A new project

To better organize my interests, I'm going to keep this journal for travel-inspired/personal writings and a new one that I want to dedicate more-focused energy toward.

It'll still be rather personal, as it's born out of my own desire to learn, study, create, to investigate and document and work on a plan for my future. It's about me wanting a farm, a community that is both local and global in its scope, some answers about how we can slow and stop the destructive forces on the planet. I want to ask questions and not find answers or judge, but still reach conclusions. I just wanna live and want others to be able to, too.

Hence: Radicals require roots

Sometimes I find myself with the incredibly difficult dilemma of having to justify my migratory ways to people who have grown up and accepted a sedentary lifestyle. Perhaps they don't see themselves as sedentary, but for me, having a permanent address that you actually live at is akin to having a chain wrapped around one ankle with the other end looped around a a large tree. True, the tree can be beautiful, with many birds and fruits, but for me the chain outweighs all the lovely things that may dwell in the branches; it also outweighs the roots.

I know other migrants face these questions: When is the time right? Where should I go? By which route? How long should I stay? Will I see so-and-so again? Money?

And migrants with privileges must ask: Should I take advantage of my passport and flee the country of my birth? Do I have any connection to the land where I was born, to the land where I am headed? Should I try to give up my privileges to live more honestly or try to use my privileges in a positive way? How do I balance freedom and responsibility?

For me these questions only further justify my need to throw the little things I need on my back and move, south then north then west then south, a lopsided circle, but always in a circle. Answers, to me, come in movement, in flight, in seeing the same places continuously through new eyes. If I stay in the same place, I stay the same person and it's difficult for me to learn that way. I understand this way of life isn't for everyone, but I think the world was made for many ways of life. And my way of life takes me to many worlds.

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I guess we all should have seen the demise of Kalamazoo's downtown coming with the closing of Athena's Bookstore...but Dragon Inn? Come on! Now I've seen the financial crisis up close and personal.

It's time to head south again.