I've seen the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. From lush green jungles to pristine, indescribable blue ocean horizons. Pitch black new moon night skies filled with more stars than my feeble mind could encompass. Thunderstorms from ten feet below the surface of tumultuous, gray, rain-splattered seas. Dawn's mist caressing silent red clay mountaintops.
I have sat on planes while the Earth and familiar things spun away carelessly below. I have ridden rickety old buses through treacherous hairpin cutbacks, white-knuckled and making mental promises to sort out that final will and testament if only, please dear precious bus driver, if only I could make it through with my vital organs intact. I have floated down the most foul stenched rivers tolerable; from my journal, I quote, "...the river smelled like ass. Fish ass. Dead, rotting fish ass."
I have learned some unexpected lessons: Always carry toilet paper. Don't drink the water. Every nation in the world has translated, re-recorded, and filmed a karaoke video for the Macarena. This is as bad as it sounds.
My hair has changed color.
I have ingested some, um, interesting things. And further, I have quenched my parched throat with some dubious concoctions. One such evening was spent cavorting with Cambodian gun traffickers.
I have negotiated stupendously new levels of motor vehicle congestion insanity, and I have found quiet peace, alone, in thousand year old ruins. I have wandered far, far out of the warm little centers, out to where no one could ever find me. And it was nice, for a while.
I have seen the inescapable trough of unfathomable poverty. And I have seen happiness blooming therein.
I have saved four lives.
I have lost one.
I have several scars I didn't have before.
I have a journal full of writings, and very little of what I started out with still remains, but after all this, I have found nothing to temper that empty spot inside me, the vacuum of you, the people I've left behind. I wondered [worried?] in the beginning whether I'd miss you less and less over the passing hours and days. It turns out that no, my ponderings were groundless, after all this.
So I think of you fondly now, as I look out at an immaculate white sand beach crowned with a crimson sunset. Don't worry, it's been too long now, and it's time; I'll see you soon.
