Homeward
Today is the day where my western adventure ends, and on this rugged road, I've had a lot of time to think and reflect - and to even bend time, and slow it down a touch.
Sometimes, one needs to leave a place of dwelling to seek out a new surrounding and a new opportunity. And for the most part, I like being a weary traveler - seeking shelter from the hard, cruel road and meeting people in the haunts along the way.
I like meeting new people and catching the vibe and the energy that comes from a new friendship.
The Rockies are a strange and enchanted land filled with majestic and breathtaking beauty...but ultimately, I don't think it's for me.
Other times, there's love, warmth, care and fulfillment in stability - there's an innate draw within every nomad to a home base.
I'm looking forward to getting back my to my base, my family and my friends - and my town.
I'm looking forward to sunday dinners and watching hockey games with my dad and brother.
I'm looking forward to vinyl nights in Vanier with Joel.
I'm looking forward to brewing a few batches with Steve.
I'm looking forward to riding my bike and running in the boring, sleepy neighbourhood where I grew up.
And maybe - just maybe - what this trip has taught me is that I am not a Western boy.
I think I'm more of an Eastern man.
We all need to find ourselves and reach down into our guts - and sometimes, we need to go the furthest distance to see that all we've really needed was right where we started from.
More to come. See you soon, friends. Let's pour us a whiskey down the line.
"The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid, and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak. The aesthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of aesthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.''
- James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
