/// itinerant

"How are you? I want to hear about you and your itinerant life!" a friend wrote me.

Itinerant. I can't place myself with that "Into the Wild" guy, I actually think he's quite an idiot, throwing away a perfectly good life (and disregarding the feelings of people who actually love him) for "freedom": meaning squatting in empty buses in the middle of nowhere and getting poisoned from wild berries because he can't find anything to eat in the woods anymore and misread his dog-eared guide to edible plants book. STUPID. Goes the same with "I want to be free" guys common in the Western World who love to surf, play the guitar, who could not commit to anyone or anything and with no sense of meaning or direction in their lives, except they know that they want to be "free", whatever that means.

Itinerant. Like Rizal? Well, he was clearly rooted in the Philippines. Like the hippies? I couldn't associate myself with them either. Maybe itinerant like... I don't know who. Maybe because it wasn't a conscious choice. I didn't mean to be like this, I was just swept into situation after situation, place after place, holding on to a single piece of thread. I actually have just one place in mind, and would happily tack my pin in that wall and stay there. But it's not me who's in control, but forces upon forces upon forces steaming in, around, and between everything. All you can do is keep your heart steady and firm. Do not resist, but do not forget.

And hope that this love will lead you back to where you belong.

And to remember that every place in between also has the capacity to make you happy. And that home could be anywhere.

Itinerant like water flowing into the sea.

Itinerant like a KLM airplane, departing but always arriving.

Yes, it has to be KLM.