The World at Large

The World at Large

As we prepare for our big SE Asia trip a week from now, I have a lot on my mind. The range of topics that are swirling in my mind little pea brain that suffers from too little capacity and too much thought turnover and too much caring about shit is vast. I’m not sure where to begin, so I will just stumble forward.

We have had Buddy now for seven weeks and he has become a real fixture in our lives and a spur to action in our daily routine. Kim is far more into training him than she was with Cecil or Betty and being the smart little sassy guy that he is, he seems to be getting the joke and settling in. Natasha is coming to watch him for the three weeks we are gone and I’m sure he will adjust, but it will be interesting to see how that all goes given that he is such a little bundle of energy and Natasha is very much a calm force of nature.

My exercise program and diet are a constant thing for me these days. I am not so much obsessed the way my buddy Mike is, as ploddingly insistent that I stay on a marginally better track day-by-day. My mindfulness and level of consciousness about it all is a quantum more than it has ever been in my life, all in a good way. I read an article the other day in Popular Mechanics of all places (I had no idea that this great and informative source of my youth was still in business) about how scientists are discovering that consciousness is actually proving to be something that can be proven to be linked beyond our individual minds and bodies to the broader universe. This is a fascinating concept as far as I am concerned, because where I not so spiritually inclined as to think I can meditate myself into another dimension or temporal life or into the distant cosmos, I do see how our limits to understanding the full breadth of our universe and the way in which billions of people before me have found their way to some version of God in their quest for understanding the whys and wherefore of existence might very well lead to the fact that there is a collective consciousness and that may well be synonymous to something like the universe at large. My getting in synch with mind and body so that I can better commune with nature and with the rest of the world (specifically the ancient worlds of Southeast Asia, where places like Angkor Wat, where over one million people lives and worshipped well before London had 50,000 inhabitants) is an important issue to me. I want to walk up the 200 steps into the Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur and walk across the Bridge over the River Kwai, two hours west of Bangkok. I will be walking up and down my hillside today doing maintenance on the garden and thinking about preparing myself for the treks to come.

That all makes me think about this upcoming trip in the broader context of my travel agenda. We will be going with Mike & Melisa and Faraj & Yasuko. That configuration alone pleases me a great deal. We travelled well with Mike & Melisa to Rome, Egypt and Jordan last year and the six of us have become good local friends and neighbors, so in a strange way it will be like being at home socially while we are away physically. That alone is an interesting configuration to contemplate. Are you more at home and able to enjoy distant lands when you travel with your local pals or are you using a crutch and not getting as much from the immersive experience as you could be. I personally think that given that I have lived and travelled abroad and remotely from those I know and love for a goodly part of my life, I kind of like bringing my chosen social network with me on my travels. Its different from traveling with family because as nice as that can be, we are quickly in the “you choose your friends not your family” frame of mind. But then again, the diversity of the six of us is such that we probably all have different things we are looking for out of our travels.

I think that what I want from this trip is a better appreciation of the part of the world and the people that I spent so much time in my youth trying to avoid (a.k.a Viet-fucking-Nam). That will get most invoked while we are in Luang Prabang in Laos on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and Hanoi, where I am sure we will be thinking of people like Jane Fonda and John McCain. We are staying at The Oriental Jade Hotel and not the Hanoi Hilton, but I’m sure memories and thoughts of the war will arise. I will even reflect back on WWII when we visit the River Kwai and drive through the Malaysian jungles that are on the road to what was Rangoon (now Yangon, Myanmar…Burma). But mostly, just like when I have gone into the Yucatán or Petra or the Caravanserai of Turkey, I am drawn to the antiquities and stories of the ancient world. What is different about this trip is that I know so little about the ancient SE Asian world compared to what I studied in Modern Civilization courses that went as far east as Jerusalem with the occasional mention of the Silk Road. And yet, the ancient cultures in this part of the world seem to rival those in Egypt and the lands of the Mayans or Greeks and Romans. I do not know why I am so drawn to ancient civilizations, but I am. Perhaps its that celestial consciousness connection that Popular Mechanics is exploring. Whatever the case, I now have to find a book on Audible or Kindle to listen to or read to prepare myself in the same way that my hillside will prepare my lower back for the rigors of the trek.

The last thing that also occurs to me is that I will be missing more than my normal comfort foods of Ruffles potato chips and Diet Cherry Pepsi. I will also be missing my daily diet of MSNBC and the mission of making the world I know get more in tune with the benefits that Bidenomics has given our nation in starting the reformation of our economy and society towards the more enlightened state that I feel is most sustainable for my grandchildren. I will be eating more diverse things than I am used to and while I enjoy a modicum of cultural food diversity, it will be as challenging to accept that as it is to walk the 200 steps of the Batu Cave. As for the U.S. political conundrum and the ongoing sage of Donald Trump and his legal and political machinations, I suppose I can survive on daily summary tidbits through the internet and the usual travelers companion of CNN International one hotel TVs. That reminds me that I love seeing the broader world at large come into better view through CNN International. Thinking about weather patterns in SE Asia alone will be different and interesting (daily tropical showers to wash off the streets in the afternoon is what I am expecting in the Equatorial area). I can ignore the local soccer, rugby and cricket news, but seeing the geopolitical viewpoint from the SE Asian perspective will certainly be enlightening and probably will help round-out my understanding of what we are wallowing in here in the U.S..

Kim and I often say that trip anticipation is half the fun of traveling. I think I want to extend that to anticipation of a more holistic sense of how I fit into the universe both physically and spiritually (not to mention historically). It may be an even more meaningful part of the value proposition of travel for me at this age and time in the world at large.