Variations on the Road
(I'm not even sure if I should be putting this here, but here it is, a variation on a theme stolen from Robert Frost and jamie. As is the current theme, this was written at the Fir Acres Workshop for Writing and Thinking, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.)
“All roads lead to Paris.”
I must begin by admitting that this is not my line, but the line of a friend of mine, thrown into a story that I am currently writing with her. The play on the old adage of “All roads lead to Rome” is twisted in the next line: “What she (the character being described) had forgotten was that all roads lead away from Paris as well.”
It isn’t something we think about much. The “road of life” is always perceived as one-way, black-and-white arrows pointing the correct direction. Robert frost declared, “In knowing how way leads on to way/ I doubted if I should ever come back.” But just as roads lead away from the great metropolises of the world as well as to, the road of life may pull us backwards more that the old poets would have us believe.
Don’t worry; I’m not speaking of time travel. But sometimes events occur that we do not move on from, or even that move us backward on the road of life. Sometimes we may find ourselves inching away from Paris or Rome of London or New York, back to our safe hovels where no one can hurt us, away from the bustling insanity of life in which we are lost, so much like a traveler feels surrounded by those crowds and pretentious buildings. We must always remember that the road of life is supposed to be a one-way street. Be careful, for walk in the wrong direction and you may be run over.