Tripping

"Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place."

~ Seneca

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Now that we have resided in Mikkeli long enough to see what the town has to offer (I believe it took approximately 31 hours), we have begun to make plans to see the greater area. For grandness and immodesty we are fortunate to be children of the 21st century. We travel by bus, train, plane, and ferry, holding timetables if not itineraries, and paying our privileged way with loaned government funds to be paid back in our working years with our greater productivity. We don't have the luxury of time to find out what is over the next hill, because our destinations are more grandiose. To economize, in expense or experience, is to miss the point.

There exists a feeling in my mind that comes to me late at night, when I am falling asleep, and the anxiety of the day has worn away but before my mind has fully pulled me under. It is the sound of a church bell ringing too far away to discern, or the word that slips out of reach as a sentence slows and hangs unfinished in the air... I think Terence McKenna called this the 'vegetable state', where ego is extingushed and sensory experience alone speaks. Sometimes I believe that all my searching is for this, because moments of gravity can scream past unnoticed in our concentration, but moments of raw experience are always moments of peace.

"Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels."

~ Socrates

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Next weekend, we are visiting Helsinki, as the closest and easiest destination worth pursuing. The following weekend will take us to Stockholm, which has been called "the Venice of the north" due primarily to the fact that the central city sits on a number of islands. Sometime fairly soon after, we hope to visit Estonia, traveling by ferry from Helsinki.

I could exercise some measure of my knowledge about these places, but that would only serve to express my ignorance. Easier for me to merely state that I am largely ignorant of these places.

"Don't listen to what they say. Go see."

~ Chinese Proverb