Well, this is it- the final blog post to be written in North America until I return from my travels. As you can imagine, there are a lot of things to think about: packing lists, travel documents, conversion rates, airport security strip searches...but that's all going to dissipate when I get on that plane in a matter of hours. Pardon me, I'll be getting in the plane. According to the late George Carlin, it's less windy in there. Anywho, what kind of Wandering Wordsmith would I be if I didn't provide you all with some sort of fascinating prose or poetry to browse on the eve of my departure?
I have chosen to highlight one of my soon-to-be-fellow Brits, J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm sure that you are familiar with him from his fantasy tales, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. However, in light of the success of those stories, it is very easy to overlook his talent as a lyrical poet. His poetry usually takes the form of song, issuing from the mouths of the various creatures and magical beings that people his fictitious realms, and the journey motif quite often comes into play in their verses. Any who are particularly familiar with The Lord of the Rings will surely recognize these two stanzas:
The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
It is simple, to the point, and some might even argue that the literal meaning barely masks the metaphor Tolkien intends to convey. I, however, am of the opinion that there is a mingling of word and purpose. As carefully-chosen words represent a purpose, that purpose is suddenly tied to those words. And so, as I follow my own road down from the door where it begins, I hope to remain in that mingling. I hope that my adventures lead to many a verse and stanza, and that my writing will keep me in touch with the person I want to be and the places I wish to go (even if neither of those are completely clear).
Before I leave, I would like to send out a quick thank you to my friends Pat and Lisa for their fashion advice, and to Miss Fontana for her list of British culinary "must-try" items (Kidney pie, here I come!).
As a parting gift, I will subject you all to one of the lists that I came up with this past semester in my "Writing the Personal Essay" class (so for those few of you who have already suffered through it, I apologize profusely). It sort of sums up my many and varied motivations for traveling:
I travel to have fun, to climb mountains, to write poetry and drink wine in a French café, to sip a pint next to a burly Englishman, to make funny faces at children on planes, to have baguette sword fights, to walk on cobblestone streets, to experience new kinds of wilderness, to gaze up at strange constellations, to acquire goofy accents, to send inappropriate postcards, to get lost, to find incredible secrets, to scoff at boorish tourists (you know, the kind who have baguette sword fights), to develop a reputation, and to become a Renaissance man. I travel because I want to, because idle feet do the devil’s work, because I can always rest when I’m dead, because I’m good with maps, because a fortune cookie once told me to, because it will make me a better citizen of the earth, because riding off into the sunset is sexy, because the smell of ocean appeals to me, and because sitting still for too long makes my butt fall asleep.
Well, I suppose that's all I have for now. I promise to come back with many stories and British things. If you are the religious sort, say a prayer that I reach my destination safely and that (in the words of Matt Milloway) I don't get stuck sitting next to a crying baby on the plane. Good luck, and Godspeed, my friends, and I promise that I'll be back before you know it.
Stay tuned and live vicariously through my exploits!
-Eric
AKA: The Wandering Wordsmith
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Getting Ready to Depart
Hello All,
This is the first installment of "Across the Pond," a travel blog that I will keep throughout my travels to jolly old England and beyond. Presently, I'm about 9 days away from leaving, which is fairly frightening, considering how much work and packing I have to accomplish between now and then. So that you're all familiar with my travel plans, I will be departing from Boston late on Sunday, January 31, doing a brief layover at Newark, and then heading to Bristol where I will land around 8:30 a.m. Prime Meridian time. From there, I will split cab fare with one or two other students who will doubtless be on the same flight as me, and we will head down the road to Bath.
While I'm in England I will be taking four courses (one of which will be at Oxford University), living apartment-style and cooking for myself in the beautiful city of Bath, and taking some exciting side trips on the Island and perhaps even to the mainland. You're in for many more details and specifics in posts to come, but I don't want to clutter up the first one. If anyone has any tips for packing or travel, I would love to hear them (I already have my power converter and plug adapters and my rain coat), so feel free to shoot me an email or a call.
The last thing I want to leave you all with in this post are my intentions for this blog. First of all, I suppose it is important to note that I have never kept a blog before, so this will be a work in progress. That said, I wish this to be an experience, not a hassle, not a bore, and not something that you delete from your inbox. Rather, I would like it to be one of those things that you look forward to reading, so if there's anything you want more or less of, don't hesitate to tell me! If you stay tuned, you'll receive a good dose of British history and culture, a smattering of humor, perhaps a dash of philosophy, and a dram of poetry here and there (because why else would I come all the way to England if not to write a bit of verse?). So settle in, pour yourself a cup of tea, or perhaps a tall tankard of ale, and enjoy the next four months of literary narration as I seek to make my mark on the place where all the history comes from.
Fondest wishes,
Eric Kozlik
(Henceforth to be known as "The Wandering Wordsmith")
(...because it's a cool, alliterative pen name)
This is the first installment of "Across the Pond," a travel blog that I will keep throughout my travels to jolly old England and beyond. Presently, I'm about 9 days away from leaving, which is fairly frightening, considering how much work and packing I have to accomplish between now and then. So that you're all familiar with my travel plans, I will be departing from Boston late on Sunday, January 31, doing a brief layover at Newark, and then heading to Bristol where I will land around 8:30 a.m. Prime Meridian time. From there, I will split cab fare with one or two other students who will doubtless be on the same flight as me, and we will head down the road to Bath.
While I'm in England I will be taking four courses (one of which will be at Oxford University), living apartment-style and cooking for myself in the beautiful city of Bath, and taking some exciting side trips on the Island and perhaps even to the mainland. You're in for many more details and specifics in posts to come, but I don't want to clutter up the first one. If anyone has any tips for packing or travel, I would love to hear them (I already have my power converter and plug adapters and my rain coat), so feel free to shoot me an email or a call.
The last thing I want to leave you all with in this post are my intentions for this blog. First of all, I suppose it is important to note that I have never kept a blog before, so this will be a work in progress. That said, I wish this to be an experience, not a hassle, not a bore, and not something that you delete from your inbox. Rather, I would like it to be one of those things that you look forward to reading, so if there's anything you want more or less of, don't hesitate to tell me! If you stay tuned, you'll receive a good dose of British history and culture, a smattering of humor, perhaps a dash of philosophy, and a dram of poetry here and there (because why else would I come all the way to England if not to write a bit of verse?). So settle in, pour yourself a cup of tea, or perhaps a tall tankard of ale, and enjoy the next four months of literary narration as I seek to make my mark on the place where all the history comes from.
Fondest wishes,
Eric Kozlik
(Henceforth to be known as "The Wandering Wordsmith")
(...because it's a cool, alliterative pen name)
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