Journeyman - Forss

This is a story of a young man, traveling ancient countrysides, looking for new

emotions to experience.

Looking to give more than to get, and understanding the frailty in the notion

that nothing is really given to you aside from the very air that you breathe

But things are changing now

Things are rapidly becoming… very different… than they once were

On a southbound train that seems to eat through the German countryside like a

mylar saw through wood

Like a hammer breaking through old bones

My reflections are now turning from the circus mirrors and smoke to framed glass

Preparing to separate my interior frailty from the dangers of the outside

Those things I do not quite understand

I can see hints of colored city kid influence

in colorful accents dancing across the foundations of former communist factories

Saying, to me, that I’ve been here before

Despite this railway being my virgin transport in this oh so foreign place

Chopping through the world I’ve come to understand as mine

Like a lion’s teeth through the ribs of a gazelle

On a hunt

And when we reach Stuttgart

I believe I am a man of different thinking

My energy replenished with each stop between Hamburg and Munich

Visions of Göthe

Thomas Mann immortalised by the artistic politics of iron curtains

Falling as certain as rain

Grape vines growing rooted from the lips of the Rhein see

This particular world I’m traveling through

Is much older than the world I call mine

Today I’m the gunpowder in a continental bullet

A cell in this electric vein coursing through the Black Forest

My destination just beyond the trees

A relatively young man traveling ancient countrysides

And newfangled sidewalk technology

Looking to give more than to get

And understanding the frailty in the notion that nothing is given to you but

the air you breathe

And the trees that hide my destination

Resemble loose hairs on the head of an old gentleman from afar

These mountains protecting villages and colonies like a mote

Encircling castles of fallen leaders

Roughly an hour north of the Munich skyline

This trip is very different than any I’ve been on before

I wish I could transmit this experience through American urban radio and

whore-house shopping malls

To Wall Street executives and stay-at-home moms in the Bible belt

Just to say hey look at the world and get off your block

Pick up a book

Stop watching the clock

There is so much more to learn than

Trades and monolingual grades

To be sure

This ride is special

This countryside is ancient

And many of these things I do not understand

But I feel like I’ve been here before

This ride, the thoughts that come with it

Tell me to cherish life now because the only real gift given to you is the

present

The only real gift given to you is right now