Travel: You know, whenever I thought about blogging, really thought hard about doing it, putting my experiences, thoughts, ideas, my life, out into the wilds of the blogosphere, I never could muddle out what exactly I could write. Now this was not for a lack of topics or interests, no, I had plenty, too many in fact. A whole myriad of hobbies, passions, pursuits, the odd philosophy or two, wove in and out of my mind, flash-inspiring threads or themes for my spectral-blog... but none lasted, none could last the dawning of the next new idea. My mind has always been cluttered, a pack-rats nest; I cannot throw out a single stray thought- my childhood imagination leans, dusty, with the memories of adolescent awakening. My young adult's idealism is stacked precariously atop a love of horror films, a pristine looking folder labeled "Camus" and a dented tin of the aroma's of past tea. Ideas, images, tangible and illusory objects populate musty shelving along a long, dim corridor that forms my mind. There is little to no system in there; the sparks of inspiration that do come arrive as if gusted from the shelves by some draft (perhaps my leaky skull). That gust carries the object toward me, throwing it at my feet, spilling it's contents out and drawing my attention. My job, eternally, is to pick up that thought, walk it down the length of shelving and place it in it's cubby; and so the length of interest in that mote of brain-clutter depends on how slowly I walk. But eventually all of the kitsch is neatly nestled away and my inspiration nestles with it. And so it goes. Or, so it went. When you really don't travel that much, at least not further from your dorm to class or out into the city of Baltimore or maybe, if you're lucky, up the East Coast toward Burlington or perhaps Portland, there really isn't anything to travel write about. But, when you fly across the world and hunker down at the bottom of things, then, then, comes the stuff to write about. Whether that "stuff" is a blog of journeys and experiences or merely a few posted ramblings, travel writing is travel writing, if you travel. Now I was never very successful when it came to structure; all the grand schemes I cooked up burnt and fouled up whenever I followed the ingredients. Some parameters are always there, but more like my narrow mental passageway, leading me vaguely across the page toward some denouement. Along this track I usually come upon something worth using and then use it! But as I sat down, last week, and tried to write up my adventures so far in this world of green hills and expansive sky-scapes, all that I wrote resolved in blandness. Now I really didn't write much, I was busy with my own personal journal and some voracious personal readings, so I guess I could blame that blandness upon my own procrastination. I could but I won't; honestly what's the use? Any of that stuff wouldn't have matched my... style? Or, more fittingly, just wouldn't have matched me. As the immortal Japhy Rider once was written to have said, "A real haiku's gotta be as simple as porridge". So here's the deal kiddies, this blog isn't going to have the pretenses of greatness or insight, really, I just want to use it to occasionally blabber about something that comes to mind, most probably spurred into screen-life by this new world around me. "What is in this world," you might ask, "what justifies me, your reader, to read?" Well, that's for you to know and for me not to really worry about. Read what you read and get what you will from it. This blog is world building, simple as porridge, done mostly in the mind; whatever world comes out of it, is the world I see:

"It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear," said some invisible Marco Polo on some white blank page. My response? I guess that would have to be along the lines of this:

Don't think that the world holds in itself 

anymore than what our senses grow from it.