"Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see,
This world is such a great and a funny place to be.
Oh, the gamblin' man is rich, an' the workin' man is poor,
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore."
-- Woody Guthrie
SECONDS. 72,921,600 OF THEM TO BE PRECISE. That was how long it took me to see whatever the hell I wanted to see. I tried to savor them all. I tried. I failed. An impossible task, though one worth tackling. I wasn’t finished. I never am, nor will I be.
When did the journey actually begin? When did it really end? I left for eight hundred and forty-four days. Left? Is that the word? Escaped, maybe? Was I a little runaway? Or had I arrived? A pilgrimage to… knowhere? Everywhere? Anywhere but here or there… wherever that may be or may have been. I wandered this world in search of what I could never find. The journey, not the destination. Along the road to oblivion I may, one day, be able to ask the most interesting question. Is the answer relevant? Or more importantly, would I really want to know after all?
No house. No job. No car. No clue. Poof!… and I was gone.
This space is dedicated to that time and a few others, a sprinkle of nostalgic flotsam and jetsam if you will. A way to reflect, to digest. A catharsis, a purge, an emotional splurge? Face a demon. Pet an angel. Kill a darling or two. I’m like a goddamned onion. Peel me… please.
I never wanted it to end and now, in a manner of speaking, I suppose it never has to. Click “Realms” and go by country. Click “The Great Sojourn” and go chrono if that tickles your fancy. If you enjoy reading this a tenth as much as I enjoyed living it, then your time will not be spent in vain. Grab a refreshing beverage, settle in a comfortable chair, and make a journey across the world, experiencing it as I did. Then, get off your ass and check it out for yourself. You're not getting any younger and, frankly, I need some fucking updates.
Sincerely,
Icarus
Musée des Beaux Arts
by
W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
