When reading things like part three of Blork’s Of People and Places I feel like creating a new category, “posts that read like I could have written them if I was a better writer and had thought of it first or, in other words, I feel exactly the same way”. But that’s kind of long for a category so I don’t.
Few will agree with that view of the world, and that’s fine by me. I envy those who can visit a place and immediately strike up a friendship with its people. That is not so easy for me to do. I tend to keep to myself, to stay quietly in the background.
It’s the same way with me, I’m always astonished when people come back with tales of striking up conversations on the side of the road deep in the Congo and ending up 2 days later at a party in the Paris catacombs with chechen terrorists, transvestite khmer rouge generals and Condoleezza Rice, watching Justin Timberlake perform songs from his new album.
Obviously I’m exagerating a bit but I’ve got a friend for example who asked for directions from an older man in Kyoto, that man ended up walking them around town, showing them the sites and inviting them for tea at one of his friends’ place. Another in Paris met people from the south of France and spent a week there later in his trip. That never happens to me. And I know there’s part attitude and part openess, yaddi yaddi yadda but that’s just not the way I act.