Traveling Alone

SITTING IN AN OLD MOTEL HOTEL IN KURANDA, QLD, DRINKING A JUG OF BEER it has come to me that traveling by yourself is a fascinating thing.  You find yourself in the strangest and most captivating places, moments, and times of your life.  You THINK a lot.  You ponder life and who you are and where you are going.  Little things you pass by you take a lot more notice to.  Back in the states, while I was a huge advocate of going to the movies (usually double headers bought on a child ticket from the automated machines = yes they don't notice when they rip your ticket) alone, there were still things that you would probably not do alone.  Most people wouldn't go on excursions or fun events by themselves.  You probably wouldn't go to a theme park by yourself or go to a music festival by yourself.  When you travel solo, you would.  It isn't that you don't have friends or that you are a loner, you just open your mind and body to moving around the globe without the accompaniment of other people.  I didn't think twice, for example, on going by myself on an old train up through a historic railway in the World Heritage Rainforest to a small little shop town called Kuranda.  You aren't lonely.  You take pictures, you listen to music, and you ponder a lot.  You have brief encounters with people (like me helping a couple from Sydney today on the train with their Nikon D3000 = a little brother to my DSLR) that you will never see again but yet you shared a moment.  There is an under privileged man in Cairns (maybe homeless?) who sits on various storefront steps in the early evening.  His beard speaks volumes and the leathery skin on his caucasian face could write a novel.  Every time I pass him, I give him all the coins that are in my pocket (doesn't matter if it is 20 cents or a ton of 1 and 2 dollar coins).  Every time I pass him, I ask him if I can buy him a beer and every time he declines.  I hope one of these days he will say yes and I can sit down with him and just talk.  He doesn't have anyone to talk to.  It makes me frigid to think what his Christmas will be like this year.

I LISTEN TO A LOT OF FRANK SINATRA when I find myself in old places;  couped up at that back 2 person table at a low lit pub or hotel, jug of beer to the left, backpack to the right, headphones on.  I people watch a lot.  Sometimes listen.  There is something about music from the 30's 40's and 50's that adds a mental ambiance to your situation that puts one into a nostalgic trance.  I sometimes picture when settled down what my evenings would be and how the best to enjoy them.  I have told my friend Joe Armbruster this.  Old music, (i.e. Frank) big-ass red wine glass filled with a mid-priced cabernet, and a coffee table book about something that has history and culture (like the History of Palm Springs book at my friend Shelby's house in Indian Wells, CA) in it.  Perhaps light eats of small meats and cheeses to accompany the wine.  Perhaps a fire burning.  Perhaps in the mountains or on a beach.  Perhaps.

THE MENTAL REFLECTION OF YOUR LIFE AND BODY ON THIS EARTH that happens while doing adventures by yourself is something remarkable.  Cognitive analysis is a day to day thing...the time I try and not think about anything is when I meditate (new weekly class I am taking on Zen and Guided Meditation) and let me tell you that it is not easy to make your mind go blank in a foreign country with 10 open months of no real plans ahead of you.  While my daily life was routine before, it is so sporadic now.  You just take it as it comes.  Capricorns would freak out.  There are no plans or organization to your future.  You pick a city or area and you just GO.  You start thinking in months and years and not weeks or days.  You start pinning down GENERAL ideas of what you will do when you get there (work, play, sights, etc).  It is liberating.  Talk about a catalyst for human thought; 20 years of school, 7 years of corporate work...to, no plan.  I remember my good friends Ben and Mandel Maughan saying to me so "basically, McLeod, you are on the 'no plan' plan."  LOL.  Yes, you can only plan so much, especially in Australia, because there are so many ways you can go.  It is almost overwhelming.  But times like this when I just got off the Sky Rail from Kuranda (the rail that inspired the flyover scenes in Avatar) and am in a weird restaurant waiting for my bus back to Cairns drinking a beer and writing, feeling tight (as Hemingway would say), everything is worth it.