#252 Walkng, Flying--2

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Continuing from DS 251, this time comparing the list of places in India he and his friend wanted to see but missed. The reasons for their traveling through India are mentioned in the second stanza, B. sauntering through the subcontinent like Old Ben [Franklin] through Paris when he was the toast of that city, and the US young and fresh, struggling to get established, like a newly-graduated, naïve 22-year-old who landed a good job on the basis of her brains, looks, grades, and charm, and now has to demonstrate she’s worth the investment. But that’s all an aside, and the poem up to this point is disposable. “Travel’s a plague. But that’s no matter. So is home.” I suppose…because: “It’s paying out cash every day that actually bugs you.” Sure, but you expect that when you travel, and you expect that at home. Is there something bigger arising here? A critique of the capitalist money economy? Well, yeah... So what is this that follows, and why?

            Isn’t getting rid of old friends

            worth it? And the destruction of mail en route

            worth anything? Accompanies the combers foam

            into which we dive too.

It looks to me like the freedom that comes from leaving it all behind, where you don’t even need to worry about letters, those little hooks stuck in your shirt that pull back at you, which you have to pluck one at a time like pesky rose thorns before they let you go—there’s a vine that grows in a tropical rain forest that’s called the wait-a-minute liana, because once it gets it hooks in you, you’ll just go ahead and wait a minute before you get all those diabolical clever thorns released from your shorts. No more of that either. You dived into the ocean, as far as anyone knows, and as to where you come up, and whether you’ve drowned or not—well, you’ll be back, eventually. More than likely. In the meantime: travelling. Expect no letters, or calls (or texts). Expect no sentimental connection to home once I’m unhooked, because frankly, folks, my life there sucked anyway.

Travel is a freedom, of which one never gets enough, and home is a drag, in other words. Get me outta here! You pay for the privilege of sitting there at home, just existing, so might as well pay to go where they eat things like banana flowers, monkey brains, and jellyfish. The banks and utility companies back home can go pound sand. So can your friends, who mean well, but whose hooked claws always force you to wait a minute. 

I love my friends, and I need my connection with them because it’s one of the critical influences that define who I am, and in Paris, I often spent long afternoons in anonymous cafés, with a demi-tasse and croissant, writing long, intricate postcards to friend and family back home. But there were other days when I said goodbye to my host family in the morning, decided where to go on my walk to the Metro, and took off. See you tonight! I’ll be back with a story. No one on Earth knew which city I was in—Bourges, Laon, Orleans, Rhiems. Let’s just go see what’s there. All by myself. It was beyond freeing and beyond wonderful.

No hooks!...