It was January- the last week before I left Canada and the snow had fallen quite heavily already (it would drop heaps more after I was gone). I was out in my Dad's garage going through 6 boxes of my past belongings. Six dusty tote bins of material things that I have hung on to since I first packed my bag and went off to meet the rest of the world nearly ten years ago.
On this particular night I was trying to consolidate these 6 boxes into 4.
The task was easier than expected. I felt a small lump in my throat as I chuckled at the treasures I had hoarded away.
Of my entire VHS collection of films, these were the ones I had decided to keep when I first packed my belongings, along with copies of un-cut footage of the road trip across North America that wet my appetite for a life of travel.
The elephant is the very first from my Mom's extensive collection. The one my Dad and I gave to her for her birthday. The one I accidentally knocked off the table while horsing around one day. Its trunk broke off and I used toothpaste to hold it together while I searched for crazy glue. She found out about it anyway. She always did.
Then I found some of my old note books and some memorable pieces of paper that I had saved from friends.
On this particular night I was trying to consolidate these 6 boxes into 4.
The task was easier than expected. I felt a small lump in my throat as I chuckled at the treasures I had hoarded away.
Of my entire VHS collection of films, these were the ones I had decided to keep when I first packed my belongings, along with copies of un-cut footage of the road trip across North America that wet my appetite for a life of travel.
The elephant is the very first from my Mom's extensive collection. The one my Dad and I gave to her for her birthday. The one I accidentally knocked off the table while horsing around one day. Its trunk broke off and I used toothpaste to hold it together while I searched for crazy glue. She found out about it anyway. She always did.
Then I found some of my old note books and some memorable pieces of paper that I had saved from friends.
This last one contains 2 quotes that I had recently read while I was living in The Milton Vineyard in New Zealand. My Mom found it 12 years before me and wrote it down while I was out on the road trip.
Now it's the last week of February and I'm back in Thailand. When I returned to my Family's house in Chumphon, I found another box I had stashed there when I first left 4 years ago. There wasn't much in it; a puzzle piece lantern, some park entrance passes for trekking in Nepal, some small maps and more notebooks. A lot of what was written in them were movie ideas- scenes and dialogue and experimental writing exercises. All of it was written in Thailand except for one page, written on July 19th, 2012 from Alice Springs, Australia.
I remember writing it, sitting outside on the patio of a bar, already four ciders into an easy afternoon.
What I don't know is how these words ever got to this box in Thailand.
July 19, 2012
WHY I'M GONNA KEEP ON TRAVELING
The more I move around the world, the more I learn about myself and everyone else. I realize what's truly valuable in my life and I feel that old, ignorant skin shed off my exterior while a fresh essence of enlightenment grows inside.
To travel is to develop an understanding of all that is unknown, unfamiliar and unrestrained. In the modern world of labels, excuses and forced explanations for everything, my freedom is found in movement without reason. Most of my life I've felt the need to explain myself for that which I intend to do.
I'm done with that now.
I'm gonna keep on travelling until I find something or someone that I'm more passionate about than travel itself.
This is my last explanation. Everything I do from now on is either for you or for me. So don't ask, just enjoy and try to understand.
