Dharma Bum 2.0

San Diego is no stranger to beauty with its…

…vibrant flowers…

…enchanting hotels…

…breathtaking sunsets…

…surfers’ dreams…

… and 323 sun-filled days a year.

All this preparation for my upcoming trip to South America brings back memories of my move to San Diego. It’s an interesting feeling, somewhat cathartic, to sort through your life and belongings, determine what has real value to you, toss it in a suitcase and throw yourself head first into a new culture. Packing for my last trip involved stuffing my car with superfluous items, from video games to lamps to frisbees, trying to bring as much junk as I could to save money upon arrival on the west coast.

Packing for my current endeavor is quite the opposite – filling a single backpack with a maximum capacity of 4600 cubic inches that I will be carrying with me for months on end. In this case, less is more. I haven’t created my final pack list but it will contain roughly these items: a few pair of pants/ shirts/socks/underwear, sandals, sleeping bag, Nalgene bottles, a camera, toiletries, Spanish phrase book and notebook and pen to chronicle my travels. I will most likely have street clothes shipped down to Santiago once I arrive, but I will purchase anything else down there if need be.

If you asked me a few months ago to spend one day without using my cell phone, checking e-mail and listening to mp3s I would have told you to screw off. But now I’m actually looking forward to escaping technology, getting away from deleting my inbox garbage and checking pointless facebook updates, and returning to a simpler way of life. Removing these distractions may not ultimately provide me with more peace, but I am looking forward to the experience nonetheless.

My most recent read has been Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, in which the Ray, based on the real-life Kerouac, travels around in the pursuit of peace, truth and happiness through Zen Buddhism. The essence of the book is summed up in one paragraph:

“…see the whole thing is a world of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures…”

[Side note: I can't help but be reminded of Chuck Palahinuik's popular book-turned-movie, Fight Club. But instead of preaching peace and prayer, Palahniuk's story is one of pessimism and destruction:

"You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something.  Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need.  Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need...We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them."]

Sure, these stories may be eccentric and extreme, suggesting we completely reject conventional society, but the essence of simplicity and unconventional living is one that I am looking forward to exploring.