Friday, March 29, 2013

Departures


I suppose the correct way to bookend journeys is to say that they begin with a departure and end with a return. That is, of course, except for the last journey that we take, which some would say only has a departure. But I digress. The dogmatics can figure that one out on their own.

From my perspective, the wheels lifting off the runway as I head to Southeast Asia signifies a return. And as I sit here in the Korean Air lounge at the Bangkok airport, I am in the midst of a departure. Even leaving Phuket, one of my least favorite places in Thailand, feels like a surrendering of something personal.

It is said the measure of a successful holiday is that one is eager to begin and, at the end, happy to be home again. That is not the case with this journey, nor any of my others in Thailand or Lao. It is not that I hate my life at home. Quite the contrary, I try to live each day as happily as possible and succeed a great deal of the time.

The transition, however, between my two worlds of home and of travel is a bitch.

I don't care about the thirty-two hours of travel I have in front of me. That is just a piece of time that I can use to draw inside myself and ruminate.

It is the leaving behind that is hard. As I said in my last post, when I leave Thailand, I feel as if I am leaving a part of myself here and I do not get that part back. It is as if there is a voodoo Lego version of me and someone is removing some of the little plastic bricks.

In eight months I will be back here in Bangkok, this time with the Genetic Envelope in tow. I will get to see some of my favorite places with his new eyes. And we will discover new places together.

Now, I will go back to Seattle. I will sort through the many photos I have taken, cull the herd of bad ones, and post some of the good ones. I will probably get teary in the process. And that is what it is: part of the process.

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