While living, working and learning here I've learnt that there are many reaons why staying in one spot for a LONG time is important. Not only long as in one year, or even ten, but also long as in 100 years or ten generations. As Satish Kamar put it, if we all slowed down and became human beings again instead of human havings or human doings we would atleast stop using so many fossil fuels, let alone spend more time giving back to the soil, our souls and our society.

BUT in amongst this lesson and the learning of it I have also found reason to do the opposite. To travel, to walk, to stray, to wander.

I guess it is about finding a balance of the two.

Below are some excerts from a book I am reading at the moment ('The Songlines' by Bruce Chatwin)

"What is this strange maddness, Petrarch asked of his young secretary. this mania of sleeping each night in a different bed?

This
life is a hospital in which each sick man is posessed by a desire to
change bed. One would prefer to suffer by the stove. Another belives he
would recover if he sat by the window. I think I would be happy in the
place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the
subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.
                                  Baudelaire, 'Anywhere out of this world'

He who does not travel does not know the value of men.
                                  Moorish Proverb

He is even more outraged by the court sentence that condemned
Lieutenant Calley for the murder of 'human Orientals' - as if 'Oriental' needed 'human' to qualify it.
His definition of a soldier is as follows,'A professional man, who, for thirty years, is employed to kill other men.
After that he prunes his roses'
                                  Nouakchott, Mauritania

Above
all do not lose your desire to walk; every day I walk myself into a
state of well-being and walk away from every illness: I have walked
myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome
that one cannot walk away from it...but by sitting still and the more
one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill... Thus if one just
keeps in walking, everything will be alright.
                           
      Soren Kierkegaard, letter to Jette (1847)

'Have you seen the Indias?' asked the son of the Emir of Adrar.
'I have.'
'Is it a village, or what?'
'No,' I said'It's one of the greatest countries in the world.'
'TIENS! I always thought it was a village.'
                                 Atar, Mauritania"

What dya think?
Love Soph

i travelled a little

i travelled a lot

everything is moving

i stood in one spot