the journey is started. i’m on the road, at my first real destination.
so after braving the vagaries and wilds of the chinatown bus, i was picked up by my friend JB. i’ve been kicking it in the annapolis, baltimore area ever since.
but before i go into the trip…
there’s hella i should be talking about that in this particular blogpost i just don’t have time for, as i am at mercy of internet schedules and scheduling around other folks. so let me just promise right here and right now that there will eventually be a hay qua and a kollab and a subsequent best/worst night of my life post. just not now. right now, i think the focus has to be this trip, with time spent on other topics coming when i have both the time and inclination.
now back to my odd-yssey.
there’s an elation in consummation. just that act of really and truly beginning something you’ve been looking forward to and thinking about. there’s also great nervousness, anxiety and no little amount of fear there, in the idea of setting out on the open road. there was such an exultation, a great ridiculous almost-illogical happiness in setting off on this journey with nothing but my gear and a hope that things would go auspiciously.
and boy did they ever.
my friend, another martial artist and a buddhist zen teacher dude took me to annapolis, which is where he worked. jesu christo… what a beautiful little town. honestly, i thought i had walked out of regular life and into some idyllic television show. tyhis was small town america at its best, this was what father dreamed of when he watched leave it to beaver and imagined america. what a quaint, wholesome town. and yes, i know i’ve railed against suburbia or whatever, but it wasn’t that… this was a real small town, with a main street and everything. most importantly of all for the particular character of the community, there was a very present aura of age, of history, of respectability and of significance that tied the scene together. this was exactly the type of thing i wanted to see, something ridiculously out of my realm of experience. clapboard windows and folks trawling for crabs right off the dockyards, the sense that almost everyone in the town knew one another and had known each other forever and a day. just the sheer cuteness of the architecture. the commemoration of the historical, but with novel twists.
and the people.
my god, the people. i do believe i’ll never find more kind hearted people in my life. there was such a generosity of spirit and welcoming compassion in the folks i met last night, it was ridiculous. here i am, hella tourist and stranger, yet these folks welcomed me with open arms and large drinks. just the way i liked to be welcomed.
but really though, meeting and talking with quirky, interesting people with life experiences vastly different from my own, that’s exactly the type of thing i wanted to do on this odd-yssey. and it’s been off to a bloody amazing beginning. they offered me advice and anecdotes, told me where to go in particular cities and what to do if unfortunate things arose. they told me their stories, which to me is one of the most vastly important and intimate acts in the world. hell, they even offered me, a complete stranger, places to crash and rides to my next location.
honestly, i still can’t get over the fundamental generosity of spirit i saw in these people. maybe it’s the cynicism i’ve picked up like a VD in new york city, or maybe it’s me just being tripped out by the sheer difference from anything i’m familiar with… but i am really really happy to be here with great folks and just hope that my journey just continues on in this fashion.
so yes, i am safe here in maryland. and happy.
see you in a few days.
oh and dude, crabcakes are bomb. oh and pictures will be up soon, with appropriately inane commentary.
life is like a box of chocolates, you gotta pay the price to get at the good stuff.
this makes me happy, vinny. i love that you’re taking it all in. “sucking the marrow out of life,” as thoreau says. i wish i had had the time to give you steinbeck’s ‘travels with charley’ before you’d set off. i think you would have appreciated his insights and observations as he embarked on his own similar odyssey across the nation.
happy traveling.
I’m so happy for you! God speed…