bbkaro

ci vediamo

I carried a moleskine around on my latest travels, determined not to let a moment linger too long in my short-term before committing it to prose. This was a highly effective way to get about, led to more introspection than I would have thought, and less of the kind of went-here-saw-this journaling my flashlight-enabled bus and train scribbling seemed to influence in others. I'm proud to look back, too, at my tenacity: entries logged while ridiculously intoxicated and swaggering in the moonlight, snippets of conversation I'd otherwise have misquoted or miscontrued (now I can misquote and know it), and initial reactions and assumptions that can never be truly, properly, recreated.

There are so many people. So many goddam wonderful lightning-bug twinkly-eyed people in this world. I may be in love with each and every one of them. Or, at least, the nice ones. I love being knee-deep in humanity: people I travel with, people I meet while traveling, people who have traveled through me. When a group of us got together immediately after our trip to share photos (god bless the digital age; I'm taking a film developing class in a few weeks so as to not lose touch with the lusty tangible side of photography, but still...) we all noticed how few pictures I'd actually taken of things -- places, statues, signs -- and how many I'd taken of people. "Where's this? The background's blurry." I remember where that is. It's in the first alley behind the Piazza Ognisanti where we met the guy who went to Stanford and then moved to Firenze to open a bar and the hot Cuban girl who Shelley said "reeked of attraction." I remember people and phrases and names and aces. I think I like sculpture more than architecture. I think rivers make me sad in a good way and the ocean makes me happy in a terrifying way. I think I keep learning things about myself. And I always will.

I need to travel some more.

Greece, anyone?