One More Candle and a Trip Around the Sun

Well, it's just after 1am, April 19, 2009. I waited up for the arrival of my new birthday. Actually, I probably would have been awake anyway, but tonight at least, I had an excuse.

I thought I would take some time to relax, reflect, and do a little reading. My book of choice this evening was Mark Twain, "Following the Equator". I always get a kick out of reading his insights about the world. He was complaining that he's waited all his life to see the Southern Cross and now that he's finally in the Southern Hemisphere, it doesn't look like a cross at all. More like a kite really, but even then, only if you had a good imagination and weren't into perfection. He says that Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.

Well, Twain covered astronomy, on the astrology side of things I was born on the cusp of Aries and Taurus. So if you're fascinated by that kind of thing, i've got one foot planted on the Earth and one foot in the fire. Hey, that's actually pretty close to reality for me. Either way you look at it, i've got a 50/50 shot at "something".

The photo above was taken about 10 years ago, in some foreign tropical outdoor beach bar. I was just curious to see what 10 years of roaming the planet has done to me. I don't think too much has changed, I still love to travel, photograph and enjoy life. Since that photo was taken, i've added a wife, a daughter and a few nagging gray hairs, but the basic song line is still the same. With any luck, there's still several thousand more miles in front of me. Lots of stuff left to see and do. I'll see you out there.

An Interesting Life

I have always believed that travel is the best way to grow, to see the world through someone else's eyes. To get a different perspective than the one you were born into. It is particularly evident when you leave the country, that you are on someone else's terms and the learning curve sometimes comes at you quick. I was born with a desire to explore and see the world, so I enjoy the different perspectives. The photo above was made somewhere in Honduras. There's a little Honduran kid playing on that little dock reaching out into the ocean. Most of the kids there didn't have much, but they were just like any other kids around the world, full of energy and big smiles.

In my research and travels, i've collected a group of people both living and dead, who I consider to be influential to me and my life's direction. Some are authors, some adventurers, some, musicians, some business leaders, but they all have a purpose in common with me, something that I could borrow and share and relate to. As the song line goes, "I've read dozens of books about heroes and crooks and i've learned much from both of their styles".

One such person is Don Blanding. He was an author, actor, adventurer and all around interesting person who seemed to live a full and interesting life. I discovered his poetry about 12 years ago. He penned the perfect poem to describe my life's biggest dilemma, and i've never forgotten him or that poem. As I am closing in on another birthday and another year of living, I thought I would share it with you. It is essentially the mental struggle that every traveller has between home and an endless curiosity for what's over the horizon.
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The Double Life
by Don Blanding

How very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other One.

And that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun and raising Hell,

But shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That habits make. It finds content
With hearth and home -- dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well-loved books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,

With puttering and garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun,
It wants to go with every tide,
No matter where...just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at all.

One eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back.
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle brain)
But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "No,"
And One Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's life.

The Restless Fellow always wins
I wish my folks had made me twins.