Sunday 21 December 2008

On Not Having A Plan

I didn’t start with a plan. I can’t seem to make them. It is as if I have some inbuilt resistance to having anything fixed. I’m beginning to think it’s my Achilles heel. It is a condition that, on occasion has its benefits but ultimately I find the one sidedness of my own nature rather frustrating.

Before I left I remember a number of friends being quite staggered at my lack of preparation and knowledge about the places I was about to visit. The strange thing is that the larger part of me was, and continues to be, similarly staggered. It is as if there were a renegade minority in my being that was nonetheless capable of dictating my complete passivity with regard to making a plan. A friend of mine, having heard of my trip and taking the most cursory look at the internet was amazed to find himself informing me of the cultural and political mores of my imminent destination. I could only agree and share in his amazement.

Maybe travelling is the perfect confluence of precision planning and aimless drifting at their most respective extremes. I’m becoming aware of these two seemingly opposite skills are in fact my left and right hands out here….(and I am right handed, to continue a lame metaphor). I feel like a Hippy in the Marines (for Hippies). Somewhere there is a voice in the back of my head, maybe he is starting to sound a little like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now…he wants to get the job done so he can surf (in the napalm). Perhaps my quiet inner (amazed) majority will benefit from my burgeoning suppressed Robert Duvall…I think I'm over-tired. Maybe I should stop this here. 


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