I was going to be a physicist, see, like my dad. Before that, I was going to be a Batman and a daddy, and neither of those have panned out either. So I got a teaching certificate from Harvard, and used it as a laissez-passer to get around the world. I taught high school English in Colombia, Spain and Cambodia -- that's the "international schools circuit" -- and then, having gone as far away as possible, decided to follow my crumbs back home. I called up Rob Boynton from a phone booth in rural Colombia, and he swore to me that the magazine business was not on a path to extinction, so I came to study with him (and some other talented folks like David Samuels and Lawrence Weschler) at NYU's journalism school. Couldn't be happier. My uncle had a place in the West Village that belonged to his old friend Jane Aire, so after twelve years of teaching and traipsing, I hunkered down for some reading and writing of my own. The third world has its advantages, and I love it there, but there's nothing like a university research library in Phnom Penh.
Maybe this helps explain why I'm interested in the idea of home, migration, cross-cultural lives, global souls, ethnic food, travelers, wanderers and the lost. I expect to head back out there one day -- for now I'm one of those New York-based writers with a few good clips and more good ideas. I pay a lot of attention to Colombia and its underreported war, and visit regularly. I'm more nostalgic about Cambodia. Spain: who wouldn't want to live there? I loved it so much, I bought a black three-cylinder BMW motorcycle and drove to every corner of the peninsula. In fact, now that I think about it, what am I doing here? It's 19 degrees in New York. I'm gone.
I've picked up a few languages and plenty of gonzo experiences along the way. From the Colombian emerald zone to the Cambodia-Lao border, I've always been drawn to full immersion, and I still bristle whenever I discover that I've somehow become a tourist. Blame Nicolas Bouvier, Kapuscinski, Patrick Leigh Fermor, V.S. Naipaul for that. They taught me how to make the ordinary extraordinary. By now, I can't help but bring an outsider's perspective to whatever I cover.
Matthew Fishbane writes about culture, food and foreign affairs. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Outside, Salon.com, the Walrus, the Christian Science Monitor and others. He is based in New York.