I, Nomad Monad, lost myself in the amusing mazes of the amazing muses. With apocalyptic vision and a longing for eternity as traveling companions, I set off to seek individuation in pursuit of autonomy; I lived on poetry and starlight and whatever the denizens of the infernal machine had left or thrown out. There IS  a free lunch. I consistently found it—and I feasted while others merely ate. The soundtrack of my voyage was every beloved song ever downloaded to my soul. I set off for the celestial Zion, the name of an impermanent city never to be found on earth. I was sure I could, through continual movement and transience, leave behind the Babylon of striated complication and flow into the continual present of smooth space. But in the process, my hermeneutic dimension imploded. I found myself thirsting and stranded in a mirage; the mirage of absolute freedom. Even as I pursued the shimmering waters of this mirage, they receded before me until the longer I contemplated the ideal, the greater I became enslaved—and the greater grew my thirst . . . I tried to maintain a continuous line of flight, slaking my thirst and seeking escape through the virtual window of art and memory. I sought in this way to transcend the ontic redundancy of my own identity, but in so doing, I marginalized myself into utter misanthropic irrelevance and lost myself in multiplicities of bitterness. If it was not for the mercy of God, I would have shattered into irretrievable fragments. But by the grace of the Lord, I was able to find my way back into the data-driven quotidian banalities that pass for settled life and respectable citizenship. Now I am no longer a traveler. I am a plebeian with reveries born of philosophy, and I know that on this sin-cursed earth I have no continuing city. Life is less intense—but also more manageable now. The colors are muted, I get tired earlier; but I sleep and I dream and I still love that verdant music.

Beholding God’s marvelous color, shade,
Rustling textures, and million tones of green;
The organic beauty that He has made—
Do you think He wants us glued to the screen?

I share my mind and bare my soul to those travelers or ex-voyagers I esteem as worthy. I mistrust and shun the tyranny of the mediocre majority.

What, oh fellow student and fish in the school of life,
is your  story?

PROMPT #12: write your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape.  At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.