Where is the Heart?

The winter holiday gave me the chance to visit my home for the first time in ages. After being away for so long, it almost felt like visiting a new place. The truth is that I did not really want to go home. For the better part of the last twelve years I have enjoyed traveling to strange and wonderful and obscure parts of the globe. I have spent extended periods of time on four different continents, and have visited more countries than I can count. As I sat in Japan eyeing the calendar and the approaching holidays, my mind was set on venturing into some seldom visited corner of Asia. I wanted to spend my winter vacation laying my eyes on something new, rather than the familiarity of my little American home. Luckily, that all changed when I decided that a visit with my family was more important than another adventure.
It turned out that going home was an adventure in itself. I saw the South in a new light. It was, in fact, as if I saw something new. All the reasons I originally left home are too numerous to recall, but from a very young age I knew I needed to roam. I wanted to know what the great writers knew. The "Lost Generation" moved to Europe and Tolkien, Lewis and the rest of the "Inklings" invented strange and exotic places. I had seen the world through books, and it was too vast, and life too short to sit in one place and watch it pass me by. I felt certain that I would find greener pastures when I left our little field. This recent trip made me realize that the world is full of wonderful and beautiful and horrible and ugly places, but at the end of the day they are just that...places. Its not the mountains or the trees or the cafes or any other inanimate feature that makes a place great, but rather its the people that you meet. I have been blessed to meet some great people in my travels, and I was especially blessed to rediscover the greatness of my own people this holiday season. I forgot how much I loved the South, not because the winters are mild or the mountains old, but because Southerners are an interesting and unique people. They are kind and friendly, funny and caring, honest and convicted. The latter bothered me tremendously when I was younger, because my convictions often differed from those of mainstream Southerners, but I am growing to appreciate diversity. Age and guile are quickly replacing youth and the need to always be right. Home truly is a wonderful place, and for the first time in my life I miss it.
I would not trade my adventures for anything in the world. I consider myself lucky beyond measure to have seen the things I've seen and known the folks I've known, but as I pass into my next thirty years I feel drawn to spend them doing something new and exciting...letting the grass grow under my feet. Vacations are meant for traveling, but it sure will be nice to have a home to come back to when the trip is done.

Its a Small World After All

I just finished off an entire bottle of Nihon-shu (a traditional Japanese liquor) at the airport bar in Narita, near Tokyo. It dawned on me that we are living an incredible age. I am desperately trying to get get home to the US for Christmas on a stand-by ticket. That means that I have to wait until there is a free seat on a flight...no small task in this holiday season. But as I wait I can eat fine foods, finish up with some last minute Christmas shopping, get drunk as a monkey, and publish my d5runken thoughts on a blog to be read by the world (or at least a few friends who find it mildly entertaining) all in the comfortable and convenient setting of the airport. I wonder if Ernest Hemingway had enjoyed this kind of access if he would have bothered writing, editing and publishing his incredible works. Maybe "The Old Man and the Sea" would have been reduced to a two or three paragraph blog entry about facing impossible odds with courage and dignity. Who is to say whether we are better or worse for our newfound conveniences? Maybe it allows the unknown and unconnected to reach a wider audience, or maybe it encourages the rantings of a poorly constructed diatribe. Either way, it is here and we must accept that the world is, in fact, shrinking. With that I will bid you all a good night. I will find as comfortable a chair as the airport offers, curl up with my bags as pillows and my crosswords as company, sleep the best sleep that I can, and hope to board a metal firecracker bound for Atlanta in the morning. God speed, merry Christmas, and good night.

Imagination

"Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey
the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is
true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet."

I randomly stumbled onto this quote, from William Butler Yeats, recently, and it has inspired me to explore a new thread of literature. Beginning with Yeats' "The Celtic Twilight", from which this quote was drawn, I have started reading more fanciful stories of myth and folklore. It is really a fascinating genre that can open one's eyes to various cultures. As we age we tend to lose our youthful imagination, but I am increasingly inclined to recapture mine. From Paul Bunyan to Irish banshees, and from African bogeymen to Japanese raccoon dogs, I am really interested in learning more about legends from around the world. If anyone reads this blog and has any books to recommend, I would appreciate it. For the really adventurous spirit, I encourage you to write a story that might help me re-ignite my imagination.