Fairbanks on the Side

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I hate the moments when you know that an idea, or an event, a moment, needs to be caught and held for the world, yet to the act is entrenched in apathy. The impatient travel writer sits at his or her computer, or at a bench underneath trees with a journal in one hand and a pen in the other, and lacks the power to think cohesively. The ideas, the memories, chase each other and mix in a soup of tumbled acts behind the eyes. The brain tries to catch them, like so many rabbits, and put them in a cage of order with black penned onto white labels.

Writing is much like hunting. We sit, pen nestled in our lap, waiting in the silence for the game to appear, a wild thought to be killed and consumed. Such is our desire, our hunger, to share and analyze and know.

I never think of the fall as a time of healing. Spring is the metaphor for new life, of planting and sprouting and reaping the rewards. But for me, healing has come at a time of death. Perhaps that is the best metaphor of all, a time to let the past die and be cleansed with a pure white that ends the pain. It is in the great pain, as trials and failures come to that pivotal point of no return, that I see my need for God’s love in my life.

I want this. I want that. I don’t get this I don’t get that. I fail, fail, fail in my own eyes. But then, I realize, as many have before me (and as many others have not) that what I want and that what I fail at is only my predetermined plans and ideas that I assume to be correct. One of my favorite movies growing up was Gone With The Wind, a story about a Southern woman who endures through the Civil War, several marriages, and the death of a child. Throughout the entire movie she is infatuated with a man named Ashley who is married to a woman named Melanie. It is only at the end when her husband leaves her after enduring her selfishness for many years, that she realizes that what she wanted isn’t what she was supposed to have.

As simplistic as it is, and as many times as I have read it on the back of pamphlets, books, or heard the words in studies, things will not bring us lasting happiness. Measuring our worth through the eyes of the world will always leave us feeling small and unworthy. I wonder how much of this hopeless thinking has resulted in suicides as the only answer, if not a deep and lasting depression.

Travel, by today’s definition, is the leaving of home to a new place, the act of moving into other cultures, places, and ideas. We travel to relax and experience something new outside of our everyday routine. But there are individuals who travel to escape from the world. An individual could be evicted from their country, and travel for purposes of having nothing else to be. People travel to escape people, ideals, or even themselves.

But wherever we go, for whatever reason, traveling only reminds us that we have to deal with our pains before they follow us for the rest of our lives.

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Photos

Where's Spiderman?
Just chillin' by the waterfall.

Always a First
First picture I took with my new camera.

Out-Of-Towners
Bob and Ione--some of the sweetest people you will ever meet.

Who Needs a Four-Leafed Clover?
When I have these!

Nazca Lines
Psyche!