Hitting the Pause Button Does Not End the Game

This afternoon during the time when I usually compose creative prose I instead took a walk. My ostensible purpose was a trip to the library, but in truth I wanted to clear my head and perhaps come up with an idea for my next writing project. As soon as I exited out of the apartment building into the clean cool fresh outside air I realized I had made the right decision. Even the heavy rainfall I encountered on my way home, sans umbrella, didn’t dampen my enthusiasm.

I have just completed a volume of memoirs and essays called Thoughts from the Aerie, the aerie being the fourth floor apartment in which I am at present ensconced. It has a magnificent view of the changing weather, and on a clear day through the trees I can even glimpse Mount Rainier in its snow-covered majesty far to the south. Sometimes, though, as I labor at my writings within my compact but comfortable domicile, I feel as if I have come to an end, that I will wander the world no more, that I have come to this place to grow old and die. When I get into this frame of mind I become depressed. After all, I have been wandering the world much of my life. When I set out on my travels in the 1970s one of the main purposes was to find my voice as a writer. If I stagnate in one place, wouldn’t the well dry up? So I muse in my darker moments. But as I walked under the overcast sky this afternoon, I realized that such was not my fate. I am a nomad. Even if the vagaries of destiny have cast me temporarily upon this shore, I remain a nomad in my heart. I don’t know where specifically I will go next, but that is beside the point. I have paused before in my meanderings, sometimes for long periods of time, but always eventually I have got up again and resumed my journey. It is not the temporary location that is at fault; it is the sedentary mindset that is my enemy. I often daydream of traveling. In fact, I wrote two novels in which I gave substance to those dreams: The Senescent Nomad Hits the Road and The Senescent Nomad Seeks a Home. (Spoiler: in the second book, as soon as the senescent nomad thinks he has found a permanent place to live, something clicks in him that causes him to want to set out on the road again.) I’ve also written memoirs about my world wanderings, and I have used my experiences living in other countries amidst other cultures to provide backgrounds and depth to my novels and short stories. It is the thought of solidification, of petrifaction in one location that thwarts and stymies and perplexes and befuddles me. For my creativity to remain fluid and dynamic I have to remember that regardless of my earthly locale I am a stranger in a strange land. We are all of us pilgrims and only temporary residents of the planet Earth, but it is imperative, for the sake of my art, that I do not forget this.

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