The exercise:
Write about: the nomad.
Kat left this morning for a weekend of onsite training in Vancouver for the online counseling course she's been taking. I stayed behind in order to do the farmers market this Saturday and to make sure the house doesn't freeze to death.
Hopefully I won't burn it down in the process!
Mine:
Never fully at rest,
He is constantly shifting,
Like the sands of his desert home.
The stars his only guide,
The wind his sole companion,
Yet he's never lost or lonely.
He is on a journey
That has no destination,
Yet every step has a purpose.
No man knows his true name,
History will forget him,
And with all this he is content.
I thought you'd finished all the farmers' markets a couple of weeks ago? However, I admire her trust that you won't burn the house down in her absence!
ReplyDeleteThe counselling course weekend sounds like a good idea; I always find that distance learning works up to a point and then it helps to have someone near to talk to. A bit like writing really :)
That's quite a lonely poem, with a quality to it that's hard to pin down. I can't find the right word for it: it's not eerie exactly, but there's this solitude and awareness about it that I rather like. Especially the last stanza.
The nomad
He calls himself a technomad, a modern day wanderer who carries a small rucksack into which all his possessions fit. He has a Kindle for reading, a tablet PC for longer writing tasks, and a smart-phone for updating his Facebook, FourSquare and Twitter statuses. His clothes are hi-tec fibres that resist creases, dirt and sweat, needing a minimum of care and folding up as small as a handkerchief. He's got an aeropress coffee kit and a bag of coffee beans, because even nomads like small luxuries in life. And he drifts from place to place, accessing funds via his credit and debit cards, sleeping on sofas offered through websites, sitting in hack-spaces and libraries, documenting his travel on-line and his thoughts to anyone who wants to read them.
Despite how linked-in he is, despite his ubiquity in the sparkling, crystalline tech universe, his footsteps are limned only on the wind and he's only alive as he last battery-charge.
And when he's gone, who will mourn him?
guys, loved your pieces, both good takes and marc, very poignant, ditto greg.
ReplyDeletemine is a hybrid of sorts...
The Nomads
With greying hair and iPads,
where to next?
These modern-day grey nomads
will travel to wherever,
truck stop to truck stop,
caravanning down a highway of bitumen,
no need for sand in this modern era.
The camera records new vistas,
text is written in iWriter and emailed
on the run
to her favorite travel blog
so that others might enjoy
the same places.
But there’s travel of a different sort
too.
They’ve lived in many places,
the grass ne’er grows long underfoot.
They buy and renovate,
make friends and move on,
each place slightly different
to the last.
From city to country,
swampland to hills,
from town to farm
and back again;
from coastal village
to coastal city
to coastal farmland,
finally, a place to call home...
before the real home beckons...
at the end of the line...
Greg - yeah, the outdoor markets are done for the year but they're doing a couple of indoor winter markets. I'm going this week to test it out, and we'll go back for the last one next week if we decide it's worth it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words on my poem :)
I was reading the start of yours as rather lighthearted, but by the end I think you achieved something rather sombre and contemplative. Nicely done.
Writebite - that's a wonderfully meditative second stanza. Really enjoyed that.