just keep swimming

Thoreau (or was it Emerson- all I know is I spent way too much time on both of them in my Am Lit class) said something about how you shouldn't travel, there is more than enough unexplored territory in your own mind and your own backyard. I have two main critiques to this: 1) sometimes traveling abroad is the best way to explore one's own mind, and 2) anyone who sits around all day in a cabin in the woods just exploring his own thoughts would go mad if he wasn't already crazy when he started.

That being said, I could spend time in any of the places I've lived and never cease to find new and interesting things. There is so much of New York I have yet to explore. Of New Jersey, too, even, though I suppose most people would think that's a waste of time. I have barely set foot in Minneapolis and St. Paul, even though they are not that far from Northfield. As for in Northfield itself, there is much of the Arb that has yet to be seen by these eyes. Perhaps Star Island, due to its limited size, is the place I know best, but just think of how many new places I discovered this past summer, plus I still need to visit the rest of the islands. Here in Denmark, there are parts of Copenhagen I am completely unfamiliar with, and parts of the country I will not get to visit (notably Southern Jutland and Fyn), despite the fact that I could probably fit this entire little country in my back pocket. And yet despite all these places so close to me where there is so much left to discover, I keep moving, making the list of places I know but not completely longer and longer.

And it's not that I don't know where I'm going or where I've been or who I am and so I just keep going forward hoping to figure that out. I mean, it's true I don't know where I'm going but I certainly know where I've been and have a pretty good sense of who I am. So now it's just inertia and antsiness and the fact that NOW is the time when I have the opportunity to go everywhere and do anything so I might as well keep moving. It's true, when I'm old I might have another opportunity, but I can't count on that. So I'm off and there's no looking back (except for the fact that I look back all the time) but every once and a while I just want to stop and root my feet in and just live rather than have experiences. But now is not the time for that, and some day I expect to be wishing for the opposite.

In other news:
1) Jul i København is lovely (and incredibly pagan), but I miss Christmas in New York
2) I am officially living in Davis 207 next term. Apparently I'll even get floor life this year! Maybe we'll have a broomball team!
3) I have been accepted to volunteer at Buduburam Liberian Refugee Camp in Ghana this summer. I must now decide if I think this particular program is the best choice for me.
4) In exactly two weeks I will be on an airplane bound for Newark, NJ. Two weeks is actually a pretty long time.