The right of the Nomad

Mon, October 12, 2009 - 8:55 AM

One right to which few individuals care to lay claim is the right to wander, the right to vagrancy. and yet vagrancy is emancipation, and life on the roads is liberty: one day bravely to throw off the shackles with which modern life and the weakness of our heart encumber us, in a pretence of liberty; to arm oneself with the symbolic staff and bundle and run away!
For whoever values the delights of solitary freedom (and true freedom depends on solitude), the act of running away is most courageous and most beautiful.
Selfish happiness perhaps. But happiness indeed for those able to appreciate it.
To be alone, to be poor in needs, to be unknown, a stranger and at home everywhere, and to march tall and solitary towards one's conquest of the world.
(...)
Never to have felt the torturing need to know and to see what's out there, beyond the mysterious blue wall of the horizon; never to have felt the depressing suffocation in the same old setting; to see the road leading away in all it's whiteness towards unknown distances without hearing the command to give oneself to it, to follow it obediently, across mountains and valleys- all this fearful need for immobility resembles the unconscious resignation of the beast stupefied by servitude, offering its neck to the yoke.
To all ownership, there are limits. Every force is governed by laws. But the vagabond possesses the entire vast earth, bounded only by the imaginary horizon. And his empire is intangible, a realm of spirit where he has his enjoyment and dominion.

from: Isabelle Eberhardt, Prisoner of Dunes

Mon, October 12, 2009