How Adventures Begin...
The
Double Life
By Don
Blanding
How
very simple life would be
If only there were two of me
A
Restless Me to drift and roam
A Quiet Me to stay at home.
A
Searching One to find his fill
Of varied skies and newfound thrill
While sane and homely things are done
By the domestic Other
One.
And
that's just where the trouble lies;
There is a Restless Me that
cries
For chancy risks and changing scene,
For arctic blue and
tropic green,
For deserts with their mystic spell,
For lusty fun
and raising Hell
But
shackled to that Restless Me
My Other Self rebelliously
Resists
the frantic urge to move.
It seeks the old familiar groove
That
habits make. It finds content
With
hearth and home dear prisonment,
With candlelight and well loved
books
And treasured loot in dusty nooks,
With puttering and
garden things
And dreaming while a cricket sings
And all the
while the Restless One
Insists on more exciting fun
It wants to
go with every tide,
No matter where… just for the ride.
Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
Until I have no peace at
all.
One
eye turns to the forward track,
The other eye looks sadly back,
I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
(It's tough to have an idle
brain)
But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
And One says "Yes," and One says "no,"
And One
Self wants a home and wife
And One Self craves the drifter's
life.
The
Restless Fellow always wins This poem sums up well how Emily and I feel and why we are
now embarking on this adventure. There always seems to be 2 selfs at
work in each of us. Even with my basic maths, this means 4 'selfs' at
work. I guess the hope is that at the end of this adventure we will be
able to lay many of these 'selfs' to rest and finally settle down.
I wish my folks had made me twins.
Our journey will take us down through the Caribbean, and on
to New Zealand through the South Pacific. Its going to be fun, at times,
and terrible, at times. We both feel strongly, though, that the biggest
regrets in life are the risks you don't take. So the time has come to step
out of our comfort zone, to take a risk and hopefully embrace all that
comes our way over the next year.
We look forward to sharing it
all with you, both the good times and the bad, through our blog.