“In coming to Alaska, McCandless yearned to wander uncharted country, to find a blank spot on the map. In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map—-not in Alaska, not anywhere. But Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita.”
-Jon Krakauer
I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done
And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done
And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here
“Someone real," I hear myself saying. "Someone who never has to pretend, and who I never have to pretend around. Someone who's smart, but knows how to laugh at himself. Someone who would listen to a symphony and start to cry, because he understands music can be too big for words. Someone who knows me better than I know myself. Someone I want to talk to first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Someone I feel like I've known my whole life, even if I haven't.”
Sing you home
Because there is nothing here that I even remotely care about.
I've got nothing to fight for,
and if I don't want to live here why should I have to,
and I don't care how much better off I am than everyone else,
that's not the point.
IMAGINARY HEROES
I wonder why, the older you get, the less invincible you feel?
Maybe you get to the point where you wear down,
and you realize the things in your youth that once seems unobtainable,
are finally within reach.
Maybe it's because you get worn out with the trials of life,
and relinquish strength in each battle.
Maybe you realize that you have traded in permanence for longevity.
Maybe it's perspective, maybe it's denial.
I guess I didn't realize when I decided to embark on a journey of life experience,
in undergoing the process,
I've lost a little bit along the way.
Living in a way that perpetuates complacency,
similarity, simplicity, solidarity...
and you cant deny the world that's out there.
The places you left behind that are burned into your memory like scars.
I remember the way the park smelled when I went fishing in the spring,
the way the sunset over the Atlantic from Coney Island,
The sounds of Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park on a Friday night,
noises floating up from the streets to my tiny window.
The way the Empire State acted as the North Star, always orienting me along the way.
The smells of the open fish markets in the streets of China Town,
the Majesty of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
The quiet corners of Central Park on a grey fall day.
When I think about those things...I feel invincible.
But I also feel really far away from that person.
And strangely...for the first time gratitude.
I'm grateful that was a beginning...
and ending to a lot of things,
but in the overall life process...
a beginning.
What a great adventure, which can only be foreshadowing for what is ahead.
And this is why I have faith about what's to come.
This is why you need to force yourself to fight against the way of living that is conformist,
that society demands of us,
because the adventures are out there waiting.
But while you are in the inbetweens focus on fine tuning the skills needed:
patience,
integrity,
open heart-edness,
bravery.
Because they time will come again,
and while you may not feel the invincibility that comes so readily in youth,
the wandering will be just as rewarding.
Gratitude...
I cannot emphasize this enough.
For the places I've been that grown me as a person,
for the people I've met that have grown me as a person,
for the adventures I've had that formed a better version of self.
Cause in the end,
when you really think about it...
it all matters.