I thought I might like to be a sojourner—a word I’ve come across this morning that is not in my
regular vocabulary. I do journey a lot, and embark on some
transforming pilgrimages, spiritual
or artistic quests, eccentric jaunts, quiet wanderings, exhilerating voyages,
intellectual or culinary explorations,
contented roaming. Few treks.
Wayfaring sounds
particularly jaunty—with the wind in one’s hair, a picnic of olives, feta, ripe
tomatoes, and oregano packed in one’s side-baskets—though it means simply
journeying or traveling by road.
The term is said to be somewhat archaic, which suits me.
Expeditions
can be great fun, if more scientific— setting off with compasses and spyglass
and thick boots to excavate earth-crusted Roman spoons, to photograph the
transit of Venus, to climb the pyramids at Teotihuacan (where atop the
Temple of the Moon you find a little cart selling heavenly popsicles), to chart
some northern fjord seeded with oysters.
But sojourning
seems to be after all less thoughtful or wholehearted; something done in
passing. A temporary stay, a visit
for a time. Boarding in a house,
school, or college, for the purpose of receiving instruction. Perhaps apt after all, since my
journeys always end too soon, all encounters in distant places though vital are
fleeting.
And which of us is not a sojourner in this
world? Inhabiting the realms of grace for all too short a while. The stay always better in
the company of a fellow traveler with floppy ears . . .
image:
Pierre Bonnard with Dachsund, 1941
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