A Focal of Carnal Carthage & the Green Hills of Antioch

Hopefully everyone in life makes a quest at some point. I prefer to suggest this sort of quest to someone very young. The allure of the open road, or as the case with Henry David Thoreau in his essay, “Walking,” the avoidance of roads. Perhaps the open country, if that exists in our modern world, would make an ideal quest setting. Over hills and dales, right? But at the core, it's the quest that's important. When I suggest this quest for youth, I think it's best suited to those still unsullied by time and experience. Yes, in our youth, we may be more open, or open minded, simply because age has not taught us to behave otherwise. With the quest, many aspects of the journey happen before the quest has been sought, developed or delivered.
Taking a sort of quest as an older person may be tricky, as age has taught us what to expect. Age has taught us that there ought to be a reason for such endeavors, or at the very least, a lesson to be learned.

I believe every writer must, at some point, must take on this quest for the sake of development. Every writer's quest is as varied as every writer. Take Sal/Jack in On the Road, whose quest is from east to west and back again. The hero never seems to reach the ultimate enlightenment, perhaps small glimpses into it in the mountains of Mexico or the all night theaters of Detroit. Nonetheless, it's a quest.
The hero quest is everywhere. It's in Homer's Odysseus, who travels far and wide, only to come home again and find his fateful wife, respectful son and the knowledge of who his true friends are. And by contrast, Etgar Keret's novella “Kneller's Happy Campers,” we see a similar quest. In this story, two suicides in the next world search for what they both lacked in life, love. The case with these two characters is that given their bizarre and surreal circumstances of existing in a sort of limbo for suicides, what else do they really have but the quest?
Yet, it remains that the motion of physical travel, as suggested by Henry David Thoreau in “Walking” or by Jack Kerouac in On the Road is just a superficial aspect to the quest. Yes, it's true that the force and influence of a change of scenery of the opportunity of chance meetings help to shape the landscape of the quest. However, so much of the quest, the writer's quest specifically, happens within.
An example of the former: years ago at the end of my quest, I spent the last evening of my New Orleans residence with a woman named Marion. We two shared a scar battered table at Rue de la Course. Later, we ate raw steaks in a neighborhood restaurant. We promised to write letters. I left within hours of saying goodbye to her, which was just hours before we met. 24 hours later in Wichita, Kansas, I dreamed of home: two friends I had not seen in years and white worms in a gas tank. Symbolism? Probably not. It was a dream after an event, and it came at the end of several years of searching.
This leads to the latter point: things happen internally, even if influenced by the external.
At the onset of my adventure, I left years of Denver, Colorado. I had graduated from college, and I decided to return to my native California. A return to my place of birth. The silence of the journey there lead to other thoughts indeed. Arriving at the silence of oneself is not an easy thing to do, it's not always a pleasant endeavor. And further still, it is not easy to listen to the silence. Often, the dialogue or the outward conversation enjoyed with others, tends to turn inside when alone.
For me, going back to California as a grown man was dangerous. I knew it was towns and people I had not seen in twenty years, and to think I was such a young man! The ensuing silence stacked one memory on top of another. I floated on memories of my family: their collective history, their immigrant story, their lives in mighty-mighty California. I had not been part of them in years, and in fact, I had not heard from them, nor thought much about them. The balance of my thoughts were mine, and mine alone. The deserts of northern Utah and Nevada brought around my recollections of the Middle East. My part in the invasion of Iraq is nothing of note. But in the spring of 1998, I wanted to order my thoughts, I had not dealt with the happenings of my war experience some seven years prior. I had thought about it, yes, in the interim of returning from the war, back to the states and the onset of my quest. In those interceding years I had, quite accidentally, chained myself to an institution of higher learning. Suddenly, alone in those deserts of the western United States on my way to my birthplace and a silence outside mixed with with turmoil within, I wanted to make sense of it.
How can one reconcile years of life in such a short period of time? This is the nature of the quest I proposed.
Go out in the world. Go out unafraid. Let your body follow the rhythm of the day, flow with the cadence of the seasons. Let it all go. Hold tight to your passport. Eat raw steaks. Stay up late and smoke too many cigarettes. Make love to deities. Write poetry. Live. Allow the quest to follow and trust in it. Return to the scene of the crime, or the place of your birth. Purge. Quest, and what follows may be Carnal Carthage & the Green Hills of Antioch.