So far this blog has been focused on Tales, writing experiences, author frustrations, and general rantings of the literary nature.

Today I have decided to write more frequently, about more subjects, and share my experiences as I experience them. The writing project is moving forward, book 2 by the end of summer is still the plan, and I am dabbling with “the novel” once again.

But I want more content, more writing exercises, and even more challenges than I already face.

So here I will lay myself bare and attempt to describe to you, dear reader, the thoughts of the road, the trials of the journey, and the passing whimsies of a man who hasn’t got it all quite sorted out yet.

So to jump right on in…

Today I am in Lisbon, Portugal. An old city, with old history, and old buildings. There are even old people here, you can feel it in their stares, even the young. Any culture is older than America, this is not a lie, and ever since first leaving those shores, many years ago, I have been humbled by the past, ever present, in these older cultures.

My home, the US of A, is really so very young. It is plainly evident that we know not what we say or do, that we are still just waiting for the ink to dry on the creation of 200 or so years. Sure the founding fathers based our current present on old history, legend, and lore. But they really were just starting something new, and grand though it may be, it is still but a babe in infancy compared to these old sages.

So the cobbled streets wear on my new shoes, and I try to relate in hostels, bars, and places to eat. But I am but a fumbling, bumbling, misspoken youth, who expects everyone to speak in a language I can understand.

I have lamented, once or twice, that the world is all explored, that the continents have been discovered, and the stars are the only frontier for the future. I have daydreamed of pasts long gone, where ships were made of wood, and the wind was the only power to move them fast along the sea. I have read of the great explorers, the Polos, Columbus’, and Cooks, of long gone years. The men who braved a never-returning journey across the deep blue, hoping for treasure, fortune, and glory…

But those times have passed and I see the detailed maps that I hold on my digital device. They pinpoint, in 3D, the buildings that stand in swarming cities, places that once were bare. I see the choices, to go where so many have gone before, and the familiar unfamiliarity of somewhere only a plane ride away.

But that’s not really what the problem is… It isn’t that the world is too connected, that it has all been done before, that there is no new territory… The problem is that I stay a tourist in a foreign land. The American in me says to go, eat, stay safe, follow my GPS route to the next corner, and avoid the common folk. I hover inside hostels, meet others just like me, and I lament the loss of the unvisited terrain.

This week the three of us got lost.

We had a map out in front of us, we knew exactly where we were going, and we followed the blue dot to somewhere else than we intended entirely. We perspired over a long walk, and argued about whether or not we were safe in the unfamiliar. We closed our eyes and tried to make it quickly past the ugly, the different, and the foreign. We ran as fast as we could to where the world was flat, and away from the dangerous edge. And then we stopped.

This was not the way for us.

Today and yesterday we walked, we did not drive, take a muni, metro, or bus… and we walked into a place where women covered their faces in what we are told is a fearsome attire. I saw the dark faces, the arabic writing on the wall, and we ordered food unfamiliar. And we enjoyed it, and we smiled, and we grew. And we did it again, got lost, on purpose, and randomly walked in a place where English was not heard, and we listened, and attempted to be heard in something that was not our tongue. These places were nearby, but we traveled. These places were not something in any guidebook, so we explored. These places are nameless, and exciting, and new and… truly foreign.

This is the way to truly see, and to explore, and to learn. For this young American has lots to learn, and to see, and listen to… The world is small, yet so big, and it only takes getting lost once in a while to see the adventure so close at hand.

C

“Fortune and Glory Kid, Fortune and Glory” Indiana Jones