Occupy Mexico-Hola Coca Cola
Key West · Mexican Riviera · New Caledonia · Nomadic Pursuits
Answer the CallThe Sea Is the Destination
An adventure is something more—but nothing less—than bad planning. The sea turns that imperfect plan into an occupation.
An adventure is something more—but nothing less—than bad planning.
As a multinational soul, I thought I would have a Coke and teach the world to sing.
The importance of being Ernest and going to Key West was less about Hemingway, fishing, and sailboats than the permission to invent a life and then live into it.
The Asymmetric Equation
Motion + Imagination + Commitment = Adventure The imperfect departure creates possibilities the perfect plan never reaches.Key West
The Importance of Being Ernest
Hemingway, invention, motion, and the permission to make the story real.
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
“That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best—make it all up—but make it up so truly that later it will happen.”
I disagreed with “Never mistake motion for action.” Motion creates emotion. Move it.
Make it up so truly that later it will happen. Hemingway spirit, Key WestTeach the World to Sing
Occupation
Procrastinate Now
Another two weeks at sea, the Mexican Riviera, and a graduate-school seamester in nomadic pursuits.
I decided to follow the OWL crowd and procrastinate now. Living at sea for another two weeks—this was my occupation.
After a week on land, the farther I seemed to get from my destination, the more I realised that the sea was the destination.
There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those at sea.
I knew both sides because I was both sides: a tourist who did not know where I had been and a traveller who did not know where he was going.
I had not been everywhere, but it was on my list. College may have been the longest vacation I ever took, but this graduate-school seamester was study abroad in nomadic pursuits.
When travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People do not have your past to hold against you. There is no “yes” in yesterday on the road.
Signal 01
Tourist
Does not know where he has been.
Signal 02
Traveller
Does not know where he is going.
Signal 03
Nomad
Realises the movement itself has become the curriculum.
Foreign Land
French Postcards From the Edge
New Caledonia, the Isle of Pines, tender boats, and instant gratification that still takes too long.
New Caledonia · July 24, 2011
Escape to Reality
The foreign land did not provide escape from life. It provided escape from the narrow definition of what life was supposed to be.
The Call
Escape to Reality
Travel as art, self-exploration, and a valid answer to the everydayness of inherited life.
“Addicted to travelling”—or addicted to non-working activities—should not automatically become a diagnosis or a reason for self-hatred.
Travel can be a pursuit like art and entertainment: a means of self-exploration that satisfies psychological and social needs.
When a pastime lacks cultural prestige, the people who love it are called addicts. Opera and symphony devotees are passionate and driven.
Load the cultural dice in favour of “reality” over fantasy and the sense of adventure is beaten out of us by the most irritating question word: why?
Then the Call arrives. Wake up, answer it, and begin the Hero's Journey described by Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth. Follow your bliss, and in many cases your bliss follows you.
I started to travel on a shoestring budget, labelled a drifter and a bum by people sinking into the everydayness of their lives. I did not care. I did it anyway.
The Calvinists say work is prayer. So is permanent travelling.
Calling Equation
Bliss + Movement + Repetition = A New Life Answering the call once creates a trip. Answering it repeatedly creates an identity.Seagull Management
Other States, Other Lives, Other Souls
The journey ends where it began: with the freedom to seek another version of life.
We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls. Anaïs Nin
Permanent movement was not avoidance. It was a way of keeping perception alive.
The sea did not postpone reality. It expanded it.
Companion Routes
Continue the Nomadic Pursuit
The source archive points outward to music, motion, and the same recurring decision to leave.
Music
I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing
The multinational-soul soundtrack for a world understood through movement rather than borders.
Key West
Motion Creates Emotion
The original Key West video, converted from a broken Flash object into a responsive modern embed.
Doctrine
Follow Your Bliss
The Hero's Journey begins when the call becomes more persuasive than the everydayness it interrupts.
The Elixir
The Destination Was the Decision
The sea became the destination because it represented the choice to remain in motion, stay available to reinvention, and keep building a life large enough to require no escape.