Or perhaps that should be, "e-Margonaut Sitings!"
As you know, we love wanderers, adventurers, flaneurs, meanderers and basically all travelers who are as interested in the journey as the destination. And we're especially keen on celebrating e-Margonauts who inspire us to get off our duffs and plunge into that technicolor tapestry of otherness waiting outside our doors.
So it's with unchecked enthusiasm that I introduce to you a couple of intriguing wanderers who've fluttered across our radar. Although both favor similar monikers -
Wandering-Woman and
WomanWandering - and although both have recently chronicled their virtual connaissance in their respective blogs, until recently they were unaquainted, one an
American living in Salamanca, Spain and the other a
New Zealander living in Antwerp, Belgium. (I should add that I know neither, and my only familiarity with either is new and limited to what I could discover in their blogs.)
In particular there are two artifacts that I'd like to pass along to you, one from each of these women. The first is a poetic snapshot as subtle and poignant as a "still" from a favorite old black and white movie:
A poem for two wandering women
That's me
nose pressed hard against the window glass
breath mist on the window as the train whirs by you
That's me
our heads turn, our eyes meet and I follow you out of sight
That's me
clutching a tattered phrasebook
stashing consonants in unexpected places
a strange new colloquy in words and hands
That's me
harbouring all the places I've walked,
every story I've met pressed flat against my heart
An intimate glimpse into the soul of a nomad. The second artifact I'd like to pass along is less intimate, but equally brave. It's the intriguing motto which serves as the blog name for the
WomanWandering's blog:
"People become stories, and stories become understanding"
Both adventurers seem to embrace storytelling as one of the wanderer's most valuable arts. This was the clincher for me in dubbing them both e-Margonauts.
I sincerely hope that we'll hear more from both of these e-Margonauts in the future!
