Day 080e: What every city tries to hide is what every city Reveals … (July 03, 2019)
And so it was that I walked alongside the ramparts of Pamplona’s age-old defenses on this still-early morn, and smoothly sauntered along her still-mostly-vacant streets …
“Obedient to no man, dependent not even on weather or season, without any fixed goal before them or any solid roof above their heads; owning nothing, and open to every whim of fate or happenstance, the home-free wanderers lead their brave and shabby existence. Physically they are the Sons of Adam, driven out of Paradise and into lives of seeming destitution. Spiritually, the are the Children of the Divine, brothers & friends to all animals and cousins of compassion & innocence. Out of Heaven’s hand they accept what is given from moment to moment: sun, rain, fog, snow, warmth, cold, comfort, or hardship. Time does not exist for them and neither does history, or ambition, or those bizarre triad of idols named progress and success and wealth – fleeting delusions in which all houseowners believe so desperately. These holy wayfarer may be delicate or crude, artful or awkward, brave or cowardly— and yet they are always children at heart; loving all others without condition, forgiving all others without reservation, and living their lives fully as if in the first day of creation. Their days are always guided by a handful of basic precepts & fundamental virtues. They might be intelligent or dense; deeply aware of the fleeting fragility of all living things – of how fearfully each living creature carries its bit of warm blood through the glaciers of cosmic space, or merely following the commands of his selflessly caring Soul with an almost toddler-like amour. They are ever the opponent of the popular & the well-adjusted, ever the deadly enemy of the established proprietor – those who hate them because they fear them, because they do not wish to be reminded that all existence is transitory, that their material success is always fading, that their power & popularity are but hollow mirages, that a merciless icy death waits for them just around the next bend, and that the only way out of the morass of meaninglessness that is their vapid lives is to submit to the far greater calling of kindness, generosity, service, and love.” ~ inspired by Hermann Hesse
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