"We travel to encounter otherness. We travel to be surprised, amazed, perplexed, challenged, even disgusted by people who, like us, have two arms and two legs and love and pray and eat and shit, yet order the world differently. Maybe they're asking the same questions about how best to prevent terrorism, serve food, or conquer duality, but they come up with different answers:..."
an excerpt from "First Empty Your Cup" by Andrew Boyd, a reoccurring writer in the ever vigilant Sun magazine.(cue plug: an advert free literary magazine that is open to reader quipped contributions and is peppered with lovely black and white photography.) The lines above are the last lines from a story documenting Boyd's first venture into Asia, a quest for Zen in Japan.
Roots unbound,
abruptly
inverted atypical mystified
success of transition to epiphytic
remains undetermined
Cultural isolation is a strange and beautiful creature. One that feeds on all of your perspectives, opinions, judgements, and most of all, assumptions. Particularly enjoying the ones you didn't know you held. Day after day the feast takes place. Day after day, in some small or sometimes big way, you're stripped of what you 'knew', and placed wordless at the threshold of understanding.
-The elderly woman holding a napkin in the air is not staring at you with narrowed eyes because she thinks you're an ambassador of all things Western. No, silly, you have snow in your hair and she thought it was bird shit.
-The group of giggling teenage girls that are flocking closer and closer to your table are not gathering to sneer at your misuse of chopsticks but because they genuinely want to know what you think about kimchi, toe socks, and Lady Gaga.
-The taxi driver who laughs boisterously at your American citizenship, later asks shyly if you and President Obama are buddies because according to him, "He's a numba 1!"
In short, hold out on serving the assumption pie, because you never know.
Maybe, you never knew.
An impending New Year is apt to make this gypsy reflective.
A very Happy Happy New Year to each and every one of you all.
I hope that it is full of life, love, and adventure!