2009 was a wild year for me. it began in my true home town where i lived out of a green backpack and slept on my parents' living room couch. i found myself feeling quite lost in the world. i did however (as i seem to always) have plans to travel to faraway places and it would only be a matter of time before i could see these plans follow through.
the previous year came to a crash in my life. i had just lost my sweet grandmother and i had since recovered from both a failed attempt to re-root in a foreign country and a failed relationship that should have ended long ago. i didn't have much money besides the cash i rounded up from scalping basketball tickets and the job i was trying to maintain wasn't really showing itself to be any great step forward financially. it was however in the end of 2008 that i met someone really unique and special to me. we didn't turn out much as a couple but she gave me a kick in the ass to step up my traveling as i had once sincerely set my heart out to do. it was in this momentum that i would soon find myself arriving in San Pedro Sula, Honduras in the late winter of 2009.
i look back on previous posts i've made into this blog and they were truly esoteric. i didn't want certain people to read about what i was experiencing or what i had seen and it still bugs me a little that i cannot be truly honest (at least in this blog) although i do have some wild stories to tell.
central america is truly a wild place. it calls on you to be at your best ability to determine the character of others while pushing your body to its limits. wherever you are dropped off, you will not be alone for long and any plans you have made will soon be thrown into the air.
i'm aware that i made a few mistakes in my travels. i got myself into situations that again i could not write about but they came together in the long run. i knew when it was time to leave too. the day i set foot on Detroit soil once again proved to be a day that i'll never forget. near the close of that day i was picked up by a friend who used to always pick me up from the airport and over breakfast i told him all about how i'll never again fit into society. i'll always remember his laughing at my uncivilized nature and my plans to later move to İstanbul, which is in an area where civilization originally came to be many centuries ago.
in the time between returning from central america and leaving for İstanbul i found myself on something like three or four adventures to the west and southwest. i met with faces i hadn't seen in years and traveled amongst some of the people who helped form me into the traveler i am today. a trip to San Francisco quickly turned into a bout of homelessness when i came to visit a friend who had been kicked out of his apartment by his girlfriend the same day. sleeping in a pickup truck in california isn't really frowned upon as much as you'd think.
we traveled california and i made my way into mexico for a brief misadventure. i also found my way north (either before or after.. i forget) into idaho where i made an attempt to live with an old friend in Boise. i came back to Detroit only to return to california again where i would write about a fondness for a friend something that i still think to be very beautiful:
"the feeling is incredible and familiar. it comes to me in silence and
beautiful solitude and it keeps me awake at night. the irony is pretty
spectacular, so spectacular that it replaces the sadness i didn't see
coming with the ability to marvel at how strangely dates and places
overlap in my history. really it feels just like it did two years ago
when i stared all night at a my bedroom walls covered in floral
lavalavas instead of sleeping... travel really really far away and wink (or smile?) at the moon
once in a while for me, she knows what's best."
-May 17, 2009
i hitchhiked to Denver then caught a long, long greyhound through the entirety of central USA. i met some of the strangest and most fascinated people ive ever met on that bus and the stormy weather seemed to dance in the burning background to my memories the whole time. back in Detroit life slowed down for me a bit for the next few weeks. i worked and washed boats and spent good time with the people of my city who truly formed me into what i am today. a few weeks passed and three good friends who had left the city the same time i originally did came back to visit. we explored abandoned buildings much like old times and later that night i wrote of them:
"it was a bless-ed reunion of a multi-faceted puzzle from which
each piece was in it's right place. while walking the concrete walls of
detroit abandonment with each assembled fragment of our tribe's
forefathers one gets the sense that perhaps our absences have been too
great. we search every corner of this world for the freedom of absolute
love only to find that we find ourselves in other people. that love is
carried with us not like a dying flame however a tattooed heart. i
miss you guys."
-August 19, 2009
i moved to İstanbul on September 2nd that year and by the close of 2009 i found myself on the rooftops of Cairo celebrating the new year with a whole new tribe.
i used to call myself a sojourner or at least i claimed it to be my only goal in life. i wanted to travel far and turn the world upside down. now that i have become a sojourner and i have been to so many wonderful places i often lose sight of how awesome this world really can be. perhaps i'm simply more instinctual now. i'm more excited about travel than i ever have been and far more experienced than most people. this came with great patience and understanding of how the world and it's inhabitants work. it is a waste of time for us to validate every move we make or every passing second of time. whatever i set out to find i have forgotten long ago and i'm much happier on this path in which i have accepted that there truly are no answers out there in the universe.
looking back on old writings and photos was quite enjoyable for me and i'm surely thankful that i have decided to keep this blog so long ago. i'm older and wiser now and i've fulfilled my goal of becoming each of those things. in so many ways this journey is just getting started and i'm glad i have the experience to see this world in the light i now see things in.
i'm humbled, wide-eyed and forever curious.. starting this next summer things are going to become quite interesting..
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