Travel is an opportunity to escape the gravitational pull of an otherwise ordinary life. People become mundane with age and experience. I’m no different. Age is unrelenting, schedules dehumanizing. Humans collect. The stuff we collect whether material or metaphysical brands us, makes who we are, binds us. Regardless of age, we get ‘stuffy‘. You may as well get a tattoo, it’s that obvious.
Who and what you are is your Hellespont when escape becomes the only rational alternative. Reach a certain age and everyday life is like an albatross around your neck. Travel is like alcohol, making life better under the influence. Survival demands we travel. Travel is my heroin. Airports, a crack pipe to the addict, a temple for the weary.
“Does travel make you more interesting , or is life more interesting because you travel?” I framed that question as an intentional paradox. Is it order or disorder which causes a person to walk away from everything and seek the oblivion of travel? Don’t we always say, “We’ll leave it all behind“? Select cultures and religions meditate into the void for various reasons of necessary solitude. Poverty is a common thread. Why westerners seek to experience the poverty of others is another topic.
The Third World is clustered with Houses of the Holy rooted in longstanding communities. Westerners are rootless and mobile, and so find temples spiritually attractive. Less affluent people of impoverished countries seek temple denizens for answers and solace, affluent westerners build airports and seek out the nontrinitarian wisdom of on-line travel agencies. Travel is a rich people thing. Air B&B a quasi-religion. Heaven is first class. Hell is a middle seat in economy.
I’m one of the worst examples. I own a home, in a rich and peaceful country. I don’t live there, it’s full of stuff. It’s used as a family pied a terre for temporary visits, sometimes years apart. I just paid another annual property tax bill for services I never use. It’s a very nice home, I choose not to live there. I’ve been infected by the travel bug. It’s in my bones. My country bores me to death. My house is a time capsule buried under a mountain of memories.
My wife/life partner/soul mate and I are on vacation. That’s what we say when we fill out forms. That’s an over simplification and ridiculous fabrication. The vacation we’re on stretches over a decade, never ending. Am I a traveler or an ex-patriot internet navigator? Is this travel or hybrid undefined lifestyle? The country I currently live in treats me like a guest. They make it abundantly clear that we have a short term relationship, at best. Am I homeless? This is a “first world problem“. What do we call this state of flux ? “Affluenza?
I don’t consider myself a ‘digital nomad’…they congregate. Sweaty children making advance reservations to work in organized rooms is not my idea of travel. I started traveling to get away from the ugliness of order. I avoid organized travel like the plague. No cruise ships or bus tours for me. I’m not structured that way. Instead, my travel partner is an accomplished bakery scientist. She creates what drives me to run because I’m insatiable. I write Free Verse poetry because I’m a disorganized mind and rarely think of words that rhyme. This is how we escape order in an overly organized world. Vita Brevis Est.
Escape from order:
Stop reading, start listening, keep moving
Risk garbage falling into the deepest recess of your soul
Disappointing, angelic
I punched my ticket long ago
So, who the fuck are you…really?
My mind runs free
If I get any crazier they’ll nail me to a tree
A nontrinitarian Tau Cross preferably
I eat terrifying memories
The die is cast
I might live forever, but I have doubts
I wrote about Nephalim
Brought them back to life
They’d been forgotten
By all but a few
Little Richard died today
He was like a taxi dancer to my generation
loved and reviled
I died in 1969 when
I met someone
She walked the street, a paid attraction
She read my mind
One of many spirits speaking through my eyes at the time
Suicide was never an option, so I saved her
That jagged edge we walked
When you can’t stand your own mind
Love dreams, dead words
Stolen treasure, ashes in your hand
Escaping energy and light
J West Hardin Road Trip 