for all those student essays ... renouncement

Renouncement, is a virtue of Indian religion. Going can be depressing leaving behind your home, dog, garden, cars, work, and families is difficult. But you tear it apart, wash it all, bleach, pack, visit, clean, and drop it all off. I had a dream I was packing up my classroom, the room was large and things were all being cleared.  The phone rang and it was the principal but I could not talk. The cords were all wrapped and interlaced and I was instructing someone to throw all the paintings away, and the hurt look of the students was palpable.  I then found myself outside the school hidden behind a bush and in the corner of my eye I saw movement. I threw my spear and it penetrated through a deer’s back, who then staggered away. I felt terrible, lost, and irreconcilable, I tried to call animal rescue but the shame of it woke me up.

My father tells tales of traveling to Africa from Germany in the early 50's. Day’s in the air: Rome, Malta, Nairobi slowly leaping towards Johannesburg. He met a woman along the way wearing leopard pattern clothing, a large landowners daughter, who took a liking for my father, in no small part because of the book he was reading, “The Love Making of __.”  For him and people of his generation flight still meant exploration the beginning of an experience that has changed from the exotic and romantic to commoditized and organized; a challenge for planners. It is in modern airports that you really sense this. Your unique adventure is shared by millions. Like you they are pushed, shuttled, herded, bused, checked, and scanned. Scenes from " Koyaanisqatsi" flood up to me. Those endless fast motion images of subways, highways, roads, and people being pushed through the body of life like so many cells, and you suddenly feel lost in a vast mechanism.

 

Freedom, that is what makes the idea of travel so amazing. Seven months to think only your own thoughts, to live a life of your mind, free!  Making things, even travel blogs, to be rushed by a sense of urgency to make  more pictures. That is the most exotic of thoughts. It makes the inconveniences of travel a joy, exhilarating, the total freedom to exist inside of yourself, authentically