Getting Ready ...
Oxford,
North Carolina,
United States
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Starting Point: Oxford
So it begins ... my journey starts here at my birth home with my parents. Times to relax, finalize plans for my trip, and spend moments with loved ones.
Soon I will attempt to wipe my internal hard drive clean and then later, see what I want to keep, if anything. I have this powerful need to let go of things, ideas, people, and most importantly to let go of the need to always be and/or feel important; the need to continually do the daily grind in a system that just isn't working. You'd be surprised at how much this need has driven me in this life. It has given much success and self-confidence, but it has also has separated me from the world around me. I am looking for a different way of being, a different way of living, seeing and relating to the world; an experience that I know I can't get here in North Carolina, where everything is all way too familiar. And so I've set my sights on traveling to help me have new experiences and hopefully open my view to what's possible, what I truly value (not what the world around me says I should), and hopefully find out what's real for me.
The desire to spend time in a place where I have no past and where it wouldn't be as easy for me to fall into the old habit of sizing up some new possible futures. I made a career out of planning for future moments, whether that was for some future musical performance, artistic production, or some future "Event." I need and want to learn how to live fully in the present. Existing and most importantly finding a way to feel secure with no past and without always grinding towards some uncertain future. To cease always being in process and find a way to just be. My past and future has always been my center and this is not the best place for ones center to be.
Why Brazil - well thanks for that goes to my sister. Honestly, it wasn't even on my radar, but she was doing a report on Brazil for one of her classes and the more research she did on Brazil, the more she said that she thought of me. She kept telling me, you need to go to Brazil, its so you. I was thinking more like Costa Rica, Canada, places more close to home, but she was adamant that it was where I needed to be. After the third barrage and making me promise to at least Google Brazil, I started doing my own research. The more I learned the more I liked. The blending and richness of cultures, colors, peoples... the, food, beaches, the women (let's be honest, right) and I had already been a huge fan of Brazilian Popular Music. Soon the idea of experiencing Brazil began to fascinate me and soon after, with difficulty, I accepted the idea that I was meant to go to Brazil.
So in the beginning of this year (2008) I closed up the business, ended the lease on my apartment, got rid of as many things that I could let go of, starting spending a couple of hours each day self-studying Portuguese and made travel plans; if you can call something so fluid a plan
So the plan is that I will spend around 2 months in Santa Cruz do Sul (learning Portuguese with Portuguese speakers in Brazil), then 4 months or so traveling around the entire country, and after that ... who knows! The leave date: June 3, 2008.
Before I leave, I will spend a couple of weeks with my family in Oxford and then two weeks with family in Boston.
And so it begins and I'm so looking forward to the journey.
