Me: Hey Google, avoid highways.
Google: OK. Avoiding highways.
Me: WTF Google!?
Me… again: Google, avoid dirt roads.
Google: I do not understand that request.
Me: Mmmfph.
Me: Hey Google, avoid highways.
Google: OK. Avoiding highways.
Me: WTF Google!?
Me… again: Google, avoid dirt roads.
Google: I do not understand that request.
Me: Mmmfph.
Click a pic
From a speeding taxi
Crossing Jakarta
Months later
While editing
Curiosity piqued
Google “KETOPRAK”
Now I wish we’d stopped
And tried one
A journey
Once begun
Never ends
Overlapping
Those that follow
With belated discovery
But no regrets
For just another
Missed opportunity
Boxed in
Egress blocked
Walls impenetrable
But a blue sky
Offers promise
Possibility beyond
So I seek alternatives
Unknown paths
Improbable routes
The unexplored
May hide secrets
New trails to blaze
No greater metaphor
To my reason for being
Than a remote highway
Through open country
I’ve not yet explored
With the tools in hand
To tell the tales
Of my discoveries
More and more
Discovery comes
As reflections of my self
In the landscape of existence
Dawn breaks in pastels
Scattered city lights
Which had powered night
Fade with encroaching day
Soon enough extinguished
While the trail
Marking my departure
Rises from the darkness
Now a frothy white
Upon grey slate
Receding mountains’ majesty
Diminishes with steady progress
In some few hours to be lost
Behind the moon-swelled sea
Held fast by Earth’s own gravity
So go I
Beyond the realm
Of all I know
To places
I’ve not yet loved
No matter how many times
I look into myself
Listen to my spirit
I find someone new
I remind myself
These are all
Acts of creation
Rather than discovery
But clamber up
One mountainside
And from atop
Discover
Endless array
Of pinnacles
Each mighty in itself
Waiting to be conquered
And I am never sure
Which outcome I prefer
A mystery revealed
Or mystery secure
But I am drawn
Inexorably
To those of mystery
Promising adventure
Challenge
And discovery
I prefer quests of query
Over sorties of attainment