yes, leaving town is one of the best ways to escape chores! in 1992 i spent four months in europe, two of them with my travel partner, berta gardner www.pbase.com/wwp/berta (the picture from mexico on another of our trips)
here's a few notes i wrote after coming home.
3. Whatever makes the present everything makes us live: an accident, love, travel.
4. Because everything is strange when we travel, we look with children's eyes, hence renewal.
5. It's strange that what makes us comfortable also makes us miserable.
12. It's a fine line between feeling alien and feeling refreshed.
15. He searches the world for intimate spaces. The grand did nothing to comfort him.
17. All our lives it's a battle between buying a house and taking a trip.
19. We search and search for the place that feels like a mother to us.
20. Only when he knew the whole world would he feel safe at home.
32. In becoming spiritual we often desire to escape life.
33. More often we are in love with the idea of liberty than liberty itself.
47. We take ourselves seriously until confronted by the inevitable.
54. Just the motion itself, the rocking of the boat, the clicking of the wheels, it was enough. He'd returned to his mother's womb.
60. The only freedom is the love of change.
74. Travel grants us the freedom of ignorance. In a new culture we don't catch the subtle signals telling us what to do.
79. Why do I always end up having a cultural experience when all I want to really do is lie on the beach?
89. After being bewildered by people it's a relief to turn to books.
95. He ruined his body, but had a good time doing it.
108. Hidden from the world he could be what he wanted. As long as he could live without an audience he was free.
144. It's not that we don't know what we want. It's that we fear what we want.
160. When he took his past back from her he, at first, felt empty, for she had confirmed his existence, even as she seemed to steal it.
169. The child reaches for a glittering object. This is the history of humanity.
176. They loaded up the trucks. As Lenny Bruce said, when he died his precious possessions had become junk.
201. Too often we mistake changing the world for changing ourselves.
231. Love or coffee, take your pick. One or the other will give you inspiration.
if these have made you curious, you can browse the whole collection www.pbase.com/wwp/zen
pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp
poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems
thanks for listening!
