Where do I exist?

I hate to get all existential, but I think it’s a valid question. In the past few months, I’ve seen a lot of changes to the way in which I live and interact with people. I am seeing new places and experiencing new things. I have begun to share more and more about my life on the Internet through this blog. There are moments in which I zone out on a bus, fall asleep in a hotel, or round a corner and am blind to where I am. I have to think hard, and once even when I did that on this trip, I still got it wrong the first time. KC? HK? Now, this can be a good thing as you get more comfortable in a place, but it can also be discomforting and out-of-body-esk.

Sunday I traveled through a town north of Lisbon called Nazare that is along the Atlantic Coast that was recommended to me by a work colleague – Bob. At certain times, I found myself snapping photos of the crashing waves, sandy beach, and soaring cliffs, absorbed in a crowd of people doing just the same. I knew none of them, and yet by happenstance, as of today, I have inevitably ended up in one of their photos, captured by mistake (or intent) in the camera frame and soon to be plastered into a scrap book or cast aside in a shoebox. My non-posing face forever digitized or chemically burned in mid stride or stare. But is this existence?

You know the story. Tree falls. Empty forest. Is it heard?

You are reading the story. Boy travels. Foreign place. Is it real?

The strange thing about living a life is that it hardly feels like you are living if you have no one to share it with. That’s one of those things that is always said but I’ve learned just how true it is. For that, I count my blessing daily for having Eric, close family, and friends. On these quick journies, few lasting connections are made, and for me if it were left to that, to the checking off of tourist spots from some book, that it would be a waste. Not an existence. For me, it is the talking about it, it is the writing about it, it is the sharing of a life that brings it into form and brings with it some meaning.

Thank you for sharing with me an existence and helping to keep some semblance of place in an unbounded world.