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“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” -Pico Iyer

I.

The distance between two countries can be charted in a single thought. Mountains pale in the traverse. One night I sat by a fountain and imagined what it would take to walk away from my city, across the plains towards the Pacific. I ended up somewhere above the clouds surrounded by stars. The hemispheres in me lit up. Oceans crashed against temples and the sound of sirens split my eyes wide open. There has been another crime in my neighborhood. Somebody murdered a child. I imagine a quiet palisade in Davao where everything grows. It is quiet there now. 

II.

Families fracture like books torn from the pages of your life. Volumes of stories burn in the furnace of your heart. Brothers and sisters squabble for scraps. Aunties drown in their private miseries. Husbands and wives lose each other amidst their lies. But as old as the world is, continents drift and settle before long. I have learned that so do people. Rupture is prelude to discovery. Let me tell you a little story. I was once anchored to a ship I didn’t own. I cut the rope and sailed into the unknown. The hardest thing to find is yourself even if you’re already there. I found myself drowning in more love than I knew with which to do. I let it go and kept on sailing.

III.

Another bomb in Palestine, another mass shooting in America. Somewhere in the jungles of Peru, a tiger takes its final breath and returns to the trees. Another turtle washes ashore with her shell tied with plastic. Very soon there will be another Tsunami. Typhoons will return our neighbors to the sea. I don’t intend to be bleak, only true. Nature is an epitaph to the everlasting.

IV.

I long to die in the sand surrounded by clear skies and crashing waves. The distance between two loved ones is a sunset. The secret to a long life is to keep chasing the dusk. You are with me wherever I go.

V.

I once visited a cathedral carved into a mountain. I’ve seen caves of fish light up in the Marianas trench. I’ve toked with shamans and watched islands ooze out of volcanoes. I’ve dined with warlords and shone a mirror on a glacier to part it. None of this is true unless you count poetry as truth.

VI.

The moon has many forgotten names. One of them is a goddess of love. She only faces the world once every thirty days because of how coy she can be. Imagine if you could stare into her forever. Imagine what that would do to the tides.

VII.

I have thrown away my map of the human heart. Everyone has their own geography. My true north is a rock in a garden overlooking the beach.