Giggles! I'd have to answer this post in multiple sessions as you covered a lot here while I feel like those travelers in the 2nd picture most of the time. More about that later perhaps.
Having grown up as a nomad, mas o menos, I have no illusions about any place being fundamentally better than another. I usually travel for specific reasons that include, but aren't limited to: I don't want to be where I am right now. My interest in the Hills has mainly to do with air quality, I like to breathe, climate and population. Of course this is offset by the fact that hilly terrain is harder on old bones, so I want to find a place that is flat enough to walk on, and high enough to ensure that polluted air doesn't use my lungs as a filtering medium on a constant basis. L.A. and Bogotá in the 70's were good examples of that.
Most of your observations ring true with me and I never saw society as something other than a wealth collection device that doesn't care much for it's components so long as there are enough of them to function. I never felt the need to join any particular group, club or society, probably because moving 17 times in 10 years made me realize at an early age that the dynamics of any group would eventually make it behave like most others. That doesn't mean I like to live in isolation either.
You early bird. Picking up the reply you wrote 2 hrs ago. But that's my perspective after having lain awake most of the night. Not for the heat which may swaddle me tightly always, but for the lightning. See tomorrow's post.
Since I am on a little new experiment with putting up but not posting till tomorrow, I am always one day ahead and one day behind at the same time. This to see what lies inbetween. Here and now. The role of the replies. And the many conversations in my head.
Where does true time, true reality, true experience exist? I somehow have my answer (inconveniently an innate pre-set) but I now have to live it (with this life of mine). Thus we must conclude: one doesn't really know a thing. Good. That leaves more time to contemplate how to love. To love : a verb used willy nilly but it will do for now.
In this life-long contemplation I have found society to be very much the party pooper on the work of loving and poeting (documenting it). It is what makes an Andorra or a Navarra or any Hill that does not tax the lungs alluring (our - yours and mine - weakest organ planetarily (ruled by Mercury) so we better make sure we prioritise clean air. And because we love our other planets, we'll add water and earth to the list. Fire can do it's own work.)
There are indeed several offsets to consider. It will become a close race between the wisdom that staying put in Theresienstadt (instead of boarding the train to Auschwitz) is sometimes better and the factor of really not wanting to be here anymore.
It has taken me fifty years to claim the right to move (instead of be moved about, if in no way as madly as you have been) for extremely personal reasons. The trick is to respect these. They are so simple I fear they might turn me blonde. Namely, I am thoroughly fed up with the lack of joie de vivre, and the way we clench spirit in our ignorance. I am used to but equally fed up with being used to a never ending very subtle but undeniable social control that is no less oppressive than any political system.
I don't have a Rwanda to walk across to help me make sense of the fear and failure to be human around me. Or "to heal" what injustice causes. It delights me to hear of individuality rising in places where tribalism is still the main starting point. But where to go with my individuality? How to escape the garrishness of individuals leaping before they can walk?
... and not end up in an isolation that is never as lonely as a crowd that rejects you. Oh, as you well can relate, it's not the being thrown out on your ear that gets to the likes of you and me. It's all fair if the pitting is square. It's the squirming nervously just because you take the trouble to ask them to reword their gibberishness that makes me rumble.... We know they can't. I suppose to insist they try makes me a nasty piece of work, after all....
There is no saving the world. I am perfectly alright with that. I refuse to be insulted any longer with the accusation of wanting to be the Messiaha. Please! I have cookies to bake and a doily to crochet (más o menos). No time to sit and preach in olive groves.
On a previous post you summarized quite well with: "there is no point surviving alone". Ah, there's the rub and that's where things get complicated. Then there is "we know they can't" ...and I can't picture you as as the proverbial blonde.
I look forward to reading the next one if this heat doesn't kill me first, pfff...
No, no, no, you're not the killable-by-a-bit-of-summer type. Besides, it's not like you're living in the Drunense Duinen.
Happy to hear I am not sounding blonde yet, but this sun is doing its best to turn the silver into gold (which is far from flattering. It somehow connotes chain-smoking - which is not what we want to have to think of with our delicate lungs).
Or it could just be the sun that's done it for him, too. All those happy little tours du monde on his bike...