If you’re thinking about going…
Sometimes – not all the time, you understand, just sometimes – I am struck by the fact that my life is perfect. I mean, really perfect. It is just exactly the life I asked for. From the hazy five and a half year nightmare that was my life in Los Angeles, I can pull up a vision of myself sitting on the couch in that duplex on Scott Avenue, wishing and hoping and maybe even praying for a very different sort of life.
If there are times when I distinctly feel that my life is perfect, now is one of those times. I am sitting at Mut Mee. It is 7:32pm. I am just starting to cool off from the intense heat of the day, wearing a tee-shirt and enjoying the ceiling fan. The night is very dark and I am looking at long, bright streaks of light on the Mekong, reflected from the Lao side of the river. White fairy lights twinkle in the trees of the garden. I am listening to The Stooges while trying to think of a title for my latest short story.
“Now last year I was 21…and now I’m gonna be 22; I say ‘oh my and boo hoo’”
‘1969’ The Stooges.
When I was 21, my best friend was a boy named Matt. We used to sing Stooges songs as we walked up and down the streets of the Mission in San Francisco like we owned the goddamn place. Not just the neighborhood but this whole dirty beautiful world was ours by virtue of youth and courage.
Anyway, as perfect as my life feels, if I for reals 100% had my way, my best friend Matt with whom I listened to The Stooges and went crazy and fell in love with life…
Well, he wouldn’t be dead.
This is the sort of desolation that I cannot escape, no matter where I go in the world. That I am here and he is not.
Luckily, I do not travel to escape. I travel because, although I am not as young or as courageous by half, I am still in love with life; I lust for experiences the way other people lust for money or sex. I travel because I want my world to be an enormous, thrilling, confusing, overwhelmingly chaotic and heartbreakingly beautiful place. I travel because at some point I discovered that the easiest way to create change on the inside is to create change on the outside.
I am only telling you all of this because you may also have a suspicion that your life could be much better than it is. And you may even have a crazy idea that what might make it better is if you did something drastic like leave behind everything that you know and love and depend upon, and hit the road. And I am saying this because maybe – just maybe – you are actually teetering on the edge of Do I Stay Or Do I Go?
I honestly do not believe that if you take this chance, you will ever look back and regret your own courage. That is simply not the sort of thing one regrets. One regrets sitting on their couch wishing and hoping, but not doing. One regrets not being able to say goodbye one last time. One regrets staying too long. One regrets opportunities missed. But you will never regret acting decisively on your own behalf. Be afraid if you are afraid, and go anyway. Just go.
Tags: Nong Khai, Thailand
sandra_101
I just read about 4 of your entries…sorry, I was busy this week…and all I can (damn it! there’s something sticky on my pinky finger and it’s getting all over the keyboard!!) say is that you truly inspire me. How fortunate I am to know you. I am going to try to work on that mixed tape today. xo