Roots/Routes: Regarding Wave

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

Why travel? Why not settle down, grow some roots? Truth is, I'm more at home easing down the road, born to seek out experience before it all disappears like wild horses over the hills. As Jack Kerouac wrote, "the road is life."


When I'm stuck in one place for too long I get as cranky as Charles Bukowski with a wart on his ass.

Stability is a state of mind, not the state of a bank account; security is health - mental, spiritual and physical.


We're all on the road, but some just don't know it. Once you do, it becomes easier to tune into the essentials. Nothing is yours except the air, sleep, sky, dreams...the key is learning to travel light, ride easy on what Gary Snyder called "the wave," those fluctuating energies that crisscross the universe at any particular moment.


Regarding Wave

The voice of the Dharma
the voice
now

A shimmering bell
through all.

Every hill, still.
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
old woods, new seedlings,
tall grasses plumes.

Dark hollows; peaks of light.
wind stirs the cool side
Each leaf living.
All the hills.

The Voice
is a wife
to


him still.

****

I live for the sound of that "shimmering bell" humming through the air. My routes are rooted there.


奥田民生　イージュー★ライダー (Tamio Okuda - Easy Rider)