Café Rio, the Right Thing, and a Couple of Tuna Fish [FF Vol. 21]
Day 72 without hitting the road:
Spirits remain high on this side of the world. Ever so slowly, I’m weening myself off the addictive thrill of novelty—the thrill of transitioning from city to city, country to country, reinventing myself time and time again like a player being spawned always in a different level of a video game.
I’m finding new thrills in my permanence. Piecing together bus routes on disconnected backroads and haggling for the cheapest street eat have been replaced with piecing together a social life in a city with limitless opportunities and shopping around for a decent-priced cut of beef. Forging stronger foreign language capacity has given way to forging stronger relationships. Perhaps this is the novel experience left unsatisfied by my nomadic chapters. There’s still work to do though.
I’m a recovering vagabond after all.
Justice for Café Rio
I spent an afternoon at the MALBA art museum. As a fledgling art connoisseur, I quickly fell into the routine of reading the titles of the works before giving the piece much of a glance, treating the MALBA as little more than a 3D textbook.
I caught myself halfway through this visit to the MALBA and decided to flip the script. I wouldn’t look at the title until I had made up my own title and story for it. By simply taking the time to experience the artwork before letting the title fill in the gaps, my MALBA experience was transformed from then on.
Upon exiting the museum, I realized that reading rather than experiencing is not relegated to art collections—it’s a 21st-century battle we face daily.
Let’s take back some territory on the crowdsourced reviews landscape and start forming firsthand opinions instead of relying on secondhand dribble.
Meditations While Meandering (Apr 5, 2024)
Smouch No Longer
“If we continue to let the tastes of others determine which experiences to try, then we are succumbing to a one-dimensional reality limited by the bias of someone else, akin to allowing the title of artwork to restrict our creative interpretation of it. Continuing to take reviews, recommendations, and titles like these at face value will, at best, achieve a life of experiences that other folks would enjoy more than we would…”
Do the Right Thing
It’s remarkable how often we actually know what the “right” thing to do is and still consciously choose the wrong:
Get up and move.
Stop hitting snooze.
Call your Mom.
Don’t look at that.
Put your phone down.
Treat everyone with respect (even when they don’t deserve it).
Life is straightforward in many respects—it’s our choices and impulses that complicate it.
Gone Fishing (for Kicks)
There comes an inevitable chapter in every vagabond’s story arc when they start deeming themselves too savvy to stoop to the level of tours. This point can be dangerous and draws a thin line between seeking serendipitous experiences and being flat-out jaded.
The jaded vagabond—the one that can’t help turning his nose up at a “tourist” activity—is the same vagabond that would be better off shopping for a flight home than shopping for another cheap meal to keep his diminishing novel thrills alive.
If a vagabond manages to avoid this pitfall though, he or she will mindfully turn down pre-packaged experiences with assured outcomes. They will instead dig a bit deeper for an experience with unassured outcomes but with assured learning opportunities.
Here’s a story about that dichotomy:
Intrepid Times (Mar. 20, 2024)
Fishing for Lunch in Chocó, Colombia
“Meanwhile, the fisherman reaches for one of our tiny catches and sticks a hook through the biggest of them. He tosses the live fish and corresponding buoy overboard, and the chum line immediately starts swimming around us.
After a few laps around the canoe, our chum line turns and beelines straight out into the gray horizon. My heart drops as I realize we’re going to have to chase him down eventually.
My mind wanders in my misery.
What had led me to this sordid state of affairs out at sea was undoubtedly my traveler ego. The day prior I had set out from my beachside hut to ask around the nearby town of Termales if anyone would take me fishing. I had been told before coming to Chocó that the tuna fishing was world-class. While I couldn’t confidently say I had sea legs, I was determined not to leave the Pacific narco-state without having attempted to catch an albacora…“
Thanks once again for reading Ferg’s Focus! My goal is to continue using uncomfortable experiences to learn and in turn share meaningful lessons and insights about the world beyond the small bubble of predictability at home.
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Until the next,
