To Step Away From The World Isn't

I Began Thinking About Why Am I Constructing Almost A Shadow Father Or Ghost Father In My Head Into Graham Greene In Response To The Father Who Created Me? What's Going On Here? I Think A Part Of My Sense Is It's Every Boy's Story. When We Are Kids, We Imagine That To Define Ourselves Or To Find Ourselves Means Charting Your Own Individuality, Making Your Own Destiny And Actually Running Away From Your Parents And Your Home And What You Grew Up With.

I Like California Because It Still Has The Glamour And Romanticism And Exoticism Of A Very Foreign Place. It Was The Place That When I Was Young, I Was Raised On "i Love Lucy" And Listening To The Grateful Dead And Reading Jack Kerouac. They, To Me, Were All Symbols Of This Very Foreign Sense Of Promise And Movement. After All This Time Here I'm Glad I Still Have It.

I Wanted To Bring The Book Out Right Now Because I Think Anyone Who Cares About Tibet Knew There Would Be Disturbances In The Run Up To The Olympics [2008]. Many Tibetans Feel It's Their Last Chance To Broadcast Their Suffering And Frustration And Pain To The World Before The Olympics Take Place And China Is Accepted As A Modern Nation And The World Forgets About Tibet.

And If Travel Is Like Love, It Is, In The End, Mostly Because It's A Heightened State Of Awareness, In Which We Are Mindful, Receptive, Undimmed By Familiarity And Ready To Be Transformed. That Is Why The Best Trips, Like The Best Love Affairs, Never Really End.

I Think America The Symbol And America The Notion Are Still Very Different From America The Nation. What's Touching And Almost Regenerative Is That Whatever Is Happening In The Reality Of America, Where There Is A Murder Rate Worse Than Lebanon's And Where There Is So Much Homelessness And Poverty, Still America Will Be A Shorthand Throughout The World For Everything That Is Young And Modern And Free.