Becoming beautiful while traveling (dedicated to my 6 years of traveling). Note: this a draft so there might be quite some changes in the final release.
Only the free thinker who had traveled in farness and loneliness can esteem the beauty within his waking passage:
the beauty of arriving in a place for the first time,
the beauty of learning how to speak sentences in new languages,
the beauty of sightseeing the breathtaking marvels of the planet earth one after another,
the beauty of adventuring in the wild and untouched nature, the beauty of self acknowledging new skills out of pure necessity,
the beauty of meeting people from different cultures and let yourself being absorbed by their costumes,
the beauty of freely stopping at any point of your path to behold the surrounding, the beauty of tasting something unknown to your palate,
the beauty of having friends spread across the planet who are always ready to welcome you in their place,
the beauty of living day by day not knowing what is awaiting you the day next,
the beauty of packing your young belongings to leave to anywhere at any time and without consulting anyone,
the beauty of knowing that is never too late to start doing something,
the beauty of returning home at long last to be surrounded by familiar people, but reminiscing and enchanting yourself that there is something new, different and special within you…you can simply call it beautiful.
Alan Gallicchio, March 2009, South Korea
Nosham's traveling handbook
I had written the 80% of this handbook during 2007, being seldom committed to this work, but had a good draft by the end of the same year. The following 2008 has just been adding the remaining 20%, reviewing and changing 10 times my mind about what to write and what not to write. The main issue was that most of what I wrote that time, turned out to be kind of outdated compared to my experience of few months after or so. I had to keep on changing and re-reviewing to re-adapt it to my “new” me, until now, when I got tired and I had to make a choice. To continue my slow and constant modification until undefined time or just publish my manuak the way it is at now, with the opened option of adding further improvements and chapters when the time comes. In the meantime you can enjoy the version 1.0, buying it now for the very cheap price of 1 Euro only (in .PDF file, download of 13mb black and white or 130 for color, as it will contain some pictures as well). Buying the guide will entitle you to receive free updates in case of any further improvement. Available in english only of course, but if anyone feels to collaborate and transalte it into different languages I will be glad to offer full assistance. By the way, some months ago Ive sent a beta version of this script to quite few people who vowed to read it and reply with constructive feedbacks and comments. Unpleasantly they all turned me down except one person: her name is Laura from Italy (in2out.it): today I would officially like to thank her for being so supportive regarding this project. Jump to my books page ——->HERE. Email me for any suggestion or comment.
I have found another written piece, a sort of metaphysic page that I must have written back in 2006, but can’t really see what I was trying to prove there. It is clear though, there are some kind of attempts to classify a mental process about how our brain collect and output the data from the external experiences and use it in general conversation modalities. Was I drunk or anything? Or stoned by a big fat joint? Judge by yourself: download or open it here (.doc format)
I have been neglecting this issue during the last years because the topic used to scare me. Recently, it no longer does… so it’s on, talking about my own after-death “responsibilities” and “rewards”. Selfishly speaking, pragmatically speaking, in case I’d have to pass away, why should I give a damn about what will happen to friends, relatives and people that used to be around me in general? Why should I care the way I will be remembered? Anyway I wouldn’t know all that when I’m already dead! I can’t for example feel responsible for my children left alone because my brain wouldn’t function anymore to transmit me this impulse. For instance, we all know that it would’t make any difference being buried under 10mts of snow in a gold coffin, or, being turned into ash, be put in a cornflakes box and be thrown away from the 28th floor. Once I’m dead I would feel absolutely the same in both situation: nothing. But let’s take one step back: the exception comes for one thing: in the moment you’re dying. In fact, in that moment, just before you die, your brain is still connected and probably transmitting those “life flashing before your eyes” films… Thus, what can change your death experience it’s just the way you’ll feel in that blink right before your brain is unplugged. So, taking for granted that almost everyone would want to die happily, that’s how we deal with our eventual death, by wanting to feel happy even though we know we will not be able to continue being happy after death. This already tells everything. Unfortunately many of us are so naive to believe that we act with the intention of doing something to make someone else happy after our death, but unconsciously we are just fulfilling our ego by instead, doing something just in order to make ourselves happy first, for that second before we die, self-deceiving that we can rest in peace knowing that people who are still alive will remember us or savour the things we left them. I’m aware of it, but I need to prepare my last-willing list (which is by the way private). By knowing that most of my last willing will be granted, I will find joy when my life flashes before my eyes. I am just another human being who is so pathetically attached to his personal fulfillment that even in the last instant of his life he’ll want to grasp the last shot of happiness pervading his senses.
To answer some of my friends who have been asking me: why is it so hard to write a manual of around 100 pages for someone like me, who has been traveling full time for almost 5 years? It is hard because this is not a traveling diary; it would be easier in fact to publish a simple traveling diary of these 5 years of very personal happenings or a sort of autobiography, whether the reader understands it or not, whether it is boring or funny… Instead, what I am trying to create, is to compress my extended traveling experience, put it out of its very subjective view and think of it as if I were other people’s brain! That is because I am writing a short manual for people who wants to travel, for some of you who wants to know more about its philosophy (with my personal interpretaition of course) and for those who need to learn very practical tips. Therefore here it comes the hard task of elaborating all my data, select what to insert and what not, what needs to be explained and what needs to be left for the readers to dig. Some philosophical topics for example would deserve to be discussed in another dedicated book, so it is yet difficult to cut and concise some important chapters. However my objective is now to write something that everyone would be interested to read and acknowledge, but something that can inspire people who already have some depth within.
