Goodbye...

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