The Silent Traveler

There was a reason Robert Louis Stevenson said “I travel for travels sake”*. Perhaps it was so I could include it in this little verbiagal waterfall or for RL Stevenson to be able to smirk from the heavens at us, when he sees the next facebook Post that goes like this: “Off to Ibiza”. Afterall, we live in an age, where apparently talking about traveling on social networking sites is more gratifying than traveling itself. Ah, us Post-liberalization children, little do we realize that it brought many things to us other than Coca Cola. Greater purchasing power to the educated elite translated into endless spirals of pretentious travels to corners of the world, to the existence of which we were previously oblivious Yes, indeed, travel is amazing, but more amazing, is to update our facebook status’ to inform our “friends” of our inevitable submlime coolness on touching down in a “foreign” land. The real bravehearts are those who travel, not knowing, not talking, but with that blissfully palpable trepidation, that beats in their heart with every step they take into the journey. That braveheart however, isn’t me.
I revere, the Silent Traveler.

*"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. the great affair is to move. - Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey, 1879

Anti-Beauty

Why do the prettiest
Declare that pretty is overrated?
When all I see, and all I hear
Is thin stick figures, clacking along the way
Pages and pictures, movies and theater,
Replete with the perfections, that perhaps,
Aren’t real, yet define our reality so.
The long glossy hair, and the untainted skin,
Their diaphanous visage, cascade in a bucket of
Visual assault, that seems intolerable.
My own cells, scream, squirm. They know that’s what
They’ll never be. Yet,
This is all I see.