monoceros blogsI'm finally home from my awfully grand adventure in Argentina. Frankly, it's rather modest when compared to the itineraries of travelers I met along the way, but to me, it was more than grand. I spent a little over three weeks in a country - and a continent - I'd never been to before; I hiked, walked, climbed, roamed, and danced; and I spent a lot of time on my own. I'd never had a journey - physical or emotional - like this one before. There were many things I did that I hadn't done very often, if at all. One of them was opening up to people. Traveling alone, I spoke often to strangers - in English, mangled Spanish and very rusty Italian, even a smattering of French. I talked to people in restaurants, art exhibitions, cemeteries, shops, at glaciers and waterfalls, on dance floors and airplanes. I asked questions and answered many. I also observed, because in many situations, I couldn't speak the language, and had little choice but to watch the people around me. And I saw many things I didn't before. Saint Augustine once wrote, "People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering." And it's true, we forget to wonder at ourselves, the people who fill the spaces between oceans and mountains.
So it was hard to leave Argentina and return to Singapore where I need to adjust to old routines. I hardly used the computer during the last five weeks; now I'm back to reading the news, music blogs and book reviews. And recently, Neil Gaiman put up a particularly good one by Michael Dirda, famed book reviewer of The Washington Post. The book itself interested me at first, but then I came across several lines that pulled me away from plot and character and led my thoughts back to the real world -
"Like so many fantasies, Mirrlees's book is at heart an exploration of humankind's pervasive sense of rift, the unshakeable feeling that Things Aren't as They Should Be. The world, our manner of life, or even the fundamental nature of the universe is somehow...wrong. Using both whimsy and mystery, Lud-in-the-Mist looks hard at the human condition and suggests how a sick society might be healed, how our divided selves gradually be made whole. Of course, this isn't to say that afterwards we will be perennially carefree and cheerful, let alone happy. Our all-too-human hearts were never designed for that."When I decided to visit my brother in San Francisco and then take off to Argentina, I was thinking about how to fill a void that had been created years before. There were things missing in my life, and I needed something wholly different from my ordinary life to fill the void or at least help me figure out what I truly wanted to fill the void with. One half of me has been responsible, sensible, thinking often about other people's desires and happiness; the other - the dreamer in me, the romantic who yearns for adventure and unpredictability - was often hapless and ignored. And I got what I needed on this journey. Epiphanies are what I associate with short fiction - the kind I read and write - and not with my own life. But I had three in five weeks. I experienced plenty of wretched, draining moments, but also discovered much happiness and indulged my curiosity. Just as I observed the hearts of others - hearts that were empty and hearts that yearned to be opened wide and explored - I knew that my own very human heart had returned to me at last, or perhaps it was that I had returned to it. And I'm glad it happened before 2008 ended.
Return to the Heart, by David Lanz
The Heart Asks Pleasure First, by Michael Nyman
Your Heart is an Empty Room, by Death Cab for Cutie