Come Again... ?

Yes I will. I am back in Madison, Wisconsin in the US of A. I never would have predicted that I would be back here after working and traveling abroad, but life and karma had different things in store for me (and Amie) than I predicted. Nor did I ever believe that I would be back working for the same firm I interned with as a Freshman and Sophomore in College. Life has taken so many interesting and perplexing turns recently.

And I didn't yet mention in cyberspace that I am engaged. Yes, Amie and I made it real - the same woman that has appeared intermittently throughout this blog over the last 5 years. We did, we made it, and we will be making it official before the law and the Everlasting Soul on July 30, 2010.

I have flashes of feelings and emotions from my travels that come to me ever so often. Sometimes I am walking down the street, or in the middle of a story about those times, and there I am, back again. I'm walking with Amie through the middle of those crowded Indian and Asian streets, a million smells and even more thoughts passing through my brain - overwhelming it to the point of sheer denial that my life exists in the midst of it all. And I realize, that my travel experiences to this point have left me in a state of disbelief that life can be so real and complex and confusing and enlightening - all at once. So perhaps that meer fact is what has anchored me back to this city, maybe it is my only chance of rebuilding my world into something that I can understand and articulate - in hopes that I can have a chance to pull from the last 18 months those lessons and truths as well as falacies that must be shared.

I have been scared to open this door for a while now, intimidated at the scope of what I will undeniably have to embark upon. And then to, there is my unwillingness to take ownership over everything that I have seen and done, as if it is easier to let it all pass by like a dream that quickly slips away as you turn your eyes to the events of the day. Increasingly, my heart and Soul have proven so restless as to convince me of this impossibility of silence. We are living to share with each other, and to celebrate the good with the bad so that we may somehow understand that we are not alone, that there is purpose to be found in chaos, and that there is some great symphonic unity of which we all play a part, however big or small that part may be.

So I open up my life to the new possibilities of realization and epiphany as well as union with the subtleties of everyday life in the here and now. I open up my heart to the peaks and valleys of those around me so that I may demonstrate a greater degree of empathy to the real challenges and celebrations of others' everydays. And I open up my Soul to the invisible guide that is experiential cognizance that finds union in seemingly disparate realities.

Let this declaration be my catalyst.

Madison Soul Global

And... I'm back. Again, in the place where the dream began. A slice of inspiration with subtle elements of the lives I've lived embedded in the places I hold dear, and the ones I am still discovering. Finally, my stubborn silence has been eroded by the warmth of family and friends, and the Soulful Energy of identity in place.

Learning.

And it's never ending, this changing perception of time and place and purpose and reason and logic and understanding.

I'm still not certain of where I am, where I am going, or even what I am doing - but therein lies the beauty of the times. I can do, go and be anything, anywhere. I have two certainties contradicting my confusion. To quote Paulo Cuelho in "The Pilgrim": You have only two certainties - What time is it? Now. Where are you? Here. Now begin your fight for truth." (That may be a liberal paraphrasing, however I believe I am doing poetic justice to the essence of his message.)

My last posting was in reaction to things that I learned in Laos about a cruel, unjust, vastly unrecognized crime against humanity. And it brought me great silence, especially in the face of the warmth and joy of the Laos people. Subsequently, each stage of our travels were viewed through this lens, and were somehow irreconcilable in juxtaposition one to the next. The struggles of Vietnam have bred a certain harshness and edge into the psyche of the Vietnamese... but also an irrefutable resilience. Cambodia... the dichotomy of the glory and fall from grace that has been achieved and committed in the name of the Khmer - Angkor Wat in all its majesty stands... and the legacy of the Khmer Rouge lives on. It seems I have buried most of the questions and sadness elicited by those things: pictures, places, bones, videos, testaments, emotions, human essence, injured Soul... And the silence those things create endures, against the passion of the Souls who demand recognition. Leaving Cambodia, the memories remained but struggled against the hard reality that life goes on in spite of itself - or perhaps out of a singular strength of manifest Soul. Thailand... somehow calm, clean and orderly against the backdrop of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. And then Koh Phangan... a life apart, but still, there is struggle for the Thais to maintain their dignity and identity while creating a sense of perfection and paradise for their unsuspecting guests.

And then there was time crunch and exhaustion and budgets. The curse of the overzealous, curious traveler is that you want to see too much with too little time. And so in sacrifice of a depth of experience you attain the title of having "been there". Of course the observant Soul never misses the world turn. And so Malaysia passed in a whirlwind of experience in the Kuala Lumpur metropolis with a pervading energy of tenuous inter-ethnic compromise - an ironic expression of our preceding journey from the Arab Gulf, India and Southeast Asia. And Singapore was just a "been there" as we passed through by bus and metro to the airport, as clean as it was made out to be as well as efficient. We successfully made it through the country in less than 24 hours.

Tokyo warrants a posting entirely unto itself, and may get one as I wind down. It is my hope that different experiences back in Madison and the next chapter of life will elicit different recollections and reorganizations of memories and experiences. The danger in this account writing of such experiences is that I run the risk of letting things go to a world apart as they are beginning to feel. But then there is potential to weave my experience of a lifetime within the running thread of local reality that will create a lasting fabric of inter-connectivity. And thus, realize my ultimate discovery - that as human beings and experiences, we cannot shed our fundamental unity that is our Soul. I've seen it. I've lived it. I've hated it. I've loved it. I've released my doubt into the truth that the Soul Is.

Our International Day of Love

My Sweet Amie-

Today I remember the most powerful moment of my life when the foundations for a life to come were laid. I didn't fully understand their significance then, and I am still learning about it now, for the influence that this love was to have on the subsequent events of my life were monumental. I reflect now on the course of my life over the last four years, and realize how much different it would have been without you. Honestly, I question whether or not I would actually be in Oman if I hadn't of met you - for you inspired and pushed me to search for something greater than I was, and to continually improve the man I was trying to become.

I remember falling in love with your beauty - your beautiful eyes, your beautiful hair, your beautiful smile, your beautiful skin... but before all that, I remember falling in love with your Soul - a purity like nothing else I had before experienced, yet unmatched throughout my travels and searches ever since.

April 7, 2004 was the moment that my world came alive, through the eyes and heart of another - through you Amie, My Beloved Friend.