Song of the Open Road

My Uncle José, who lives in Madrid! sent this to me.

"Thought of you as I read this passage from Walt Whitman from his Song of the Open Road"







Afoot and light hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.



Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.



The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.




(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,

I am fill'd with them; and I will fill them in return.)




The road is a metaphor and it is perfectly literal as well. It is the idea of motion and of change or of personal transformation, the opportunity to become something or someone different, someone new. P.T. Barnum famously said that in America everyone has a second act. Thank God, right? In my life there are far too many places, important junctures, where I more than dropped the ball, where I wish I could get a do over, where I would maybe choose to start anew.




The road signifies a path on travels when one is in need of new material, new material for poetry, for internal renewal, for personal transmogrification, salvation. On 'the road' all of us may move away from the events, the memories, traumas, that haunt us, that we wish that others did not know about, those things that we are not proud of, that we cringe to imagine that we may be judged by. The road is also a place where we hope that, by moving along it, we can arrive at a place where we are able to be who we are today, not the temporally fixed, unable to change, being that we were when we stumbled, when insanity and stress broke us--the moments that we fear others can not or will not forget. The road is the place where we hope and we pray that we may be allowed to be recreated in our own original image, the being born an angel, undamaged, before the others changed and damaged us, before our own cleverness, our own mischievous nature sacrificed our wholeness for a simple moment of avarice, of greed, of mistaken desire, confused anger?




Couldn't agree more with the notion that the road, for Whitman, is a symbol for more than physical travel, it is more than a source for poetry, it is a way of life. The road is a mentality, one that can be brought into even the most sedentary of lives. Into the office. Into the commute to work. It is opportunity, it is change, it is novelty, a manner of being aware. The opposite, therefore, of stillness, of death, finality. The opposite of the 'permanent plant' spoken of by Jack London.




This trip, this Camino adventure, is "the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose." It is but the beginning, I am hopeful to say, of a change in my manner of living that has been a decade plus in the planning. My goal, put in the most simple of terms, is a nomadic life. To radiate for where I am to follow the radii of the globe, move along these lines, establishing and maintaining human relationships; soaking up the flora, the fauna, the geography and landscape of as many different spots as I can; learn languages and cultures; sing and dance with peoples as varied as the colors of this plane; swim and sail and scuba the waters which cover seventy percent of the planet; fall in love with a woman on every continent; walk across huge sections of too many lands.




This walking five hundred miles, one forty-eight of the way around the world, is a most empowering experience. Yes, I can! I ask not good Fortune, I am good fortune.




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Location:Calle Padre Ángel Martínez Fuertes,Villadangos del Páramo,Spain