After a Journey

That title also happens to head one of my favorite poems written by Thomas Hardy. In it, he reminisces about, and immortalizes, his final years with his wife before her death and laments that he could have cherished their moments together more while they were taking place.


My title sums up the end of a different type of journey, however, namely, the finishing of another book. And now I am enjoying the calm but richly full feeling of fulfilment and that accompanies the completion of any accomplishment. It strikes me, though, that no journey, be it literal or metaphorical, ever really ends, for there is never an ultimate destination beyond which we can no longer move. All roads lead somewhere, but they also all lead back to where they started, opening up even more possibilities on all sides.


So now, I stand here at the end of this long walk, seeing lots more road ahead of me, as well as all the different other directions I might have headed off in. For writing, like roads, is never final. There is never a "last word," or a true "The End." Words are audible and visual forms of energy. And if words should ever fail us, like the energy that enables the flower or the tree to mesmerize us, they won't die but simply lie in wait for the next traveler upon which to attach themselves.


Like a cat moving along through underbrush unwittingly gathering seeds and other bits of potential new plants, I move along gathering ideas. For now, I will pause and take stock, assess and reevaluate. And then, before too much more time elapses, I will pick up my walking stick and set out anew to see what awaits me there along the many secret paths which are, as long as I am able to travel them, all mine and mine alone.


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Along a Journey

I suppose it's normal along any journey to come upon roadblocks...bright yellow tape marked, not with the words "police barrier---do not cross," but rather with something along the lines of "inspirational barrier--do not venture beyond this point." I read somewhere that distancing oneself from a piece of writing for a day, or two, or maybe even three, is actually good...good for the soul, good for the thought processes, and good for the motivation.


It's like any other trip I've taken. I come to a spot that doesn't look very familiar, and a sort of fear grips me that, if I venture any farther, I may reach a point of no return.


There is always, ALWAYS, that fear in writing...


So there is nothing else to do but to stop and ponder which direction I should proceed in once I get my steam up again. For there are usually many such directions, as many sometimes as there are sunbeams; but usually, if I wait long enough, one seems to beckon just a tiny bit more loudly, more insistently, than the others, just a wee bit more persuasively, and that is the one that I must undoubtedly take. Funny, too, how that presents itself at times. For when I get to the roadblock, I can't always see all the possible paths leading beyond it and away from it. It's like they're camouflaged by a dense riot of weeds and other unruly growth in a profusion too thick to be hacked through at the moment. And if I wait long enough, I usually don't even have to resort to that, can leave my pen sheathed, for the path that finally does open up does so as clearly as if it had been there all along and I just wasn't seeing it.


Then (and I've done this early in the morning when I first wake up), I say, OUT LOUD, "Yes, that's it! That's the direction I should go in from here on out!"


Until, that is, the next roadblock looms into view, the next bright yellow tape, the next tall hedge that I can't quite see beyond...


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