The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
-G.K. Chesterton

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.
-James A. Michener

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
-Lao Tzu
 
Not all those who wander are lost.
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Rings

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
-Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
 
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
-Rumi

What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms.
-Kobayashi Issa
 
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often. 
-Mae West

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
-Alan Watts
 
The journey I'm taking is inside of me. Just like blood travels down veins, what I'm seeing is my inner self and what seems threatening is just the echo of the fear in my heart.
-Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. 
-Mark Twain

Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. 
-Benjamin Franklin Wade
 
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. 
-Aristotle, Metaphysics

Down the valley, the green oasis fades into wind-swept sand dunes, dunes like those seen in Arabia, but smaller and bounded by the mountains. The shrubs and tufts of grass obey no sharp boundary with the dunes, but rather meander into and out of the neighboring ecosystem. Sand and camels at 12,000 feet, ranges away from the sea, but once upon a time...  


high altitude
valley -- strange worlds squeezed
between two mountains 

orange temple gates,
dripping rain water --
mental crosstalk

promised turquoise
waters; instead i get a
concrete color

midways announce themselves at a distance
jangly music discords with organ toots
arc lamp light and spastic dancing colors
but i find myself there dream-style swift

my disorientation is complete
i can't tell color from sound / it's all loud
nothing is in focus because all is in motion
neon red is a shard of electronic music

my eyes dart about looking to rest on something painless
my ears try to hold just one tune from the cacophony 
twinkly music runs my spine as I wonder how a god
could deal with all the voices, all those voices, at once