Do I Even Try...

How do I do this?

Both photography and writing fall disappointingly short at conveying the magnitude of emotions that even the simplest of experiences illicit. I sit here reflecting on the Killing Fields, staring at a dissipating lake, trying to peace together sentences and poignant fragments, to somehow capture the truth that can be, not learned, but felt while playing with a Cambodian orphan. I put pen to paper or fingertip to shutter, but am consistently disappointing by my results.

I believe that only the most artistic of souls can capture the sheer weight of our experiences. Can I begin to do it? Should I even try? My answer, to my own question, is a resounding "Yes." I will try to compose moving and meaningful images and I will attempt to paint literary portraits. Not to fulfill any goals or to meet any standard, but instead to explore what it is that I experienced. By writing I am reflecting, and by reading I am remembering. These two, or four, acts help me to build my own world, or my perspective of it, a little more thoroughly. It is only then that my heart and my soul fall in line with what I was trying to accomplish by traveling in the first place. To be changed.

So, as Ernesto "Che" Guavero writes in The Motorcycle Diaries, "The The person who writes these notes passed away the moment his feet hit Argentinian soil. The person who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I am not the person I once was." The man who writes these words that you are reading right now is different than the man who experienced what they are a response to, and in much the same, but entirely different way, the person who re-reads them over again will be different than the one who first jotted them down.

It is my hope that this process continues as I move away from this crazy capitol city. I hope that the process not only continues, but in fact perpetuates further change as I go to Siem Reap, Ko Chang, Bangkok and back on home to America. I suppose in writing this a new discovery was made: The greatest hope of my life's journey is that relationships, cultures and experiences continue to perpetuate change, growth and a more active pursuit of love in the deepest recesses of my heart and soul.