title thoughts
it’s strange to me that i call myself a hobo sometimes - it almost carries a feeling of imposter to it. i’m not certain how the dictionaries define it at the moment, nor how hobos themselves might. i know that i have never ridden the rails, only rarely hitchhiked, and seldom slept or camped anywhere that i neither paid for nor was offered by a friend. maybe the nickname just stuck because it was a given one and wasn’t my last name… i know that i am of a priveledged class - know that a great deal of my travels come to me virtue of my birthplace. i know a great many things and do not know a great many more.
frankly, i can sit and rationalize my current namesake however i want to. logic and english go hand in hand in that way. where english slips torward greys and the realm of abject beauty is in what i cannot rationalize. it lay in between the words that i write, in spaces deeper and more rare than we take notice of.
what lay unexplainable to me is my own heart. my wanderlust of head and mind and soul is masked from my conscious reality. “i don’t know” permeates the drive behind many of my dreams - it stems from something greater than me - something of me and something that i am of. it is there, however, beating a relentless drive to wander - a moving need to continue to find things new, to try and again be open - always open (and it is a fight to do so) to what experience lay around the corner.
at some point in that eyeblink exchange of our youth for adulthood we lose our innocence and naivity to how we dream and search our surroundings. no longer is anything possible - a great deal becomes impossible and we cease to even try. somewhere we lose something incredibly important. if we are lucky, one day we find it again.
there is no harder thing for me to see than to watch the light of excitement go out of a friend’s or relative’s eyes. to see someone and have it become painfully obvious that their childhood wonder (however it might have manifested itself) has just disappeared is a dreaded experience. it’s as if a bright part of their soul went to go and check out some random interesting thing and the rest of them failed to follow. it is a defeat - an early death.
we live in a priviledged society, yes, but we also live in a time that places the great weights of rationality and logic upon our shoulders. good tools these, to be certain, but not the only ones. it is a fight to carry them as a part of you - not as you. and if one falters in that fight, well, the five year old at play in his or her heart tends to die. the beauty and wonder of the world disappear into the tragedy of an industrially clean, post-modern life.
and there is so much to marvel at - so much to see. even as poorly travelled as i am (and compared to some i am) i’ve still seen great things. most can be found within feet of me in simple acts of friendship. a good conversation with a genuine friend always carries as much warmth as the grandest vista or most beautiful sunset. peter mayer, a midwest folk musician, puts it well, “the trick isn’t to finding miracles; it’s where to find there isn’t one.”
i wander, yes - i move and bounce from place to place. it is a manifestation of what is in my heart - of a young child filled with wonder and awe at the world. i am proud to call myself a hobo from this regard - to call myself a travelling admirer of the simplest of human interactions and the smallest beauties of nature. i travel and write because i don’t know any other way to express the things that i bear witness to. if i do not express it - do not share the energy i take in - i will (very messily) explode. i am at home when i smile or laugh at the absurdity of the universe and it responds back to me just the same.
there are wide eyes in my head and i strive constantly to have them open.
i refuse to grow cynical.
i refuse to look into a mirror and no longer see hope.
i cannot but love fiercely.
and i like the name of hobo…