A Journey to the Middle of the East

Pat Ryan works seasonally in upstate New York and spends his Winters traveling the world with a tent, a backpack and a very low budget. In fifteen Winters of traveling he has wandered around more than fifty countries on five continents. He carries a pen and spiral notebook as he travels and writes stories about his various experiences on the road. Some of the stories are more or less true, some of the stories are exaggerations and some of the stories are more like mythological representations of reality... But all the stories seek to express artistic "truth" and capture the very real experience of traveling as a stranger in a foreign land.

In the Winter of 2012-2013, Pat Ryan took his pen and his notebook and went for a little wander around "The Middle East." Unimpressed with mainstream propaganda that depicts "The Middle East" as a dangerous and scary place filled with blood thirsty terrorists and religious fanatics, Pat Ryan went to find out "the truth" for himself. Over a period of almost four months, he filled two notebooks with stories, poems, doodles, pictures and outlines for more stories. He simply wanted to experience and explain what "The Middle East" was all about.

Upon returning to the United States, Pat Ryan edited the stories and sculpted the stories and assembled the stories into a "symphony of stories." During the assembly process, however, something remarkable happened. Pat Ryan discovered a single long story hidden within the symphony. It is a very old story and a very new story at the same time. It is a story of "death" and "re-birth." It is a story of transformation. Did Pat Ryan really discover "truth" in "the Middle of the East?" Or did Pat Ryan, the author, merely turn himself into Pat Ryan, the fictional character?

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