13 September: Home and Away: Traveling On

For those of you who have ever stood on an ocean coast and wished you could get to the next large landmass…this is for you….

I have wanderlust. Borne of fascination with that which I am not experiencing, and an endless desire to have no opportunity denied me, no doors closed to me, I am curious and roaming, if not in actuality than in mind. Some clear thinker, articulate and succinct (though whose name I cannot for the life of me remember) has said it best: you want a man to build a ship, do not waste your time teaching him the engineering of ship building, or the mundane task of learning what type of wood to collect; do not bother giving him sewing lessons so he may make the most perfect sail; instead incite within him a longing for exploration and lust for the ocean. This desire for changes lies in perfect opposition for my endless longing for stability and continuity, this desire for change always wins out. I hate to leave, I am a miserable, stressed-out, anxious disaster when leaving time arrives, but I need to go. I can’t turn down the chance to go.

And I have always lived on the water. I have had that lust for oceans as a constant, my whole life. I have never been but mere moments from the salty water of ocean or sound or bay. And I’m sitting here, at my desk, longing for change. Never complacent for long I can not bring myself to research countries I have not yet seen, not without a small nagging tug at my heart, at my heels. But money comes in short supply, and time even shorter. To know that I will end up here is not to say I am willing to forgo a chance to see what I have ultimately turned down, and I am not willing to turn it down without, at least once, seeing it all. The fantasy of Home and the fantasy of Away; the dream of roots and the mirage of the journey (S. Rushdie)—these are the irreconcilables in my life…