Plunging into Wanderlust

Two years after the inception of the dream, the Eurovan

arrives tomorrow. So I've had two years to mull and mulling

is one of the things I do best. I've been around the block

enough to know that there can often be a ginormous gap between

a fantasy and the realization of that fantasy:

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow*

So if you think I haven't, on occassion, concluded that

this whole idea is insane or felt the fears of leaving it all

behind, think again. I suspect that the desire to chuck

it all is universal, but to actually do it requires either

an act of courage or, perhaps, extremely uninformed

stupidity.

Ha!

But somehow the road is calling. There is enough evidence

of the journey as metaphor in world myth and literature for

me to conclude that wanderlust is, also, universal. I don't

suspect that it is necessarily a search for something, which

implies an arrival at some point of certainty, as it is the call of the

journey into the unknown itself. Besides, I no longer believe in a

certainty that can be expressed in the limited rational tool

of language and I am increasingly comfortable in the ambiguous

gray goo of the Now.

So, in order to drop out, I've had to strip away the usual

layers of socialization, ignore the little voices suggesting

my insanity and prepare to plunge into the unknown.

Ain't you been properly socialized? Yeah, didn't take.

I am leaving behind a beautiful house, a lucrative (yet essentially

unrewarding) job, and a set of patterns that are warm and cozy

if mostly unnoticed in the dream of everyday life.

Exciting? Yes. Scary? Sure.

Wendy once said that one idea of Hell would be to die and only

then to be able to perceive all of the things that you could

have done and didn't. Indeed.

Time to take the plunge and I'd be a damn fool if I didn't.

I'm going where the sun keeps shining

Thru' the pouring rain

Going where the weather suits my clothes

Banking off of the north east wind

Sailing on a summer breeze

And skipping over the ocean like a stone**

-Gerry

*Eliot

**Nilsson