Romance Lost, Romance Found
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
21
53
Trip End
Aug 01, 2005
Dahab,
Egypt
Friday, June 3, 2005
Unfettered lust and romanticism is also, not often, a reality in our permanent locales. Tonight, I sat reading in a restaurant and partaking in my favorite past-time: people watching. I found my glaze dropping upon a young couple hopelessly staring into one another's eyes and stealing very passionate kisses. I smiled thinking how sweet it all was. And I realized that now living in Dahab, it was no longer romantic to me...
I believe there is a reason that couples jet set AWAY from home to find the romance that often is so lacking back home. Thus, I declare, if you visit a place and are totally taken by it--keep those fleeting moments of love and lust merrily locked in the back of your mind...and don't move there! It's the newness and plain fact that it's not home and the realities that come with it that make it so gorgeous. Once you live somewhere, you see the reality of it: the rawness of daily life...and the romance is often gone.
Don't take what I say here literally--as I use the term "romance" quite loosely. For some it means the relation they have with their mate, and for others it could mean the miracles of life that we witness often. So is it any wonder that countless couples come to Dahab, for example, to revitalize the lost or struggling romance in their relationship? Or perhaps it's the wanderlust traveler such as myself who seeks the romance of an unknown land. Its people, smells, touch, and sounds. My romantic liaison with Egypt is just as any other--fleeting at times and strong at others.
Tonight it is strong. A strong wind has come in and I hear the force of the waves crashing into the rocks and when I look out, all I see is the black darkness of night. The smells of Dahab: the sea, incense, the desert breeze. I looked up tonight and saw two miracles. The first, a single monarch butterfly. I watched as it passed in front of me and gasped as I desperately wanted to follow it. The last remembrance I have of seeing a butterfly was over two years ago in Honduras. My disappointment at the lost butterfly was masked only by the sight of three white birds flying overhead, their whiteness in stark contrast to the black sky and green glow of palm tree fronds below.
For someone like myself who has both found and lost love numerous times throughout my life, I had decided recently that it was time to find romance again within myself rather than trying to find it through another. Is this why I jet setted off to Egypt? I have been asking myself for quite some time what it is exactly that I am doing here. And I've decided that there is no longer a need to try and answer that question. But what I do know is that I've come here to find myself again...the self that has been battered quite emotionally by my environs and some of the negative people I've let into my life. I can honestly say that I have yet to encounter anyone or anything here that is acting as a negative force upon me, except perhaps myself. I've been searching for it, trying to find a reason to hate Dahab...but it's a losing battle. Thus, I must try to trade my complete jadedness with the world for a little reassurance that there are good people and good things in my life.
I hope for those who come to Dahab to find romance again--that they do, in fact, find it, relish in it and carry it back home again. I, too, hope to continue to find my own romance in Dahab and not let the often burdensome realities of daily life mask the unbelievable beauty that I encounter each day of my life here. And should I, as I often do, feel the need to escape again to another locale in search of my own romance...then so be it and may I continue to find that romance and beauty in every inch of the globe that I set foot.
