Greece-An Instant Classic

Ordinary World · The Journey Is Home

Public Dreams. Private Myths.

“Every day is a journey,” wrote Basho, “and the journey itself is home.” I am Basho on a frequent-flyer pass. What am I on? I don’t do drugs. I am drugs. I’m a one-man National Geographic on that everywhere trip.

The myths of Homer’s epic Odyssey are public dreams. My dreams of cruising around the world are private myths, lived with my eyes wide open.

The journey is not the interruption.
The journey is the operating system.

The Call · Myth as Compass

The Greeks Put the HE in Hero

Temple of Aphaia on Aigina — The Temple of Aphaia · Aigina

Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aigina — Aphaia · the ancient world still speaking

Threshold · Acting As If

Life Happens FOR Me, Not TO Me

My T.O.E.—Time On Earth—doesn’t always read as a legible diary, or even a larger-than-life biography. The best thing I can say is that I am ACTING AS IF: as if it had been my intention all along.

With that empowering thought I evoke my will and get to say life happens FOR me, not TO me. The whole damn adventure is its own payday. It has the mountaintops and the valleys, all of them beyond control.

My Myth lets me know where I am.

Trials · Write? Right!

Leave Traces of the Life You Lived

Parthenon at the Acropolis of Athens — “Greece, I Myth you — but the Parthenon ruined the picture.” · Athens

Write? Right! · Blogging as an inventory of a life

Proust decided he had done enough living by age thirty and spent the rest of his life processing the life he had lived. I chose motion and reflection at the same time.

If I said “I know what I like” too early, I might really mean that I had accepted the taste of the culture I was swimming in. Authenticity became the preoccupation.

Blogging is literature in a hurry. It began as vanity and became discipline: an inventory, a torch for the meaningful life, and a hedge against self-doubt. It became a place to leave traces of the ebb and flow of travel.

The web turns plain text into lived experience

To read is to translate, because no two people’s experiences are the same. The web adds pictures, video and visual vocabulary, turning plain text from flat to fantastic and giving eccentric detail to an ambiguous life.

If you truly know exactly where you are going, maybe you should not want to go there. Uncertainty is the salt of life.

Revelation · The Quest Is in the Questions

Consciousness Over Speed

We live in the space of the nanosecond. Posting is an exercise in becoming someone other than who we used to be while remaining, astonishingly, who we are. It only ends once, so everything else is progress.

“How can I do things faster and in less time?” is the wrong question. Doing things faster can rob the future of potential and the past of relevance. Doing things with consciousness is what it is all about.

Travel has its own scale. Geography may be gigantic, but a small thing picked up along the way can touch the heart every bit as much as an iconic landmark.

The Quest is in the questions.

Return · From Experience to Narrative

You Undergo the Story Before You Tell It

“You should write a book.” I’d rather shoot a movie—with sequels. A show rather than a tell-all. How can I compose a story big enough, deep enough and broad enough to encompass the reality of my life?

When I’m at sea, immersed in action, I am the protagonist. You can’t create experiences like this. You undergo them.

The power of narrative comes forth when I am engaged in the telling—or selling— of these accounts.

There are three versions: the edited inside version, the story I tell the world, and the created self—the real-life story. Depending on audience, motive or mood, the countless possible versions can vary widely.

Whoever authors your story authorizes your actions.

The Elixir · Beginner's Mind

From the American Dream to the YOUniverse

When we tell our own story—and write our own autobiography—we begin to live more consciously and unfold our own myth, with ourselves as producer and director, going out to sea in an infinity of hope, with final cut.

There is a uniqueness to inhabiting our own life when we follow our bliss. Most of the time we never fully get inside our own lives.

Your wishbone becomes your backbone.

That is the difference between living mythically—the inherited dream—and living autobiographically: consciously authoring the YOUniverse you inhabit.

Companion Voyages · Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean