On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

  "Like all men in this land, he had been a wanderer, an exile on the immortal earth. Like all of us, he had no home. Wherever great wheels carried him was home." - Thomas Wolfe (Of Time And The River) ...the new kid in town... ...a new face, possibly Middle Eastern, which is rare around here...I recognized myself in him him because he was acting like I did a few months ago, he had found a spot, a haven, possibly after some aimless wandering about to avoid being seen by those he knew. The first stage of homelessness is the worst...everything looks big, every problem crushing you and what was your life is now gone...it's a rebirth but it doesn't feel that way because it feels more like death. In the tarot, the death card is actually a symbol of rebirth...which I knew due to being a tarot card reader on the early internet when it called the usenet and mainly consisted of discussion groups and ftp sites. I went by the name of Magus Fool, and...

Johnson at last, of his own accord, allowed very great merit to the inventory of articles found in the pocket of the Man Mountain, particularly the description of his watch, which it was conjectured was his God; as he consulted it upon all occasions. - James Boswell (Boswell's Life Of Johnson) One of my favorite movies is "Jeramiah Johnson," a film that starred Robert Redford, about a civil war vet who became a famous mountain man. The film has many of the elements that Americans love; the wily old sage and a varied cast of oddball characters whose paths cross throughout the film. Those meetings at various times in Jeremiah's new life become a barometer of his progress as a mountain man. It also illustrates a concept that many Americans love, particularly in the Internet age; the notion that one can become a master with a few choice secrets from an expert that opens the door to mastery. Americans love "experts," who are as exalted as ...