Vic and I visit Germany in an alternate universe. 




The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do? Why, he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn’t miss a trick. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be on to something. Not to be on to something is to be in despair. - Walker Percy, The Moviegoer


Ahhh, Walker Percy.

Makes me want to sit down and read his entire canon again. To be in despair, he seems to be saying, is to deny yourself the possibilities all around you. The antidote to despair is to allow yourself to poke around your cosmic and everyday neighborhood, searching always searching.

The alternative is to focus obsessively on the cause of our despair. It is our parents, our neighbors, our fickle friends, church, book group, co-workers, children, where we live, our government, our marriage, our lack of money,  

So we grumble, gossip, speculate the worse motives in others and ourselves. We flee from the pain of perpetually unsatisfying relationships, making our world smaller and smaller. We sit and fester in the human condition believing there must be a shortcut to happiness wherein we can bypass Meaning and Fidelity and Self-awareness and the Search. 


All the while blind to the uncomfortable truth that even if we had perfect parents, a perfect marriage, perfect friends and community, etc, we would still, in the quiet hours of the day, feel a creeping sense of meaninglessness. When we STOP and look around, as castaways on our island, we either choke on the endless sand as we crawl toward a bit of shade to die under. 

Or we search. 

We wade into tide pools looking for anemones and signs of life, we overturn pieces of driftwood, and throw stones at the coconuts overhead. We journey past the beach looking for fresh water. We follow established game trails then veer off to make new paths. We sit at the end of the day as the rain drips on our heads and observe this place we call home, falling asleep under a banana leaf to the sounds of life teeming all around us and we wake up the next morning and search some more. And when we think we have discovered everything this island has to offer—although we haven’t— we build a raft. 

We set out over uncharted waters and search. 





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