Burning Ship.

Bertrand Russell wrote: Adventurous men enjoy shipwrecks, mutinies, earthquakes, conflagrations, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences.

I found these lines rereading one of my favorite travel books, called “Vagabonding” by Rolf Potts. He’s a mild mannered guy who spends his time getting into trouble all around the world while living on a shoestring. If it ever turns out that I’m updating this blog from Macau, then it will be his fault. The man leaves wanderlust in his wake the way snails leave a sticky trail. Youtube him and you’ll be amazed by how much of a dork he is. Read his book and you’ll be impressed by how fearless he is. I wish someone had put his book in my hands when I was a decade younger. But I also wish that I wasn’t suffering from advanced male pattern baldness and I also wish that floating unicorns distributed Butterfinger candy bars. These wishes are neither here nor there. I’ve learned to rock male pattern baldness just as I hope to make good on wanderlust. As a thirty-four year old grad student, I have long since given up on doing things the way I was supposed to, and there is something kind of liberating about this existence. Though no word yet on the floating Butterfinger unicorns, but I am keeping an eye out.

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Oh! BTW, that beautiful painting above is called “Burning Ship” and it was painted by Frank Bodilly. He was just a boy from Cornwall who became a barrister and served as a judge in Calcutta in the 1890s. He retired back to Cornwall but died in Sicily, which ain't that bad a place to die of old age. He was a lawyer first and an artist second and not of much note in either direction, but I like that painting even though it is hard to tell that the boat is on fire.

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