A Fresh New Entry

            So now I’m sitting here again writing a fresh new entry to this journal that lay dormant for so long. Time and time again have a tried writing down my thoughts so as to reflect on them later or show my nephews and nieces when their older or just to get news back to those who care simply because it feels a lot less repetitive than telling the whole thing again. I guess that’s one of the only reasons I still use Facebook, although itty bitty status updates hardly ever have what it takes to convey a feeling hard to explain in a very large journal entry alone (no matter how many nifty new features they come up with). Anyway, time and time again have I also lost my writings. Once all on a travel notebook Kiti gave me before leaving Brazil, (I remember how curious I felt to read hers) which I forgot inside a phone booth at Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport trying to call Luma in London and ask if she can pick me up somewhere when I arrived.
             If you’ve ever known me a bit longer you’d also know of my nearly chronic forgetfulness concerning items such as towels, notebooks, tooth brushes and so on. If ever you’ve found something in your flat or car that you had never seen before or didn’t recognize, there’s a good chance it belonged to me once.

            In other attempts to compile my thoughts I had once recorded my own voice to preserve my ideas, which would have been brilliant had I not erased the files by mistake when trying to make more room for pictures (which would have made no difference considering the size of a RAW file and that of a minute voice recording). In creative desperation, I’ve written on the backs of pizza boxes (6 in total) which got thrown away by Matteo or Diana in Venice. Even after many people said “Make it online, like a blog. That way you won’t lose it!” I still didn’t because I never felt inspired to write anything sitting in front of a screen. I mean it’s really counter productive, just ask anyone who has ever had to start writing an important report, book or term paper (I remember Elisa sitting for long periods of time in front of her computer waiting anxiously for her fingers to write the first line in the chapter of her TCC)… That damn screen doesn’t help, it’s all the more pressure from that little insisting ever blinking line at the top of the page waiting for a typed word to be surrendered, like a penguin does when a fish is dangled in front of it, it’s almost as if you could hear that annoying little thing say “MINE” in a Disney-Pixar seagull fashion.

            Although I must admit that at Ana Carla’s good natured journalistic request (it’s most impossible to reject something Ana asks you so innocent and politely, that’s why I’m confident of success in her chosen profession) I gave in and made this blog with one single entry of a song Bilbo sang before he set off on his journey.
            The funny thing that just dawned on me is that I’m talking about all this computer and online stuff while I’m actually just sitting on the floor in Maria’s flat in Vienna scribbling hastily on any piece of paper I can find while listening to the Across The Universe soundtrack (valeu Rafa!) which usually gets me in a reflective mood. I’m just trying not to think how boring it will be to transcribe all of this to the blog later. I’ll be laughing at myself when I type this part (and right now, I am).

            Going back to registering thoughts, I made a single entry of The Road Goes Ever On And On thinking of greater things to come and appear on this blog, which they did (they just never made it into writing before) up to the point when a few days ago my Couch Surfing friend Mila echoed something I had heard a lot. It’s about all these people who every once in a while see the things I post on Facebook and imagine how I got from one place to a completely different other the next time I update a status or post a picture and how all my fellow would be travelers would love to hear the stories, ideas and tips (which I’d love to sit down and share personally, but I can see how that’s not too easy). So half dutiful and half just wanting to put my thoughts down as a healthy exercise (as once my dark brother had rather darkly on his blog) and half so that I can be completely honest with you, my friends and maybe followers (Cassio’s words come to mind “You’re fucking Jesus!”). And yes, you did see three halves to that argument, it’s just that space and time work differently in my mind. Math on the other hand doesn’t (at all).
            So I guess I should try to explain some of my reasons, objectives, strategies, plans, yes? Well this trip used to have a plan and so did this life for that matter (even a vague notion of plans and strategies). The truth is that I set out to travel as a pause to life as I knew it, but slowly and suddenly at the same time, the two things have blurred together in a sense that today, life as I know it (or have come to know) cannot exist without travelling. Life is in fact the trip no matter how physically inert you are. Therefore, in my eyes travelling is the only way of living, which of course doesn’t mean you have to be moving all the time, it simply implies that your mind must. You just have to choose if your body will follow suit and chase after it. I did.