Summer of 2005 marked the fourth and last time I flew to USA, aiming to enrich my creative writing . I took a taxi from Charlotte to Asheville and on my return trip, I rode the Greyhound bus.
Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. Thomas Wolfe
My traveling helped me overcome my loneliness brought by: divorce, tragic death of my father and some personal losses. I choose to thrive by working hard, rewarded by traveling.
Asheville, North Carolina
August 2005
Thomas Wolfe is one of my favourite writers way back college days. Reaching Asheville, his home town, seeing every room of the house where he grew up, the interior of the house, the myriad piles of books, antique chairs, old Underwood typewriter, the garden, sleeping porch, his father’s room as he immortalised in “Of Time and the River,” the room where his brother Ben died, the piano parlour, memorabilia related to his exile and return in 1937, his writing desk and old chair where he wrote, “Look Homeward, Angel,” and learning what inspired him to write his great classic novels was worth the trip even if on this trip I was heartbroken.
Traveling helps heal fresh or deep rooted wounds. It wakes up one’s eyes to all other doors opening in your life. That’s the same theme I wrote for the heroine, Lara Speranza, in my memoir, Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul.
Equipped with a huge Samsonite luggage, filled up with books from Thomas Wolfe Memorial, as I flew back from a deviated trip from Orlando via Charlotte then a five hours stopover in New Jersey, I wrote the opening lines for my Speranza Odyssey Trilogy, a memoir.
While exploring in Vanderbuilt Museum, it pricked an inner awakening, a sweet longing of coming home soon to my waiting and growing two older daughters.
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