waits to take all back
Well. Having returned from Cambodia, and it being the only country I'm visiting this summer that I haven't visited previously, it's time for a new map!
visited 20 states (8.88%)
Create your own visited map of The World
It's difficult to know where to start with Cambodia; my writings for the trip are fragmented and unorganized, largely incomplete. There was much to do just in moving from day to day, and little time to gather my thoughts and commit them to paper. This was my first trip to a Southeast Asian country, and it was very different both from what I expected and also from any place I've been previously. Another piece of the Asian puzzle jostles and slides into place, but this one seems murkier, harder to make out. My trip was shorter, and I felt like I didn't get a good idea of what the country itself was like, or the Cambodian people. Certainly I enjoyed the trip very much, though. Phnom Penh was a mystery of straight streets and speeding motorbikes, Siem Reap a growing tourist haven surrounded by inscrutable, crumbling ruins. Perhaps the strongest impression was that of change, at an incredibly rapid rate.
But those were the cities. In between, the country was endlessly flat from horizon to horizon, broken by rare strands of trees. Houses stood on stilts, practically open to the road, and their inhabitants slept under them in swinging hammocks or attended to their errands, here and there. I watched it all go by from the window of the bus, moving through the world without touching it, leaving no trace.
* * * * * * *
I delight in proverbs and colloquial expressions in all languages. One of my teachers taught me a new one today:
会うは別れの始まり。 - "To meet is to begin parting," or "Meeting is the beginning of parting"
会者定離
The second way of writing it is the classical form, from a Buddhist text. "You will definitely part from the people you meet." Beautiful, and so very sad. Sometimes I wonder if the two are not one in the same.
Perhaps the greatest joy of traveling is the ability to leave all else behind. When you travel, the journey takes up the whole of your attention. Moving through the present is your most immediate concern, getting to the next present, and the moments are all one endless moment that consumes you utterly. But it is impossible to travel forever; sooner or later the wheel must stop, and the prodigal must inevitably return home. And find, extraordinarily, that everything left behind is still waiting, in one form or another.
The straight line of the journey inevitably becomes a circle.
visited 20 states (8.88%)
Create your own visited map of The World
It's difficult to know where to start with Cambodia; my writings for the trip are fragmented and unorganized, largely incomplete. There was much to do just in moving from day to day, and little time to gather my thoughts and commit them to paper. This was my first trip to a Southeast Asian country, and it was very different both from what I expected and also from any place I've been previously. Another piece of the Asian puzzle jostles and slides into place, but this one seems murkier, harder to make out. My trip was shorter, and I felt like I didn't get a good idea of what the country itself was like, or the Cambodian people. Certainly I enjoyed the trip very much, though. Phnom Penh was a mystery of straight streets and speeding motorbikes, Siem Reap a growing tourist haven surrounded by inscrutable, crumbling ruins. Perhaps the strongest impression was that of change, at an incredibly rapid rate.
But those were the cities. In between, the country was endlessly flat from horizon to horizon, broken by rare strands of trees. Houses stood on stilts, practically open to the road, and their inhabitants slept under them in swinging hammocks or attended to their errands, here and there. I watched it all go by from the window of the bus, moving through the world without touching it, leaving no trace.
* * * * * * *
I delight in proverbs and colloquial expressions in all languages. One of my teachers taught me a new one today:
会うは別れの始まり。 - "To meet is to begin parting," or "Meeting is the beginning of parting"
会者定離
The second way of writing it is the classical form, from a Buddhist text. "You will definitely part from the people you meet." Beautiful, and so very sad. Sometimes I wonder if the two are not one in the same.
Perhaps the greatest joy of traveling is the ability to leave all else behind. When you travel, the journey takes up the whole of your attention. Moving through the present is your most immediate concern, getting to the next present, and the moments are all one endless moment that consumes you utterly. But it is impossible to travel forever; sooner or later the wheel must stop, and the prodigal must inevitably return home. And find, extraordinarily, that everything left behind is still waiting, in one form or another.
The straight line of the journey inevitably becomes a circle.