From tparkin@fix.net Thu Apr 29 01:25:31 1999
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 10:44:01 -0700
From: albatross <tparkin@fix.net>
Newsgroups: alt.gothic
Subject: travelling

A couple short days ago,- in a different world,- I was reading a
magazine in Union Station in Chicago. I cant remember the magazine,
perhaps Vanity Fair (not my sort of magazine, but in a train station,
with your luggage checked through, you are likely to be found reading
worse.) Anyway, an author quoted Susan Sontag as saying,' travelling is
really a matter of farewells.' True enough- there are reunions in life,
but then the travelling is done.
	I travel, and under the felt pressure of approaching farewells every
moment must approach precious. The pressure of flux can be overwhelming.
But bliss comes in moments when we lose the sense of flux: 
	In the last month, I've been skinny dipping with my oldest friend and
his wife. I let a strong steady current take my white body a ways. More
recently, a dear friend and I walked through a diffuse evening light, on
an overgrown path, and observed quietly the strangely colored Cranes and
Herons of Africa and Asia. And for me, there came a moment that was
outside the flux. A still, quiet, clear moment of actual presence.

						Albatross
						Prodigal

He could not prefer the awful eternal presense of marriage to the magic
of meetings and partings- Iris Murdoch