Slicing Thru Life

I wonder if some of us are just born to wander...not shiftless, pointless roaming...but wandering with purpose. I realize that there are more than a few of you who look at us as modern day gypsies...bouncing from one place to another as the wind blows, but our crisscrossing of Asia has much more to do with relationships than whimsy.
My all time favorite read and movie is The Razor's Edge...the story of Larry Darrell, a WWI vet who walks away from life in Chicago to wander across Europe and Asia. Maugham's tale of Darrell's break from convention and searching for the meaning of life moved me deeply in my late teens. I remember the first time I read the book and then saw the movie...Ann and I sat in the parking lot of the library until after midnight trying to get around the quote used in the epilogue..."The edge of a razor is difficult to pass over, thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard".
It doesn't surprise me that those same passions we felt as we sat in that library parking lot considering "breaking away" from cultural conventions...is the same passion that propels us forward a quarter of a century later. We simply were designed to live an unorthodox life.
Bottom line for us is that it is all about the people we meet on these forays, the culture in which we are immersed and to a far lesser extent the romance of travel and epicurean experiences.
If you decide to check out the flick...make sure it is the Tyrone Power original.
Here are a few of our moments from the edge...

Unexpected Morning In Maçka...Stopped to Buy a Tea Pot and Got Adopted by the Family

The Vanishing Nomadic Tribes on the Eastern Highlands

Dung for Fuel in an Iraqi Village