I suddenly realize, with morbid regret, that no matter how I try, I'll lose so many stories, anything I've not written down. I'm truly amazed by my poor notetaking skills, both in general and on this daring jaunt which, I vividly discover every so often each day with pounding nostalgia, HAS HAPPENED and I'm about to be going home. It's rubbish. Absolute rubbish.
I'm reminded of the mortality of this trip just now and my note-taking by a story being told to my right about a guy being rolled on the street before arriving at his hostel to sit on the toilet shitting out his guts and puking in the nearby shower. How many times have I heard a similar story and feared the worst every time I shat a little loosely? No one wants the Screaming Eagle, but we're all aware of its hovering existence.
Stories circulate through the Culture of Travelers, making the rounds with quiet changes and subtle cultural tweaking across borders, through translations, and over time. Remarkable the stories one could collect given time enough and diligence to observe by first-hand gonzo experience. The Culture of Travelers is a remarkably vibrant entity, existing just beyond the awareness of those who've never been, like the world's biggest mushroom, growing just below the surface.
You hear the stories and nod, learning the lessons and vowing never to get into such an imbecilic situation, until you find yourself the victim of a brilliant scheme by the universe designed to test your sense of humor, aplomb, and grit. Everything balances itself out if one's focus isn't chokingly tight. We're all a sort of quivering mass in the personified muddle of space, time, life, economic cycles, ideas, and miscellaneous extras. I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but I will someday, even if that day is after my strings have been assimilated into the twisting chaos of the particulate realm of the subatomic.
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