"Take a cruise, you said..."

Today was pretty sweet. I slept for like 11 hours last night because I'm really sick, which sucks, I'm not gonna lie. But after 11 hours of sleep, I feel a lot better than yesterday. Anyway, I worked today, which wasn't a whole lot of fun but not entirely bad, either.

But THEN I saw another Tuvan band, Alash, which was great because I happen to love Tuvan music. The throat singing is like nothing you've ever heard, and I really hope at least a few of you get to hear it at some point because it really shouldn't be missed. More than that, though, I really love the instruments. They possess a kind of power that I can hardly explain... something pure, old, majestic, and noble, but also very physical. To Tuvans, their sounds represent those of nature; they are in fact derived from animals: some of the stringed instruments have horse skin covering the drums, and the bows and strings are made from horse hair. The necks have carvings of horse heads at the ends. For Tuvan nomads, horses are synonymous with life. (Probably because horses provide almost every means of existence). Somehow, that significance is not only carried by the music, but it transcends Tuvan culture into ours and presents itself in a way that we too can understand it. Despite our distance from the natural world and dependency on machinery and technology rather than what the earth alone provides, Tuvan music is still very powerful to at least some of us. I think that suggests something universal about humanity - about our undying bond with nature, as well as a primal desire to travel, since more than a few people, after hearing Tuvan music, have been inspired to visit that far away land (including me... someday).

I'm going to revisit the entry I made a few weeks ago (2/3, so exactly a month ago) which was simply a chapter from The Songlines. I didn't add any kind of commentary to it then, first because I thought its beauty stood for itself, but mostly because I didn't want to pollute its words with mine. And while I myself don't agree with the Aboriginals’ belief in how the world came about, I found that belief both fascinating and universal in a different way, and very applicable here. I had to write an essay on that book, and I think it'll help me to bring my point around by including a part of it (the last 2 paragraphs) here:

The direct link between music – a primordial and universal phenomenon – and travel suggests that the desire to travel is borne within all human beings, just as is affinity to song. Chatwin makes his strongest assertion for that claim when he says “Natural Selection has designed us – from the structure of our brain-cells to the structure of our big toe – for a career of seasonal journeys on foot through a blistering land of thorn-scrub and desert” (162). There has got to be a reason Aborigines will leave their homes and jobs for months at a time to wander through thousands of miles of Australia’s deserts on walkabouts. Likewise, it is no coincidence that travel is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. In the notes of The Songlines, Chatwin has assembled quotes from all cultures referring to humankind’s lust for travel. He cites, for example, the epic Finnish poem Kalevala: “Internal burning… wandering fever…” (167). The intense desire – the “fever” – to travel, or wander, is not a trait limited to Aborigines or the occasional adventurer. It’s a hunger that exists in all of humankind, from the baby who refuses to be still to the retired couple traveling the world, for, as J.G. Hamann has stated, “When I rest my feet my mind also ceases to function” (250). Similarly, in Anatole France’s words, “It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks” (174).

That last quote especially struck a chord with me. While I was in Italy last spring on a school trip, I felt a constant need to walk somewhere; it didn’t matter where, as long as it was someplace I hadn’t yet seen. While most people were shopping, I was busy recruiting friends to climb the heights of Assisi or traverse a path down to the Mediterranean in Sorrento with me. I thought, “You can shop anywhere. You can only see what we’re about to view from this one place.” I gave no consideration at the time to why I felt the way I did: I just knew I wanted to walk. I realize now that my desire was one of humanity’s most elemental and is shared with billions of the world’s inhabitants. The Aboriginals were insightful enough to perceive this desire, and they formed their entire philosophy and religion around it. In a way, it seems they’ve known a part of me better than I have, and now I understand we’re not quite as different as one would think.

So I admit it's not the best piece of writing ever, but hopefully it says something to you. The Tuvan music and Aboriginal religion have revealed, I think, a universal desire which exists in all of us, and that is, quite simply, to see the world. Perhaps more than that, it may suggest an inner longing to return back to nature, and my hope and naïve belief that that might happen someday.

I saw The New World the other night, and while I thought it resembled Pearl Harbor meets Last of the Mohicans, it was still a powerful film, deserving of its critical acclaim. It was powerful because it filled me with guilt: not only for what Americans have done to our land's indigenous people, but for what we've done to the land itself. More prevalently, it filled me with dismay that there are no more "New Worlds" on this planet - no chances to start anew and get it right. At least not on a grand scale... sometimes I feel I'm destined for a rather different kind of life.

During coverage of the closing ceremonies of the Olympics last week, I watched as the mountains of northern Italy flew by on my tv screen. Inexplicably, my heart started pounding and this intense but distinct feeling came over me, like the feeling you get when the girl you secretly love gazes at you for just half a second longer than usual (not that I know anything about that). But I just felt that I had to, if it was the last thing I did, go there, just to look at those mountains.

Are these the same feelings that every person my age has when going through a tumultuous time in life when opportunities present themselves everywhere and options seem limitless, but inevitably die away as people get older?

Well, I reject that. People don't outgrow these ideas. No, they dismiss them as impossible or unrealistic, and justify that dismissal by calling them nothing more than youthful whims. I do not know what road is laid out before me, and I have no idea where I'll be in 20 years, but whatever road it is, I know I don't want to take it alone, so I guess the question is, if it turns out I have to lay the asphalt myself, will there be enough free people left in the world who want to follow? Or will I end up as a broker for some corporation, and look back on this entry as nothing more than a whim?