Trips By Sam

          I wake in a hostel bed to the sound of OM, though my alarm has yet to ring for the 5:30 a.m. meditation class.   Have they started early?   Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I scramble in the dark for my trusty Mexican poncho and sneakers.   I’ve never been late for a yoga class.   Never.   Work? Often.   But never my soulful stretching time.   I imagine a lotus-perched posse of stern, shaved monks, their eyes narrowing in scornful pity as I interrupt their sacred meditation… That is, if they let me in at all. Mat slung over sweatered shoulder, I emerge into the darkened street, bathed only in faint starlight.   In my haste to meet the chanting voices on the nearby hillside, I stumble over strewn stones.    I halt, however, when a woman wrapped in rich vermilion scarves slinks out her door.   We both smile, salute each other with a slight bow, hands pressed in prayer and murmur, “Namaste,” befor...

            It’s an italicization of the present moment.   The greyish underbelly of the fluttering maple leaf enchants my normally scattered attention.     I pause in appreciative observation of its electric lime backside gyrating in the mourning breeze.   Though this seemingly tangible enchantment exudes all existence, my ego maintains a loosened grip on the illusory control it craves: to write, grill eggplants, juggle schedules to plan a European reunion with friends.   It’s morphed, however, from taskmaster to tool.   Rather than yank my chain of attention from desire to desire, fear to fear, my shrunken self serves my spirit rather than vice versa.   For a few sacred hours today, I find it easier to simply be rather than do, do DO for a future that’s always out of grasp.   A cliché, I know, but cut me some slack—I’m on 10 micrograms of LSD.           ...

I never meant to become a vagabond.   While reading Rolf Pott’s guide to the rolling stone lifestyle, I romanticized the notion of long term travel and seeing the world without agenda like one might fantasize a Roman holiday with a rainbow array of gelatos and Vespas.   But only to find the Trevi Fountain swarming like a big box store on Black Friday with tourists clutching cameras, elbowing each other for the best Instagram angle, there was an unexpected dark side to vagabonding.   It was where confusion, fear, and loneliness lingered, seldom shown to the shiny eyed yoga teachers gushing about the “awesomeness!” of this strange, gypsy life.   I owe it to all those yogi’s smiling eyes, and to you, dear reader, to harness my experience like a prism does a beam of light and distill it into colors, leaving no hue ignored, providing you with my honest account of accidental vagabonding. HOW Everyone wants to know “How?”, typically referring to finances.  ...