... I wonder why I wander!

Trip Start May 17, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Brazil  , State of Rio Grande do Sul,
Friday, August 15, 2008

Spending time with Karen and her family in Florianopolis, Brazil was both a great joy and also an unintentional splinter in my soul.  It was such a wonderful thing to see what 15 years of love can build.  Seeing Marcos's passion for his work, his ideas and observing his pace was like looking into a mirror each day.  Yet, for all his brilliance, he couldn't have done all that he's been able to do without them.  Without them he could have been me.  Just another dumb schmuck wandering around Brazil, looking for what to do for the next 5 years that could 1) hold my interest and 2) help keep me feeling like I'm alive.   They are centered in a way that I can only imagine.  And what reside in their center are each other.
 
And dear Karen is so happy in each glorious moment it's as if her container can't fully contain it, so it oozes from here pores as if trying to escape.  She's so happy that I don't think she can even know or understand how truly happy she is.  Hell, if a person could be any happier it would probably make them unstable.  And with this, I remember why I'm here, what I think I'm doing, what I'm looking for and what I'm missing.
 
Something happened to me in Florianopolis; that night, on the boat, bouncing along the black waters of Lagoa da Conceição. After experiencing the small towns and villages along the Lagoon where people try to live simply and preserve their past, I did something quite unusual since my arrival in Brazil ... I started thinking.  And we know thinking only begets more thinking.  The very thing I came to Brazil not to do overtook me like a bad relationship anew.  I found myself wandering around in the past and then later, the future.  As usual with such useless thought, I found myself feeling ... alone ... waiting and willing for something to happen, for the fates to intervene, for someone to save me, for my destiny to magically unveil itself; all the time despairing, that that, probably wasn't going to happen.  Knowing that if anything happens at all, it will probably have to be by my will alone.
 
I lifted my hands and touched the circular hollow that sits in the center of my soul and remembered why I came here and what I was looking for.  I have no center.  To be such a brilliant soul, how can I have no center?  In front of me sits many options. Many potential lives that I could put inside the hollow, but it would not truly belong; and with time, it also, would not sustain.  Could it be a person, a place, thing, a passion, work ... I don't know what it is or where to find it. I only know that it gets harder and harder to live each day without.  And thus, I wander in the beauty that is Brazil.
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