I am drawn to ant colonies as a metaphor. Mostly scouts go out and find food and then a trail of harvesters brings it back to the nest. Do some scout ants just go out and find the sugar cube and then think, "Wow! This is da shit! I'ain't neva goin' back again."
(Do red ants talk like Chief Sitting Bull?)
Questions are so much more fun than answers.
Do I stay or do I go... I guess I answered the question with a late night plane ticket purchase. These have historicaly acted as mile markers dragging me on down the line.
I wish it were so easy to explain that it is in my genes that I must wander to feel alive - but I don't really believe that myself. Possibly the tendency to wander is related to restlessness, AKA the excess of energy, which I could say I certainly have while I live in America; massive meals, tons of down time to contemplate big trips, lots of exercise and physical work. Truly it is a blessing, from the Mega-Mall Coffee Cup Gas Station God, that I have this chance to come here and fuel up my body and restock on restlessness.
Restlessness is rocket fuel. Contentment is the enemy of firey joy. When staleness and stagnation strikes - sometimes in the middle of the day on a Thai beach, somenights alone in Slavic beer halls - the fire cools to blue ash. I remember now...some man living as if his hair was on fire. I thank the Mega-God, for giving me back my restlessness. Truly, there is no time to rest.
To the mountains. To the wild Sierra. To the Death by a bear's maul if it must be.
To the part of me that sometimes lies weakly in the fragrant dream of a comfortable bed, a secure future, and a normal job. To the incessant advertisment of More. To Wastefullness. To Fear.
Look at me, see if I am poor, or my people either. The system may get me at last, as you say, but I will have good times till then. You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee.
I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie mice, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak.
You come here to tell us lies. But we don't want to hear them.
Chief Sitting Bull of the Lakota
