ABSTRACT
This riff or mini chapter begins with a summary: wandering often seems endless and irrational, which adds to the mystery of why it happens at all. The end is an illusion, however, a phantasm of linear thinking. Events stop but rarely conclude. Suppose that moving on is all we ever do; endlessness is all there is; and wandering simply exposes the fallacy of endings. A conclusion needs to question the binary contrast between sedentary and nomadic orders. It invokes Whitman as embodying a counter-ethos opposed to capitalist work ethic and instrumental reason. It describes apranihita or “aimless wandering” as an experience of “pure being.” For Buddha as for Odysseus, wandering reaches its limit, exhausts its resources and completes its task. For others, caught in Cain-like cycles of affliction, wandering seems perpetual and home unattainable; there is no task, no completion, and we wander because we can’t stop wandering. The book closes with a return to Paradise Lost as Adam and Eve leave the Garden: “hand in hand, with wand’ring steps and slow….” This is our future, Milton implies, but he also softens the image of endless wandering with the prospect of a saving companionship.
