the road goes ever on and on...

hello world.

up until now, i have been lost at sea.
i was yet another sailor who had found himself alone, without a trace of the ship i had come on or those that had accompanied me thus far. like countless others had done before me, i journeyed on, searching for that which i knew not needed looking for...

after a tumultuous few weeks of fording the waters of everyday life, I came across an island, barring my way. it was small in area, about the size of a house, but it was massive in girth, shouldering the skies and, to my eyes, pushed and stretched at the thin layer of clouds overhead that served as its blanket.

"truth is like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold..."

did the island just speak? maybe i was going crazy. perhaps i had imagined it. but no, something had definitely spoken. i went on.

a few paces later and i came across a mound. it was not like those mounds you see in the sand, leftover residue from some child's attempt to create an architectural wonder, hours of work and days of dreaming, washed away in an effortless sweep of the waves, the ocean's careless, lazy yawn...for this was a rocky island, and this mound resembled nothing more than a rectangular pile of stones. for the first time since coming upon the shore, i felt another presence...i knew that he who lay beneath those stones was a kindred spirit, a being with whom i was one in loneliness. i tarried by him, held there by grief from losing what could have been a true friend and great man, one who i could truly call

"O captain, my captain!"

i was pushed along, gently, by the knowledge that the captain would want his death, like his life, to be celebrated in quiet...


i made my way along. i soon came upon a cave, hidden in a grove of trees. a hole let in a few weak rays of sunlight. down on the floor of the cave laid the remains of a fire, as well as a crumpled box of raisins, a lamp-stand in the figure of a man, and a valuable looking pipe. something about this place was familiar...

as i sat there, wondering...recalling memories...i heard yet another voice...

"chaos screaming, chaos dreaming..."

"...and then i saw the congo, creeping through the black..."

"I wanted to live deep...and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived."

and then it came to me.

"I hereby reconvene the Dead Poets Society."

could this be the very cave? yes, it had to be...that pipe...the lamp, really the god of the cave...lines of poetry, whispered more than 50 years ago, by some acoustic or magical property still echoing within...

and then i knew.

it was my soul that was travelling, venturing out there...once lost, but now well on its way to being found...but how had this adventure begun only a little while ago? it seemed only minutes since i had awoken to find myself in this vast expanse of ocean...

perhaps because my spirit had never truly awoken before. it had always been there, lying dormant in its vessel, bound to sail for a certain port forever, back and forth, over and over on the same voyage...the shipwreck, then, had not been a tragedy but an emancipation of my thinking. in the physical life i had only been this way for a few days. yes, then, the mound i had discovered and had felt so close to covered the great J.D. Salinger, reclusive in death as he ever was in life...the cave, where minds were loosed and feelings unwound, where Dead Poets came back to life...the whispering of the island was not a result of insanity...it was the true me, only heard when all other voices were not there to drown it out...



as beautiful as the island was, i knew the time had come for parting. i had gone and discovered, pursued and conquered...i had been released from invisible bonds, which, like most things in life, are most powerful when unseen...i was deeply grieved to leave this island, with its familiar places and ideas, but there was an entire ocean to discover. and so it must be. the time to bid something goodbye comes when we hold it most dear.

and so i leave here...onto my next stage. creating. the current led me here. here i hope to continue my journey. at times i may stray from the path or be forced to backtrack, but my imagination will go on, i will gather the rosebuds while i may...i will, above all, seize the day.

but, before going, a parting message. i bent over the only stretch of sand on the island and scribbled...



the road goes ever on.



[quotes from: Todd Anderson in Dead Poet's Society; O Captain my Captain, Walt Whitman; Poetrusic, Charlie "Nuwanda" Dalton; The Congo, Vachel Lindsay; Walden, Henry David Thoreau; The Road Goes Ever On, the Lord of the Rings]