HELLOW STRANGER

That is not exactly how I greet myself before the mirror in the shoddy spirit of my awakenings, though I could rightfully say so with the awful demeanor of my hair and spooky attitude of my face. In whatever time of day, I simply have to remind myself the need for strangeness to this earth if only to shy away from the correlative result of the domestication of a wildman.
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The poet Czeslaw Milosz, in A Book of Luminous Things, states that while a visited place becomes our temporary home, we continue to preserve a sufficient distance to it to feel its strangeness not perceived by those who live there permanently. Milosz, of course, was talking about travelling as a great human endeavor where the desire to visit foreign or strange places is brought by a rudimentary inclination to unravel anything mysterious. And so he quotes the great passage Navigare est necesse, vivere non est necesse, To sail is necessary, to live is not - because we continue to live and think like the ancient Roman sailors in their seafaring journeys through tempestous weather. Then as now, we seek adventures. Then as now, we break routines.

I remember watching Anthony Bourdain in his Travel Channel show where, while doing a Conradian journey upriver in the wilderness of Sarawak, Borneo, he mentions the great gift bestowed upon a travel writer: the thrill of the unknown. And so through Bourdain's narrative, we transcend his own strangeness and nurture in the strength of his intellect; with him we saw the jungle and everything about it's raw and distinguishing power. (In one scene, he mentions and points to at local guide who, he was told, was an ex-militiamen who beheaded a number of Communists. Bourdain, a New York chef, sheepishly smiles and says before the camera of his need to keep his left-leaning politics to himself. The guy was smart enough to acknowledge his place in the hot Bornean sun.)
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Summertime is a great travel time. An so, with our collective quest for adventure, this blog will soar on to a new chapter that dwells on the spirit of travel. Grab your tickets and ride on.