29 September 2007 - Pittsboro, NC
Miles from nowhere…
We leave tomorrow. The train is scheduled to stop in Greensboro at 4 AM, and we’re scheduled to be on it. Scheduled…that’s a word that defines the next six weeks. I look forward to it with both anticipation and a deep sense of fatigue. I am weary in my bones. Weary of the news of the world. Weary of the long hours in a chair. Weary of worry. It will feel good, I think, to set out into the world for a time. We will visit some beautiful places, and meet some beautiful people. And we will do our work in the world. Hard to complain about that…
Miles from nowhere. I feel unhomed. I know now that I will be leaving this place. I do not know where I will end up. Peak oil and climate change and the mass extinction have loosened me from any expectations I once held. Changes in my personal life have cut me apart from the knowns that had defined my existence. And twinges of health and body bring me up short, undermining assumptions and blasting through denial like tiny mines embedded in my soul. Setting out into the world, unhomed and unknown, as the world itself unravels around us, is a frightening thing to do.
I want to hunker down. I want to get quiet and close in. I want to become invisible. But right now, I have things I must do, and those things require that I get on a train, my back aching and my heart confused and sad, and walk this path.
Miles from nowhere deep in my bones…and yet venturing out into a multitude of somewheres, perhaps to find, there in