Reading Ulysses in Montana #363
So you arrive at a place, but not your destination, and you wonder how far you have left to go.
Or to put it another way, having contemplated the cat on the window sill, maybe the place was your destination after all, or would be if you could see your way clearly enough to disengage your vigorous eye and see things as they really are. Refinements in some attributes profess the urgency of moving on to your final destination, but winds of change in scenery bring doldrums from time to time in which you give the cook the night off. Better spirits with heart and noble pratting urge you to put down the sails and your roots.
But no, you still have a destination, and this place is not it, so you join the cat in the window, the cook in the kitchen, and move on down the road, the winding, everlasting road.
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What a beautifully contemplative piece. It captures so well the tension between contentment and longing—the quiet question of whether where we are is enough, or whether we must keep moving toward some distant horizon.
I especially loved the image of the cat on the windowsill, patiently observing what is, while the restless human spirit wonders what might yet be. There is a gentle wisdom here: that life is not always about choosing between the journey and the destination, but learning that each stopping place has something to teach us before we continue down that “winding, everlasting road.”