To return home, subsequent to an interlude of extensive travel (three weeks) prompts me to reflect upon my life. I would like to think I do not take on the role of a tourist, a dabbler, one who passes through anonymously, with diffident attention to anything or anyone. Boredom can be chosen without leaving…
Here I am again, in the corner by the wall on a rainy morning at Starbucks. The return home feels right, the feeling of completion. What did I accomplish in the last three weeks on the road, a composite of time and places in my memory? Did I accomplish much, or nothing? “Nothing” sounds…
Shortly we leave Asheville. The drive through the Blue Ridge mountains to Lexington promises to be spectacular. Passing through the mountains at any time is breath taking. At the peak of fall color change, the views will be extraordinary. Perhaps I will attempt to capture the splendor with some photos. A photograph never does…
I couldn’t concentrate on the email summary of the stories in the New York Times. Maybe the brain fog will dissipate as the morning flows into midday. The Times featured story was about a recently taken Gallup opinion poll on the matter of abortion in Texas. The poll shows that Texans think remarkably the same…
Monday dawns as another mid-Fall, blue-sky day in Greenville, South Carolina. Our plan is to leave for Asheville, North Carolina shortly. The drive will be short. I can see the blue mountains on the distant horizon from here. Yesterday I spent some time walking among the graves in Springwood Cemetary. The place, a quiet plot…
John Fogerty sings in the background, Down on the Bayou, and I drink a mediocre cup of coffee in the breakfast room of the Holiday Inn. It is Sunday morning in Greenville, South Carolina. To bed late and a short evening of restless sleep. I know that “things change” and that I will feel…
…more miles south yesterday, into South Carolina. We are staying in Greenville, which I had forgotten is the home of Bob Jones University. The term “University” is understood as only Christian fundamentalists would understand the word. Young adults born into a cultic form of faith seek admission to BJU. “Faith” by the literalist interpretation…
We departed the Outer Banks crossing the five mile long Melvin R. Daniels Bridge on I64 in bright sunlight. The bridge arched over the water ahead of us. We approached Alligator Island, I could see the marina below with a row of big (and expensive) ocean fishing craft at rest. These looked to be…
We enjoyed a last walk along the beach at Nags Head. The gently rolling surf enveloped us in its timeless cadence. I would like to think this island will last forever, the waves will beat on this beach eternally. I know that eternity is an abstraction, a fiction of the mind, and that, change…
Boredom dominates the widening gapbetween subject and world,between freedom and facticity,between action and being. The Dasein that is determined to act,is no longer familiar with the feeling of being-surroundedor of being-taken-in.The ‘point’ of the ‘moment’, as the temporal form of the self,lacks the width and length of ‘home’,the space for dwelling and lingering. …’home’…
