Wild goose, brother goose, which is best? A wanderin’ foot or a heart at rest?

(The Cry of the Wild Goose, Terry Gilkyson, 1950)

###

I love that song, from my childhood, sung by Frankie Laine, vinyl 78, when music was music. Lotsa big brass in the back. And anyway, which is better, to be wanderin’ or to be at rest? I used to give a presentation called, “Nothing Happens Until You Leave Home.” I cribbed the title from one of Paul Theroux’ insightful-caustic-funny travel books. (If you haven’t read The Old Patagonian Express, and have any interest whatever in trains and/or South America, do so.)

In that talk, I explained that I had caught the wanderlust bug early on: at 14, my Boy Scout troop took a summer trip to Iceland (back then, three days of sea-sickness from Leith, Edinburgh’s port). I was hooked, and still love traveling many (many) years on. Louisa and I competitively hoard out airline frequent flyer miles so we can fly for free to Europe or beyond — one of the perks of volunteering overseas is that you end up with a slew of them. (Careful choice of credit cards also helps.) With airfare taken care of, the way we travel, we usually end up spending less when we’re abroad than we would have if we’d stayed home. And I’m still ahead of my Life Goal, to die with more countries visited than my age. (Changing planes in another country doesn’t count — rules are rules.)

But damn, coming home is more and more of a pleasure as age catches up. I love Old Town, I love our apartment, I love not having to drive — everything is so handy where we are. I love the familiar: sofa, PC + printer, kayak (which I can easily wheel down to the C Street dock), coffee shops, great clam chowder nearby, Vista del Mar fish tacos, my beloved’s home-cooked stews, my books, our bed…the familiar, tried and true.

This ramble was inspired by “Routine Maintenance,” an essay in last January’s Harper’s by one Meghan O’Gieblyn who, in several thousand words, justifies to herself (if not to her readers) her habit-ruled, routine existence. “I live a monotonous life, which is not to say a tedious one.” Much of her anxiety — shouldn’t she be lusting after something new? — derives from the internet, “…not a place of order but a boundless abyss that erases the contours of individual hours, swallows entire days, and inundates our lives with a vague sense of possibility never quite realized…the never-ending hunger for novelty…”

And that’s it, isn’t it? When the thirst for the new becomes routine in itself? Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day breakthrough came when he came to see the time loop he was stuck in, not as boring, but full of possibilities, “…learning new skills, perfecting his self-discipline, and honing his moral responses—until he has become the best possible version of himself.” (Quoting again from O’Gieblyn.)

I recently wrote in this space, “What we can do is to keep the novelty alive by filling our lives with new experiences, spinning out our days with events to make time seem to pass more slowly and deliberately.” Now, a few months later, I’m not so sure. Perhaps Saint Benedict had it figured out when he instituted his monastic rules, whose centerpiece was abiding by a routine of prayerful “hours,” from 2 a.m. Matins to 7 p.m. Compline. In his view, a strict schedule wasn’t antithetical to freedom; rather, it was the gateway into it.

So yeah, now I’m not so sure about nothing happening until I leave home. Maybe there’s more to this “nothing” than I realized.