The Belaborist

If I were to have a spiritual experience, I suppose this would have been the "x marks the spot" moment.  If awe will suffice, then I have achieved some connection with what the rest of you hang your futures on when you "turn it over",  pray, genuflect or otherwise seek transcendence.  I recognized it, had been previously so emotionally ball-peened; it happened when I wandered alone into the Serengeti and encountered the water buffalo.  I had been warned, and yet I set off solo, unconsciously wishing to frighten myself, to see if I could heighten the wanderlust high by pretending courage.  The buffalo was docile; what unnerved and dazzled me was the vastness, the clean line of horizon, the Edenic smell, the sheer beauty of Africa.  So fucking much bigger than me.  Better than Machu Picchu, really, for that gut-whallop of incredulity.  No one built Africa.  It just is.  Huge.  All true.  No snark, no bling, no avarice, no spin. Itself.  Machu Picchu does it differently - it addles your mind with the complete impossibility of its existence up there, shimmering atop a tor, lifted and dropped by magicians and conjurers.