Chasing Dragons

“Here be dragons” wrote the old pirate captain in a rather well worn book I read as a kid.
Or so I imagine. In a show of bravado and the desire to be ever the fearless one to his men, to feign knowledge of the remaining unknown, to conquer the uncharted, he drew dragons in its stead.

There aren’t parts of the world where they could be dragons. People seem to be everywhere, reducing the world and killing the imagination.

We live in a world teeming with activity, a frenetic pace from the first scream as air fills our lungs to the last rasps, perhaps finding rest only in those moments when we accept inevitability. And in between, the Red Queen’s Race. Wake, brush, dress, work, smile, rest, sleep, repeat. And find the time to have meaningful relationships with others…with others.

I still want the places in the world where I can find dragons. I don’t mean this in the same sense as Francis Drake. I’m trying to find a place where I am cut off from the steel snakes underground ferrying millions of lives back and forth, each an individual cookie cutter. I’m trying to plot the unknown in my head, to develop a meaningful relationship with myself.
In no way does this preclude others nor does it demonstrate a self indulgence/obsession.

It’s just that it has been a while since I’ve gone looking to get lost, to sit alone outside some where and feel like people are still building lives, still getting their hands dirty to build something from the ground up.
I am looking for a place where I can be alone, in my head and find the uncharted bits that have developed when I wasn’t looking, the bits that have developed over the past three years, find the dragons and see how fearful they really are and at the very least become acquainted with them.

It’s impossible to plot a course without knowing the gaping holes, without shying away from what’s within.

I want to see myself in perspective with, for the lack of a more romantic word, the planet, to be able to sit on a hill somewhere and look down and out on an endless view with no sign of another human being, to forget and to get lost and see myself as alone and free of everything.

What I hope to achieve from a seemingly idyllic activity is to find that rush, that tiny hint of perspective we get when we sit on a beach alone and see the sun cross the horizon, or look up far from a city to the night sky or lie on our back and see the clouds that drift by, that tiny sliver of perspective of how short life really is and what the point of it may be. The answer isn’t out there or up there either, it’s that tiny click when the piece falls into place, that life really is short and the whole point of it really is to experience as much of it as you can for, in the end, there may be nothingness.
And it’s to experience that unique sense of satisfaction and peace when the cogs finally turn and that unknowable smile spreads itself and when you feel a little bit closer to yourself .
It’s only when you experience that do you realize that a insofar idyllic activity of lying alone somewhere is replete with meaning, that you don’t have to run in one place to find happiness, that lying like that is as full of meaning as working hard or developing a relationship with a person.

It’s when loneliness turns to solitude, when meaning is found in the simplest of things and a smile without reason is good enough.