"I'm a ramblin' man"

Restarting "Kino's Journey" last weekend had me thinking about travelling -- it's kind of obvious that I need a vacation, I think -- but a lot of my hesitancy comes down to "where do I go?" and "what will I do there?" Short trips (a week or less is all I can manage to get away for) by myself wind up being a bit pointless. Sitting on the beach, or wandering around some city, drinking in pubs; that's all well and good, but I can do that sort of thing here if I'm just going to do it alone. I keep thinking I'd at least need some sort of purpose to occupy my time at that destination. And then I put it out of my mind and went back to work.

Then I watched the latest sub of "Mushishi", and it got into a little dialogue about travelling and purpose, versus "flow". As in "going with the..." So now I'm thinking wistfully about it again. But a week or less is too short a time, I think. At least, too short a time to really get any meaningful value out of it, as it takes me a while to get my "flow" ramped up, as it were.

And I'm really not ready to ditch everything and pack up a motorcycle and wander around on my mid-life-crisis-inspired quest to find myself. As epic and classic such a quest as it would be, or so says Joseph Campbell in his "Mythos" lectures that I've been watching lately.

But I do find myself thinking about that a bit of late. Particularly if you replace "motorcycle" with "sailboat". Of course, then I wind up flashing back to that Geraldo Rivera "I sailed around the world" special from some years ago. *cringe*

Anyway, that was a really meditative episode of "Mushishi", and a simple one at that.

Oh, I also caught the recent subs of "Blood+" and "Noein" as well; I just couldn't quite bring myself to drop them yet. "Blood+" kind-of sort-of held my interest a little because the scenery and situation changed and that made me curious, but it's really lacking depth when you get right down to it. But since it's not totally immature, I seem loathe to actually admit defeat and get rid of it. And with "Noein", there too was a drastic change of scenery, and maybe even an inkling of what the story actually is about -- because it really didn't seem to be getting anywhere before. The art style is still all over the place, but there's just enough of a spark of life going on there that's keeping me hanging on.