One whiskey, one cigarette, and dim eyes through smoke… A weeping guitar, an upset pilgrim… An elusive feeling for some holiday in the night--- longing, burning---as a reproach, drawing closer, as if toward grief… A smile, like the strike of long-awaited rain--- without rapture, without thought or shine, ...sudden, brief---like a cry! And whiskey again, and cigarette again, and dim eyes through smoke… A weeping guitar, an upset pilgrim… And here all goes askew--- sorrow and joy, tears and laughter. Echoes in the heart, like a temple--- unbidden yet foreseen sin! And no longer by chance, and not quite by will, again a longing that stayed a secret, melts softly like snow… And whiskey again, and cigarette again, and dim eyes through smoke… A wholly broken guitar, almost weeping pilgrim…
# Pilgrim I have walked across the fields of elsewhere, my feet sinking into the soft rot of autumn, and found nothing but the echo of my own footfall returning from the distance like a debt unpaid. The temples I sought were mirrors. The gods I prayed to wore my own face, worn smooth by the rain of a thousand prayers, unrecognizable even to themselves. I have slept in the hollows of ancient stones, drawn water from wells that held only sky, and learned that thirst is not the absence of water but the presence of a mouth that will not close. The pilgrimage is not a journey to somewhere. It is a journey away from the everywhere that haunts you— the rooms you have lived in, the names you have answered to, the versions of yourself you left behind like discarded clothes. And at the end, if there is an end, you arrive at a shrine that does not exist, bow before an altar made of your own longing, and understand that you have been praying to emptiness all along— which is another name for home.
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