Saying things that I believe in

I talk, alot.  Probably too much.  I spin yarns of great experience and knowledge of this and that because I paid attention in college.  I retained knowledge that was bestowed upon me by those that I would like to believe that have "been there and done that".  But what I have learned, a decade or so ago has been forgotten over business deadlines and local stress that absolutely kills one's ability to look outside of the day to day; slipped away like friend that is close enough to ignore daily small talk but so important and so vital that you never feel the burn because when you finally see them, pleasantries are dispensed with.  It doesn't hit you like an enemy at the gate, it doesn't cause you to lock down the castle and mount a defense force.  It isn't siege warfare.  It is a slow breaking down of ideals, the person you wished to be.  You don't even realize it until it's gone. 

The day before I left, over Skype, my dad said, "What do you want out of this trip?"  I said, "I want my life to change.  I want to see things I have never seen."

The driver came to my house in a black Lincoln Towncar.  He called me sir and loaded my beat-up backpack that I have been carrying for the past 11 years into the trunk.  The backpack covered in patches from the countries I have visited and holds my first aid kit, my silk cocoon for sleeping in hostels to keep the bedbugs at bay and my copy of Othello that has gone everywhere with me for the past decade, western Europe, the Caribbean and Central America.  It was going somewhere new. 

17 hours later I was in a place so foreign to me I recaptured some of what I lost.  I was there for 11 days.  I want to tell you that the water moved gently from right to left as I sipped my cocktail poolside at an opulent hotel.  But all at once I found myself in the middle of the desert, carried there by 4x4's, standing on a large dune with familiarity, my ignorance and my home thousands of miles away.  There wasn't a breath of air, the sand stood unmolested as my desert boots sank in up past my ankles.  I looked around, 360 degrees and saw something so different than anything I have seen.  My life changed, and I smiled.  I was in the UAE and it was spectacular...

I took this picture as the sun was setting and my dad's french buddy Francois was smoking a cigarette.  I will tell the story.

Laters,
jth
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