it's a small (but very vast and complicated) world...

Last week, I drove down to Atlanta with a couple friends. Driving from DC is quite an undertaking -- a good 10-12 hours. So the plan was to start from DC at around 10:30am. We'd get in before or at midnight, catch some deep zzzs, and be fresh and awake for the US Social Forum the next day.


Right. Yeah.


We actually arrived at 4:30am...after a un pneu creve, a tow truck, two and a half hours at a car dealership...


I still enjoyed the ride. DC is a bubble and, to tell the truth, not my top favourite place. I feel a bit trapped here at times. I think the place attracts so much ambition and attention that there is not that much energy flowing out. I feel sucked into the centre and long to break out and run. Flee for a short while into the cool of the countryside, into the quiet.


That is why it was great to be on the road, speeding through lines of trees over rivers nameless to me unless I caught a glimpse of a passing sign.

We even stopped at a mini Pizza Hut...Lesson: get the super veggie-- it has tomatoes unlike the regular veggie. I was lucky and chose the super... :)


I drove the last shift as I tend to get strangely hyperactive after 1am. I stopped at a Waffle House to buy a coffee. For those of you not versed in the eating places of the American South, Waffle Houses are yellow and black restaurants serving, besides waffles, lots of coffee and all the greasy overfried breakfast foods you could desire. I personally would not recommend the sausage, but I have had relatively decent waffles there before. And their coffee does the trick...I was babbling on for hours, much to the dismay of my friend in the front seat hoping to catch some zzzs........

But yes, the Waffle House-- it was a good pitstop. I got my first shot of southern hospitality in a while. For all its faults and all its lingering sores and scars, the South does have a place in my heart. Strange, it sort of sneaked up on me; somehow love entered in amongst a lot of other slightly more negative feelings (doesn't that happen surprisingly often?). I was reminded of this tangle of emotions when I walked out of the Waffle House. Despite having to work at that hour for very little pay in a greasy cafe by the side of a highway, the three servers shared their laughs and smiles with me. They gave me cheer...and explained how their sales were going compared to last year's.

Anyway, why am I rambling on about this? Because it reminded me how much I find I need to be on the road from time to time. Journeying reminds me of how big and complicated this world is -- how many people, how many lives, how many stories. Living in a city like DC, you bump into people you know from other places all the time, inevitably exclaiming "oh, it's a small world after all..."

I used to complain about that phrase every time I heard it. Now I have accepted that it will be said and does represent an important truth about our interdependence and interconnectedness. But I still maintain that we need to know that the world is also huge -- a crowded, complicated, interwoven mess. A beautiful mess, an ugly mess -- we can simplify it, we can explore it, but it will remain tangled and vast.

I think that's what amazes me the most -- how can the world be simultaneously small and vast. I think intricate is a word that helps me understand this paradox. You can zoom out and see patterns, see connections. But then when you zoom in, you just keep going, on and on, the details keep appearing. Even when, finally, you get to a single person, things are never simple...

Blessed be journeys and their confusions. Things will never be simple. But we walk on...