Until Tim.
Short curly brown hair. Slight space between his two front teeth. Europe Guide Book glued to his hand. Backpack big enough to carry a limp body.
In a nutshell, the antithesis of me with exception to the friendly disposition - friendly enough that the likelihood of him actually carrying a body around seemed fairly low.
I'd taken what might be considered the Incognito Approach to backpacking. I dressed casually in plain prints and colors - minimal logos and lettering - and carried only the bookbag I'd used in high school. In any given place, if I looked enough like I knew where I was (not frequently the case, but nevertheless), I imagine I looked more like a student than a tourist.
And generally, that was more accurate. Between budgeting my trip and realizing that my own priorities tended to be less the museums and attractions than plain people-watching and wandering around town, I spent much more time "playing local" than tourist. True to the guide book in hand, Tim preferred to scope out good restaurants and famous landmarks.
On the other hand, he also liked to scope out the McDonald's in each place he visited, not to eat there but to check the price of a cheeseburger for means of comparison. Apparently you can tell a lot about a city by how much the fast food costs. I was slightly less interested in this undocumented study and slightly more willing to treat it as a scavenger hunt.There was one thing that Tim and I had in common, though: we had each done the majority of our journey on our own. I'd found that traveling alone seemed more to my benefit than a liability. Not only was I more alert than one may be with a group, but also silent (i.e. less boisterously American), save for the occasional simple phrases to get around. I felt safe on my own.
Theologian Paul Tillich has said that "Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone." In between great times of meeting up with friends along the way, I was rather enjoying some glorious solitude.
And as any vacationing being knows, the moment you taste solitude is the moment something or someone stumbles upon your quiet place.
Cue Impromptu Travel Companion. How he went from "fellow tourist" to "impromptu travel companion" is essentially a tale of one man's spontaneous decision to co-opt an acquaintance's plan for a detour through Bologna, Italy, but don't worry, because in the end he turns out not to be a criminal, as far as I know.
So Tim 'n Kim hit the road. Or the train tracks, as the case may be. It might have made for a fun photo in a travel journal or backpackers' catalogue, me with my puny high school backpack and him strapped to that trailblazers' bodybag. It could have doubled as a jetpack if the thing wouldn't weigh him down so much.
On the train, I spent most of the time writing while Tim pored over his traveler's guide book. We were happily quiet company, but all it took for me to miss the glory of solitude was for Tim to ask about what I was writing.
Ain't nobody ask what I'm writing 'less they don't wanna live.
I am not usually what folks would call a "sharer."
I know, strange personality trait for a blogger, but the truth is this: my first blog? I told about three people that it existed. Socially, as do many people, I have very wonderful but very few confidants, which somehow carried over into my willingness to share my writing - even my fiction. In my first (and last) creative writing workshop, I dreaded shopping work, which is oddly a central part of the process.
And one of my college professors once asked, if I wanted to be a writer, why had I never tried to submit any of my work for publication? Was I not even curious? Was it a simple fear of rejection or was it actually that I refused to open up to the point of being a writer who avoided readers?
Blogging (v. 2.0) has actually been a challenge to myself to be more comfortable with articulating the silly and the serious to others; to force myself to complete short pieces of writing meant to be read rather than hoarded. It's taken me a long time to get to this point of openness.
And by all means, I think it's fine for people to be reserved. Privacy and dignity are obviously not shameful, especially in a world of "over-sharing." But some part of me - the part that began AmenAbility, the part that doesn't lose herself in her writing but rather remembers the world as she writes - was ready to be more open to people. And not just as the Giant Ear, a role that I quite like to take on, but also, perhaps, as a Voice.
Why has it been so difficult to embrace that?
So while it was easy to resent the Impromptu Travel Companion for interrupting the glory of solitude and for reminding me that I was the Awkward Loner hovering over a notebook like it might disintegrate if someone else so much as glanced at it, this unusual meeting was also a thought-provoker for me. Made me contemplate why I was so defensive about a fictional story. Because it wasn't already complete? Because it wasn't high quality and it would injure my pride? What, then?
It made me think that maybe, if I pour so much of my being into what I write (yes, even the silly things - especially the silly things), I don't want to wait until I've completed a masterpiece before I'm willing to share my work with other people. I'm all for promoting quality over quantity, but maybe there is something to sharing besides thinking that something is good enough for an audience, that something is done and thus needs no additions or alterations.
My life is thus far unfinished, too, and by no means a work of art. I expect it could use quite a few changes and, I like to think, many additions. It could end tomorrow or it could end years from now - I don't know. But I do know that I don't want to keep life contained and avoid living it with others, either.
So I'll take my chances.
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