Day 18 - Wednesday December 26, 2001 - 2:03pm

It was Fitzgerald who said,

“Sometimes I think I’m a character in one of my novels.”

I understand exactly what he means. If old F. Scott had been a travel writer he might have uttered these words instead:

“Sometimes I feel like an expatriate in my own country.”

I certainly do.

From Kindergarten to Grade Eight — nine years — I went to ten different schools in two different cities. Two of those schools I attended two different times! This doesn’t include the three residences I lived in prior to going to school in the first place.

Since then I’ve moved many, many times, never being satisfied with where I was and boring easily. So far I’ve lived in forty-five different places in my perambulating life. Perhaps I was Frodo the wandering Hobbit in a previous existence. What I lack in height I more than make up for in curiosity, always “looking at maps and wondering what lay beyond the edges.”

My grandmother always used to say,

Go to Europe and see the East. That wall’s coming down some day and it’ll never be the same.

Once again, she was right. I never saw the ‘eastern bloc’ countries before Mr. Gorbachev tore down ‘that wall’, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Democracy has a way of pissing on your parade sometimes, you know.

Maybe I’ll start my own religion. I’ll call it ‘Bedouinism’ and worship T.E. Lawrence, the god of travel. I’ll stand on a stack of Eurorail passes on foreign street corners and quote chapter and verse from my ‘bible’: a dog-eared copy of “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”.

“Go west, young man,” I’ll say, “and don’t stop!” “Keep moving - that’s how Lincoln got it!” I’ll continue.

Hmm… maybe Robert Louis Stevenson had it right:

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

I think I’ll move, into the shade. This thirty-degree sun’s frying my hairpiece.

Later

In a couple of days I’ll be boarding yet another Air New Zealand flight and losing a few more brain cells in LAX waiting for my Air Canada flight home. For now, this Fijian beach is my home. And with few exceptions I like ‘home’ - it’s my place for now. But travel is good and so travel I must. Each and every experience enlightens, broadens and educates. I laugh, I cry, I break, I punch, I misunderstand, I grasp, I eat, I drink, I throw up (in that order, thank goodness!), I yell, I live. But mostly I laugh.

A few more days ‘roasting’ on the beach, a coupla more Fiji beers and no more writing. Gotta go!

Now, if I can only avoid the goddamn frogs! (The French, not the reptiles!)

Fin