Detour

After reviewing the last few posts, I'm beginning to realize this thing isn't exactly proceeding how I'd wanted to. I'm starting to come across as a bit more of a leftist "damn the man" hippie. Let me try to set the record a little straighter. I'll tell you a bit about just who you're reading. I'm a guy, modestly smarter than the average bear, old enough to catch that passing reference, not old enough to have seen the referencee in his first run at the world of television. I am impulsively passionate, meaning that if I read or see something I like, I'm immediately swollen with the desire take part in it. I was looking for another word there, but I think swollen accurately portrays the slowing and stiffness of other parts of my life when this desire seizes my brain. Allow me to explain. I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I wanted to move to Long Island. I saw Lost in Translation, I wanted to go spend a week or two in the Park Hyatt in Tokyo. Currently, I'm suffering from a bout of intellectualism. If the nagging is persistent enough, tomorrow I will drink deeply from the river of Whitman's words while occasionally breaking to scan the horizon for Moby Dick. I have little doubt that within a few days, I won't be able to crack the spine on either of the books, despite the fact that I'm already over half way through them both. Continuing, I'm a writer who is afraid to write, afraid to find the failure that I know I'll find, the failure that is necessary in order to better myself. How tragic and Catch-22. During my year abroad in Scotland, I took ill with a serious affliction that hinders my thought process even today. It was caused by a bite from a nasty little creature, commonly known as the Travel Bug. I believe I've got 12 or 13 countries under my belt for now, though plenty more exploration can and will be done within those countries, and hopefully another half dozen or so on the way. Just going to have to wait and see how money and other common hindrances affect my life in the Far East. I have to admit, despite the class that I took on political Islam, I fear I've been too deeply effected by romanticism in movies and books growing up. I'm a bit of an orientalist, hoping that the mystique that surrounds places like China is entirely true, though reality will undoubtedly teach me otherwise. I've been through enough places to know that one should never enter a country with preconceived notions of what you will find there and that a large part of your opinion on a country comes from your own perception of things. Do yourself and the natives a favor, learn and experience as much as you can while you're in their country, don't take anything for granted, and, whether your physical appearance will allow you to or not, do your best to blend in. Culturally or linguistically, I've just found that you get a more pure experience when you make an effort to show them you're pleased to see how they live. Dear God, I should've stopped while I was ahead. I'm starting to sound like that damn hippie again