Crossing the ocean is suddenly not as fun as it used to be! Its mysterious nature and promise of the greener grass was what defined traveling. But alas, once the mysteries are unveiled and the neighboring grass has been harvested to a point of depletion, the best one can get from a transoceanic flight is some peace of mind for effective intro/retro/pro-spection and soul searching.
While Baudelaire and Pessoa struggle for the elsewhere, Berndard praises the intra-where:
Basically, like nine tenths of humanity, I always want to be somewhere else, in the place I have just fled from....he truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car, between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to. I am happy only when I am traveling; when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable.
Along these lines, one can argue that Schopenhauer and co. are in favor of the nowhere. This is how in our human nature we tend to relate to places, and what are friends and lovers but places we visit or inhabit... I believe that at some point in a man's life, his well-being becomes independent of his geographic location and vice versa. Nonetheless, man shall never stop blaming it on his location, hoping that the elsewhere that he is ignorant of will unravel joy, perhaps eternally. That is the very bliss defining ignorance that we tend to loose as we grow older or abuse with alcohol and drugs. The modern man will eventually resort to these mind altering means and more severe and irreversible ones when he is finally convinced of "the unimportance of his location" which can translate to "the vanity of his existence" with a less materialistic tone.
Bon Voyage!
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