I spent the last week wracked with chills and roasting with fever. Viruses raged through my body while opportunistic bacteria set up shop in my ears and lungs. Three days went by in a miserable blur. It was all I could do to keep myself hydrated. I'm not exactly in the best of health at the moment: the mucusworks are still running at full tilt and sometimes I cough so hard I feel like I'm going to pop a vessel in my forehead. At least I can focus on the monitor in front of me. This, dear readers, is the essence of dedication. It's through this veil of pain, this valley of pestilence, that I have traveled to bring you this column. It isn't much, but it's easier on the eyes than an abandoned Pokemon page built by a ten year old and stuffed with animated gifs.
The first thing that comes to mind is the Taliban. They're such an easy target. Blowing up ancient treasures in the good ol' iconoclastic tradition. It reaches through my ribcage like Mola Ram, but instead of grabbing a hold of my pumping heart, it yanks my spleen. It is one of the irritating things I've read in the news recently, one of those items that makes me wonder why I even read the news. However, the Taliban is following a well worn path. All the folks in late Imperial and Byzantine Rome didn't have any qualms as they tossed all that finely sculpted statuary into the kilns for lime. Posterity didn't concern the scavengers who pulled the brilliant limestone facing from the Great Pyramids and knocked down the redwood-sized columns of the Temple of Artemis. Even England has seen its period of religious fervor and the ensuing destruction and defacement.
Do I have a point? Not really. I'm just trying to get some perspective on the whole thing. If I were to dwell solely on the Taliban's most recent actions my stomach would probably seize up. The only action left to me, my only defense, is to set the madness into context. It doesn't really make me feel better. It only feeds my hunger to see the world. As I stood under the obscenely sprawling metal legs of the Eiffel Tower, I felt more human. As I gawked up at the vast dome of the Aya Sofia, the same feeling rushed to me, like I'd just found another piece of a puzzle.
I'm not only concerned with grand sites. The french fry my future wife and I found on our desperate hunt for the McDonald's in Neûchatel was another piece of the puzzle. Those moments sneak up on you and surprise you. The grand sites and the magnificent locales are waiting for you to come and find them. So I'm hungry. I can't wait to feast my soul on the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal, and Edinburgh Castle. I'm really glad that my wife and I enjoy working on puzzles. We make a pretty good team. I think we both understand that the fun isn't in finishing the puzzle. The fun is in the doing.
Pakeha