Look. Look here. See Doug. See Doug write. Doug write book.
For decades, American school children learned to read by studying the pages of Sally, Dick and Jane books. The intrepid trio of juvenile adventurers (or a grab bag of their assorted friends) explored the world around them, narrating their experiences with the most elementary parts of speech. Their sentences were repetitive, their observations banal, and their comprehension of the world was infantile. To read these books as a literate adult brings on fits of laughter or labored groans. And yet to the child in early development, those simple words and two-dimensional stories were the only tools they had to explain their world.
If I’m honest, I feel exactly like Sally, Dick and Jane. I too have bumped up against experiences, realities, and adventures that far exceed my vocabulary or capacity to describe them. And like a 5-year-old in the Louvre, I have only the most rudimentary terms to describe the priceless beauty that surrounds me.
The adventures I speak of took place during my 365-day, whirlwind circumnavigation of the globe. What started in Dublin ended in Quito, 33 countries, 4 hemispheres, and 79,000 miles later. It was the experience of a lifetime, probably multiple lifetimes. I was kissed by God's grace, and my life has never been the same since. I’ve spent the past 2 years reflecting, praying, wrestling, and fighting to hold onto the faces I saw, the beauty I beheld, and the realities I crashed into. It is only now, with much fear and trembling, that I embark upon a new journey, not of boats or buses, but a journey within, a safari of the soul.
“Ultimately, words are useless,” laments author Madelein L’Engle, “but pentultimately, they’re all we have.” I dream of composing sentences with backhanded wit, dizzying prose that elicits audible gasps in the reader…but what good are words when describing an African sunset, the smells of Calcutta, the sheer exhilaration of standing atop the Great Wall? I’m guaranteed to fail in my attempts to convey even 1/10 of the mystery, beauty, and goodness of the world. For the earth is too blue, too bright, too sharp, too sweet, too wild for any mortal tongue to do it justice. Yet, I’m assured that I will succeed (whatever that may mean) – for that same heavenly hand that motioned me out into the world two years ago is the same hand which beckons me to sit, and pray, and write.
So where do I start? Well, for those of you coming from eyeshift.com, you’ve seen the first fruits of my labor: the sorting of my 4000+ images and transcription of my journals. But now, the blank page – that great adversary that taunts and ridicules and is never satisfied. It's going to be a great challenge, and I will falter. Yet, with the love and encouragement of my Traveling Companions, and friends new and old, I will seek to obey and write, and deem the result of my writing irrelevant.
I guess a good place to begin is the end. As T.S. Elliot so superbly stated: “And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” And the closing narration of the Motorcycle Diaries, as a young Che Guevara sums up his own life change after an epic continental journey: “Yo, no soy yo, por lo menos no soy el mismo yo interior.” I am not me anymore. At least, I’m not the same me as I was.
:doug wrote:
