joie de vivre

when you have a second to catch your breath, and you turn around to look at what you’ve left behind, and it’s something between a random collage with masterpiece potential, and a useless junkyard of compost.

I’ve been in LA for the past 6 months now. Becoming accustomed to this current lifestyle has creeped up on me without me really realizing it was happening. I don’t like the idea of becoming accustomed to anything, scared of creating a mold, like one of those orthopedic beds that form to your body shape when you lay on it too long. I don’t want to stay anywhere long enough to make a permanent indentation that I can fall into. 5 months ago, I was devising all sorts of plans to free myself of LA. And I kind of put those plans on the back-burner for a while because life got too busy to think about insignificant things like “the future”. But now that the Southeast Asia trip is impending and it’s time to get moving again, those forgotten plans are popping back up and waving their, “Hey, remember me?!?” signs across my mind. “Remember when you fell in love with the artistic vibrancy of Melbourne and wanted to move there and live with a bunch of struggling musicians and chill in beer cafes and talk to people all day and wait tables at restaurants and be a free spirit?” Yes, I remember. “Remember when you truly, deeply believed that every cell in your body was born to live in New York City, that you grew up eating, speaking, breathing New York culture but never realized it until you stepped into the crowded streets and lost yourself in the mazes of people, that New York is in fact your soul mate, the whole city in its entirety?”Yup. “Remember when you wanted to study in Oxford and then live in London and spend your afternoons at the National Gallery and Tate Modern and sip tea while eating finger sandwiches and read in Hyde Park and take afternoon strolls, and live a life of melancholy like all those old time poets like Keats and Coleridge, just because it’s London and rainy and melancholic, but deep down really relishing it all?”“Remember when your biggest fear was to be stuck some place, and become content with being stuck in one place?” Yes, oh yes, I remember it all.

And now, this 2 month backpacking trip to Southeast Asia is bringing up ghosts of “could be”s and “maybe still will be”s. But it’s also bringing up the question of, what will I do when the trip is over and I come back to LA? Probably apply to grad schools, work, take classes, hang out, go out, soak in LA in its superficial, artificial, ugly, smoggy, sprawl of SoCal splendidness. But how soon will it be before I’m itching to leave again? Stirring up fantasies to run away? Sitting in my office and thinking… what am I doing here when I’m not even close to being done with seeing the world?!?

Southeast Asia never held any particular appeal for me at all as a travel destination. England wooed me with its literature, France with its culture, Italy with its art, and Spain with its Gaudi-an liveliness. And Australia with its great beer, and Great Barrier Reef. And South America because of it’s South American-ness (enough said). But like crack, traveling is unhinging-ly addictive and each dosage is never enough, constantly forcing you to think about where you can get more more more. So Aussie backpackers gave me the tip-off to where I could get the good stuff, the best stuff. They could not stop raving about Southeast Asia and naturally convinced the Curious George in me to go see for myself, how great it really is. But developing countries consumed by, well… consumerism… and pollution, overpopulation, political havoc, constant natural disasters… do I really want to immerse myself in that?

Why, yes I do!

What do you picture when someone says, “Phillipines”? A deserted white sand beach with nothing for miles but the sounds of waves slowly caressing the shores while you enjoy the scenery, internally rocking back and forth with the tides? That’s what I picture now, because that’s what I’m desperately craving. To go somewhere so unspoiled, where the only overwhelming presence is the landscape itself. Hiking to the top of Angkor Wat before sunrise, walking for hours in the middle of a dense jungle filled with unidentifiable primal sounds, might bring some sort of peace and center to this lurking sense of agitation and anxiety that’s been slowly spreading every time I try to figure out which direction I should take with my life, or if I’ll ever find any direction. And very much like my life has been so far, the entire Southeast Asia trip is riding on bare-bones plans, an open mind for adventure and new friends, and the deep-set faith that all will tie together wonderfully and harmoniously, simply because.

So this is a really long way of saying that I’m excited to disappear off the face of LA for 2 months, or any sibilance of society that resembles society as I know it. I want to be me and just, BE. For a while. And absorb the natural, unpretentiousness of Southeast Asia. If that makes any sense at all.

I’ve always been good at keeping my options open, not closing any doors that could have even the most minuscule possibility of contributing to a fulfilling life. And as a consequence, I’ve left too many doors open to be able to decide which one to walk through. I’ve pondered over every single path that will maximize the perfect combination of passion, humanity, beauty, love, inspiration, and joy. So what kind of life will it be? Artistic? Academic? Scientific? Philanthropic? Entrepreneurial? Or just plain ol’ Nomadic? Never wanting to completely desert one role for another, leaving my bread crumbs down every trail in case I ever want to go back and explore it further.

All this pondering of life’s destinies gets even more entangled every time I think about it, which is quite often because it’s something you can’t really just forget about. I’ve always known, or thought, that all I really want to do in life is to bring joy into people’s lives, to encourage them to want to be happy, to inspire them to love this world and see it the way I see it, as beautiful, miraculous, and everything wondrous. But how do I go about achieving this? Am I even at all capable of contributing anything? And how do I even begin, when there’s so much that I don’t know about, and haven’t experienced? I want to give so much, but I don’t know how, yet.

Of course it’s not all as clean-cut and selfless as it sounds. There’s a need to help and inspire, but I’m not yet ready for the plopping-into-the-middle-of-a-third-world-country-and-scrubbing-people’s-feet kind of altruism. And I also realize that I’m ridiculously fortunate to always have the kindest, truest, most genuine people around me and that’s probably why I have the perspective of an unyielding optimist. Meanwhile, billions of people who lack the most basic necessities are prevented from the time and opportunities to appreciate things like the simple symmetries of a blooming daisy, or Michelangelo’s David in all its humanist glory. But I’ve always been convinced that if only they could, they would be converted to optimists, too. And of course I realize that I sound totally hippie-ish and delusional in my idealistic mantra that love is the answer, love will solve all, not just romantic love but love of self, love of human kind, and love for all the beautiful things in the world. Oh, and I also really do want world peace, too. But like I’ve said, I don’t know how to go about doing this. And rationally, going to Southeast Asia may be the worst way to solve this enigma because it will certainly only open new doors that will leave me further ravished and hungry for more.

But for some reason, it feels like this trip might actually allow everything to make more sense. Maybe because Elizabeth Gilbert paints the universe out to be so damn picture-perfect if you can just make it to Bali.

I’m gonna use this trip to try and organize all the parts that I’ve collected over the years, parts that I’ve stuffed in my back pockets and have forgotten about, that have stained, scarred, and marked me while I was too frazzled to notice, that have been patched and plastered onto areas that have been neglected for far too long. And maybe I’ll be able to sort it out during these two months, and come back with even just a tiny section of this puzzle put together. Along the way, I’ll also collect new pieces too, to add to the masterpiece. or junkyard. its a fine line. WOW this sounds like a self-centered trip. Aren’t you glad you’re not travelling with me?!

A wise storyteller named Ted Mosby once said, “I think for the most part, if you’re really honest with yourself about what you want out of life, life gives it to you.” Well, I know what I want from life. I want adventure, passion, love, chaos, genius, creativity, unity and spontaneity, i want sunshine, hip sways, red wine, symphonies and swirling colors, i want the tomorrows, yesterdays, and right-here-right-nows, i want introspection and retrospection, and fireworks-sparking-we’ve-met-in-a-past-life extraordinary connections, i want to learn and grow and teach, i want the unexpected, the multitudes and contradictions, awe and boundlessness, i want joy, peace and poignancy, to never quench my unquenchable thirst for life, and give enough love to everything that makes this world beautiful. I want too many things for one person to have. Is it too ambitious to ask for it all, to expect it all?

I think life will give it to me. Either way, I’m off to find it myself!

Bon Voyage! <3>

Sunday, August 8, 2010

about me

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Monday, May 24, 2010

It’s one of those moments