KL

The ride into Kuala Lumpur from the airport takes thirty minutes on the KLIA Express. It is a fantastic train really, clean, organized, not crowded, and it has the little flat screen televisions that tell you news and random facts like where petroleum comes from and why a particular football star does not want to return to Marseilles. You speed through tropical marshes and greenery until the concrete slowly begins, tall suburban high rise apartments, more and more congested, then arriving at the city center and an impressive skyline topped by the Petronus Towers lighting up the night. I have come to love Malaysia, my second time in, and looking at it all, this impressive array of complex infrastructure and architecture and design, you think for what must be the hundredth time if this concept of America paving the way in everything, so popular in election season rhetoric, is perhaps a concept that should be revisited by the masses. A friend and I once weighed the benefits of dropping every high school graduate from the west in the middle of China with $1,000 and telling them to find their way out, in order to better mold foreign policy. The more I am out, and the more I go back home, the more pressing and more pertinent I think this idea becomes.

In any case, I went straight to my Whisky Bar on Changkat Bukit Bintang, for a dose of sophistication and a cigar. Sitting out on my chair that hasn't changed since I sat there last, I watched the most interesting group of people walk up and down that electric street, ladyboys on the prowl, old white men in town for vague hazy reasons, and backpackers lugging their luggage and spreading their dime as far as they can. It is a melting pot of people really, where a Bangladeshi boy trying for college waits on an Australian businessman who sits next to a girlfriend from the Philippines half his age, whose family back home is assumedly supported by that relationship. I always find myself gravitating towards these concentrated places where everything comes together, vice and incredible goodness, hand in hand, all out there and visible to the attentive eye.

From there a whirlwind, too compressed, as these things always are. A rooftop dinner and the Kuala Lumpur skyline, a helipad full of wine, a club full of Asians jumping up and down, a taxi ride, a short night's rest, a hangover, a trip to the suburbs, powerpoint presentations that do not end, more wine, more food, more talk, the good kind, the best I can remember lately, all bleeding back into the KLIA Express, the world in reverse, the concrete slabs, the green marshes, the airport and the big full ocean below. 

I'll tell you what it's like for me

Back in Seville, my old host brother got a dog and is dating someone now, but I'm not sure how much else has changed. I think about him often but don't catch up often enough. I think about all the family there really, nesting away in Triana, another year or two older. Out from their house I still remember that shuffle of people coming across the bridge and walking down San Jacinto and people drinking their small lunchtime beer or gossiping in the surrounding plazas from 10pm onwards, old men with canes and a newspaper and young girls in love with boys on scooters. All that Spain is to me can be defined by that feeling in the air on a nighttime stroll, that very street, the buzz, the smells, the humming of voices.

And meanwhile in Colombia the streets are packed on Friday and Saturday around Medellin's Parque Lleras, a similar language spoken with a different tint flowing through the air. I miss my salsa school and mountain views and go-to restaurants and the Velvet Cafe where I sat one day and met a person who just immediately without rationale felt different after meeting so much of the same. Gone, gone, gone is that country now, brought to life only in short lived moments when I shut my eyes and put Bomba Estereo or Romeo Santos on as background noise. How lucky we are to have such beautiful places and such beautiful people to miss. How empty would life be to have never had those things at all?

I remember the toxic smog of Nairobi traffic and the pureness of the air once you escape, which is still today on this very day no doubt toxic and no doubt pure. When you go far enough north towards Nakuru you come to a hill that peers out on the Great Rift Valley, the real cradle of humanity, a coming home of sorts, and there it looks like the world goes on forever and never ends. One trip took me beyond this point to Meru County, remote, untainted, in the heart of Kenya. The national park was full of wild animals and no one on the road and in all my months in that country, full of so many bitter memories far too vivid to this day, I extract a few happy ones from this tucked away part of my mind, looking out at elephants as they looked back at me.

And meanwhile in Nigeria, Lebanese millionaire playboys still take their armored cars out and run through the decade long motions - work, clubs, drugs, boat to the beaches with the female flavor of the month, and back again. It's a place that harvests vice, more dysfunctional than you think a place can be without entertaining a civil war. I'm glad I was there and saw what the world can be, and what the world will continue to be, because none of these themes will change, but it is not my place to decide on the reoccurring cycles of people, much less countries, that are also reoccurring today.

I imagine the cafe culture of Melbourne still carries on, as do the waves that pummel the Great Ocean Road and the runners along the Yarra. All those people I never met, and the tiny percentage  of those I did. I was so young, and too inexperienced to have context for it all, but certain parts stick out through my 21 year old eyes: seeing the Southern Cross through the clouds each evening; the flying foxes scattering the sky at dusk; the cold tram ride to work each morning; a bottle of wine alone one night on a park bench. I really don't know if I'll ever go back, to these places that were once all there was, but I hope to, like everywhere, if it is in the cards. There are so many places like this now, and yet so many more to see.

Where's that Dutch girl I travelled with for four days around the Great Barrier Reef? I have no idea really. Or the Australian I smoked a deadly cigar with on a hill in Guatemala? Those Turkish girls from a night out next to Istanbul's glowing mosques. The students around Honduran ruins?

The divorced financial planner at the brewery on my epic ride through Monterrey. My only real one-night-stand, on my final few days in London. The Egyptian that joined me for an illegal midnight swim on Qatar's side of the Persian Gulf. The actor from Breaking Bad I saw roped with a blonde at a bar in Cape Town. The prostitute I spoke with for awhile one night in Abuja. The President of Tajikistan whose hand I shook one afternoon in Brussels. The potential ladyboy who delivered a foot massage in Bangkok. The Argentinians and the rental car that circumvented Tenerife. Ex girlfriends turned wives turned parents in far off places. All these people I've lost track of, nearly forgot, and to my knowledge are out there living on somewhere. Hello and goodbye, hello and goodbye, the list goes on and on.

I am fascinated by these connections, the ones we have lost and the ones we still have and the ones we didn't even realized happened. I am fascinated by how the realities continue, are happening now, in every corner of the world without us. I am fascinated that there are billions more I will never see. So at present, this is the scope and how far the world extends for me.

I cannot describe to you the paradoxical feeling of both great fullness and great emptiness that accompanies having been everywhere and hardly anywhere still, and wanting to be all those places at once. This feeling comes often and with great force, and it is the benefit and the drawback of a life that has expanded so big. 

From Sri Lanka

One part I have come to love is the birds outside my window. They nest in the trees that rise up and peak a few floors down. They start chirping at any hour of the day or night, but I prefer it best when I rise in the morning, tropical sounds, off some relaxing rainforest mixed tape. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of birds they are, but occasionally you will see a bright green parrot or a yellow beaked black bird and other times fearless ravens all flying between the brush, and it could be any one of these. They are sometimes accompanied by miniature squirrels, smaller than I have ever seen, running along the rooftops, and then if it is dusk, giant bats come out by the hundreds for feeding, their silhouettes flapping against the dimming sky. Nature, above all things, points you here. It is indicative of this small island in the Indian Ocean, and a reminder of where you are, how many miles you have come, when the buildings and the roads and the cars all start to look the same.

The morning run takes me with the birds, out of my apartment down a buzzing street until I reach that gaudy government building that signals the beginning of Viharamahadevi Park. Past the big statue of Buddha and down the cobblestone paths, the sweat is noticable already pouring off your face in the equatorial humidity. The captured heat of the grass and the trees and the pond encapsulates you as you tune into your breath, the pace of your steps, and the subtle looks from those around you, all very reminiscent of that one afternoon in Singapore's Chinese Gardens. There is a special feeling to a run in this part of the world, almost spiritual in this weather, where the rain can come at any moment when the skies are still blue and then vanish without a trace leaving curious little puddles in the street.

And that is how a day begins, before a suit flies in and characterizes the rest. How different are things in Dallas and Austin and the rest, where all those people from past lives scurry about fighting and finding their way, one person in a crowd of millions, with one or two overarching themes soon to define a decade? I gauge often the merits of both - there certainly are merits to both -  but to be honest these days, a brief examination of all the lives I could have had, normally plastered over people's Facebook walls and Instagram accounts, provides all the motivation I need to keep moving and wait patiently until I find the right kind of rest.

So I arrived here in this place, fittingly welcomed by a tropical downpour on the cusp of monsoon season, with so many unquantifiable things put behind me and any number of new things laying ahead. That was that. Old colonial hotels beckon afternoon tea, plantations sit waiting up in the highlands, and a thousand untouched beaches on far corners of the island call out to my Saturdays and Sundays just a train ride away. There are new routines to find and be made, and even a little trust in life leaves no doubt a piece of writing from January 2016 will proclaim how all this could not have been any other way, another lovely year in the books which one does not get back.

Intermediary

The intermediary place was New York City, which puts me in good company. It has been the intermediary place for how many people throughout human history? How many writers toiled away on its city streets and never published anything? How many artists whose name I have never heard painted in a run down studio? How many twenty-somethings tried to make it work in shared beaten down apartments full of strangers? How many people in suits withered away working 80 hour weeks hoping they would succeed? How many weary travelers? How many immigrants? How many romances? This city is always changing and redefining itself, as are the people in it, and that energy you feel when you get out in the middle of it all.

So for three days I put my feet to the pavement and explored and wandered and got lost while visualizing again all the infinite crevices I could one day call home, and all the manners in which I could potentially make that happen. In the background sat lovely conversations woven with food and coffee that turned slowly into beers as the day moved on. All the various micro-niches worked themselves in and out of sight and by walking and tuning in to your surroundings you realize not a single city block is left untouched by some profound past event, whether remembered or not remembered by the average outsider like me. 

And again, that was it, a start and a stop. Up again from JFK and out across the Atlantic, Soho and Brooklyn and New York University and all the fountains around Washington Square continue making noise further and further into the background. The future ushers in tropical rains, tea plantations, and a whole new set of unknowns.

In and out of the Aburra Valley

I grow unnaturally excited these days at the sound of salsa music. The rhythm to me demands movement and a migration of people to open space, linking hands, looking into one another’s eyes, and then the steps and twirls begin. It is beautiful when done correctly, when seasoned veterans intertwine like they have known their partner their entire lives. It is romantic even if it is not romantic, passionate even if there is no sexual passion. It is improv, never the same, and it is based off feeling: the strength in which the woman holds your hand; how she twirls when instructed; and the manner and confidence and delicacy in which he the man directs. Of the many things I think back on from Colombia and my month in the Aburra Valley, this dance and my progress in learning it makes me smile a lot in the end. 

Thousands of miles away now, other things also come to mind, things which make up a month just too short to justify any drastic changes or life alterations but just long enough to feel important. Sipping a coffee in Parque Lleras and having a Sunday run in el Poblado and drinking a pint in Bogota Beer Company were just a few of the gorgeous routines that settled in shockingly little time, all to the backdrop of Spanish language. This is a familiar process, developing routines and then uplifting them, a theme of impermanence and constant change. It has come to characterize my last five years, and while there are of course trade offs to this style of life (aren't there with everything?), this time left me musing from the 740th step atop Guatape, on just what sort of toll this takes. How many times can you say goodbye just as it got so good? At what point does perceived obligation take a rest and you just go where you want to go? When do you drop everything on irrational chance, and when do you maintain the course? These are the questions that sit in a grey hazy middle, without straightforward answers, that to some extent haunt you, tossing and turning up and down the aisles of the plane that takes you off somewhere else in the night.

My first image and last image were the same, rounding the first and final corner with the lights of Medellin spreading out into the distance and maneuvering up the hills on the other side. This will forever be ingrained in my head and associated with this point in my life, another profound transition, alongside this lingering feeling that Latin America feels more like a distant home than anywhere else in the world, and like somewhere I belong, a borrowed culture, somewhere I fall back into in stride and will certainly swing by again.

Post number 99

It's a milestone of sorts, but I'm just glad I did it: taking the time to mull things over as they happened, jotting down a few notes and ideas along the way, and putting words to the dreams as they took shape in my head. In truth, I'm still not sure what to call it, and any attempt has always seemed incomplete - part blog, part journal, part mindless rambling, part introspective thinking, partly for me and partly for the public realm. It is not ever only one of these things.

I sometimes go back and edit a cringe-worthy sentence I've since outgrown. I sometimes read a line multiple times and remember exactly how I felt when I wrote it on that specific day any number of years ago. I sometimes write an entire post in ten minutes, and other times edit for weeks before deleting it altogether. I sometimes write five in a month, and have at times regrettably skipped a month. Some I felt I couldn't not write, while others I almost couldn't bare to write. Some I think are decent, and some I think are tedious. Some I wrote drunk and some I wrote tired. Sentences have grown more tight and observations at least a little bit more true. There is just no method or blueprint to this thing. It is consistent and it is constantly evolving, and I like that more and more as we creep up to a century mark with an expanding body of work spreading out behind. It makes me wonder what I'll write next and what viewpoints and what victories and what sorrows will make me want to write more.

For now, I don't know why I do it and I do not pompously believe it has any lasting impact, but late at night when I open this up and click back on a random month of my life, it brings me great happiness to see a general progression of things, all the little stepping stones from the world's multiple corners and chance encounters, people who once morphed us, mattered, and now do not. It is my Marco Polo journal, my graduate school thesis, my nobel prize winning speech, my Ted Talk, my manifesto, my last words, and all that is both insignificant and significant in my life. If I died tomorrow I recognize, like most of us must, that there wouldn't be much to show in the grand scheme of things, and absolutely nothing for the history books within a hundred years; I'm at peace with every bit of that really. But I would feel happy knowing I left this little bit of me behind, floating out there somewhere, with no importance placed on the fact that someone or no one will ever find their way here.

Secretly though, I think I do see that happening. I see someone one day reading a page and thinking how much that applies to them. Then I see them getting up, walking out the door, and carrying on about their day.

All the little Africas

Out past the dilapidated roads of Lagos further and further into the countryside, things get strange, but this is not a Nigeria-only phenomenon. Stay the night at an inn in West Texas, or eat breakfast at a Waffle House outside Little Rock, and you are sure to see a fair amount of strangeness too. People there and in all such places I find more hardened to the elements, more enclosed, more absorbed in the little worlds that don't change as much or as fast as they tend to in cities. For me it will always be something worth seeing, something worth sharing a coffee with in the morning or a meal with at night, a chat that reminds you just how many little niches there are out there, but after a week I am crawling back to civilization, where the buzzing energy of people and their broad fluid ideas surround you.

I reached that week-long threshold in an ancillary Nigerian state of 3 million, but out there it really is a whole new level. I learned, for instance, that the entire pipe system of this no name province is decades old and made of asbestos, which I then thought about later in the shower before turning the water off. Meals each night were passed alone in a dining hall next to a blaring evangelist preacher on a television that no one was watching but no one bothered to change. I will forever look back on those meals, alone in a room, overshadowed by an animated shouting Prophet Akanda, wondering if this was a low point in my life or one of the most interesting periods there will ever be.

One day I rode on a scooter and found it infinitely less pleasant than my moto-taxi in Kampala, and likewise in Bangkok, and pretty much any motorcycle I have ever been on in my life. I elected not to do that again. I was dropped at an open air informal market to buy apples and crackers, cloaked in a suit after too long a day, and never in my life have I felt more out of place, middle of nowhere, somewhere in Nigeria, dimming light on the horizon, people yelling "oyibo" in every direction, an impossible distance away in both time and space from what I and many would consider a normal existence where girl and guy meet in coffee shop and two months later curl up on a couch watching the cinematic version of On the Road. You just have to laugh about it sometimes, or else you might cry. You have to decide if the conventional life is for you, and then just how unconventional you are willing to go. Blazing back down broken roads after a week in the boonies, Lagos, Nigeria never looked so good and so forgiving when its buildings popped up across the sky in front of me. When Lagos starts to play that role, I realize your reality has gotten obstructively warped.

It's challenging to explain, the cynicism you start to develop. The Africa of my littered memories is a thousand things, East, West, and South, and not all of them are happy, leaving me in a constant state of cross-checking reality with whatever it is I used to know. But I feel like if you've done this place right, if you've done it long enough, if you've ventured a bit into the heart of what makes all the little bits add up to a whole, you just cant look back on everything with a big smile on your face, and that's okay, right even, because I do not believe everything in life is meant to be happy, uplifting, or inspirational, wrapped in colorful flowers from the world's paradisaical escapes. We do no one any service when we apply masks and pretend things aren't what they are. It brings us no closer to the happiness within ourselves, which, you know, can exist anywhere, no matter how far out we land.