I Did Keep A Travel Diary Once

I Don’t Keep A Travel Diary. I Did Keep A Travel Diary Once And It Was A Big Mistake. All I Remember Of That Trip Is What I Bothered To Write Down. Everything Else Slipped Away, As Though My Mind Felt Jilted By My Reliance On Pen And Paper. For Exactly The Same Reason I Don’t Travel With A Camera. My Holiday Becomes The Snapshots And Anything I Forget To Record Is Lost.

Every Dream That Anyone Ever Has Is Theirs Alone And They Never Manage To Share It. And They Never Manage To Remember It Either. Not Truly Or Accurately. Not As It Was. Our Memories And Our Vocabularies Aren't Up To The Job.

The Truth Is, I Hadn't Grown Up Really Wanting To Be A Writer. The Whole Thing Was A Weird Aberration In Some Ways, And I Didn't Feel Personally Connected To The Level Of Success I Had With It - The Success Of Sorts, I Guess.

I Knew My Affection For The Philippines Was Equally As Telling: A Democracy On Paper, Apparently Well Ordered, Regularly Subverted By Irrational Chaos. A Place Where I'd Felt Instantly At Home.

Waking Was The Most Reliable Part Of A Dream, As Built Into Dreams As Death Is To Life. You Dream, You Wake: You Live, You Die.