Wednesday, January 30, 2008

No Direction

I have been experimenting with direction lately.


Taking trips alone; and to nowhere.


Turning down unfamiliar streets, never entirely concerned with where they may lead.



Or, for that matter, wherever I may go.


It's quite a feeling, really: this placelessness.


This... realization


That I have never been so unafraid


To find myself lost.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

I've experimented with direction too. I've found I don't take it well.

Papa Woodchip always says that he's never been lost, only bewildered.

Anonymous said...

I never get lost. I am always Right Here. It is the rest of the world that is lost.

If you don't care about where you are or where you are going, can you ever really get lost?
~BPP

thirdworstpoetinthegalaxy said...

=) I love that line. May have to use it sometime — with due credit, of course.

BPP - Sure you can... if you don't know where you are. At which point all that matters is how you handle yourself from there.

Eli said...

Great photos, makes me miss farm country, a little.

thirdworstpoetinthegalaxy said...

Eli - Thanks. I actually took these photos a few months ago and was just waiting for the words to go with them.

Alijah Fitt said...

I am famous for getting lost. I used to get so mad and yell about how much I hated being lost. After the millionth time I just learned to accept it and laugh about it, of course I'm lost hahahah kind of thing. So much less stressful. I think you are brave and the bell tower, brilliant.

M@ said...

Third,

My sense of direction is so poor I once got lost in my hometown.

david said...

can you narrow down the locations of these beautiful photographs a little?

Supafly Turbo Cyborg said...

Have I ever mentioned that old brick industrial buildings are probably my favorite kind of architecture?

ds said...

They put sky in a day and I
went there
windows all unrolled
gravel dust shifting across
the
dashboard. There
was an old place
with trees beneath
it. I saw it when I left.
Then the place where
going things went.
Telegraphs
and the end on the
way to Denver.
I've seen
all these things from
behind bricks and
almost alone
under bright
clouds. If I knew
you I would tell
more secrets, but until
then the men
from God
will hold
my truth

in the same
sky
I've wrapped lies.

The First Domino דומינו said...

When I allow my feelings to be my guide,

It doesn't matter which road I take, truth
Rides alone with me.

And all the wondrous sights I see
Along the way

Are merely signposts of where I been,
And where I hope to stay.

thirdworstpoetinthegalaxy said...

Stacy - I was the same way, for a time.

M@ - I hear you on that one. My terrible sense of direction has led to a variety of misadventures, as innocuous as taking 90 minutes to try and find a friend's apartment 8 miles away (and then giving up and going home), to nearly dying of dehydration in a woods. But not I have GREAT stories to tell, and I no longer freak out at the prospect of being lost.

David - The rural Midwest. Oh, heck, rural Indiana.

STC - Same here. But I especially like buildings in a state of collapse, for whatever reason.

DS - And I have unwrapped them.

Domino - Precisely. Beautifully said, by the way.

Jonas said...

It's a fine art...this business of being lost.

Pamela said...

I'll see you there... I hope.
But not today. I need to buy underwear.