On the subject of Exile

I am currently reading through Ovid's "Poems of Exile" alongside Hannah Arendt's essays that transpire her "thought-trains" in the early to mid 1930s. The position of exile is an intriguing one. It is at once the manifestation of and punishment toward external victimage. It at times involves a relocation of sorts--both in the mind and out from it.

I have come across the subject of a self exile or a contrived exile, and I wonder how viable a subject is this? Can one be sentenced to live elsewhere, or as in the words of Neil Gaman--"Neverwhere"?

When I was younger, say 13 or so--I remember that I hated to read, but I could sure quote any television commercial known to a young islander (yes, we had electricty in the islands). Then something happened, and it happened with frequency. I found myself leaving my routine life of television shows, microwavable bagel pizzas and fights with my brother as to who owned the rights to the television remote control (obviously it belonged to me).

Anyway--one day I decided to forego my routine and headed past the tv room, pass the den down the hallway and entered what would be a new space to promote new habits and the like. I began with comic books, gravitated toward Michael Crichton, John Grisham and Peter Benchley. Later, in a given summer I found myself reading fifteen novels from these combined authors. I was hooked!

I now looked forward to heading off toward my room forthe sole purpose of "the getaway" or the removal from a collective society. Could this have been the beginnings of dissatisfaction? Could this have been the beginnings of an exile?

I did not readily know the answers to such extended inquiry, especially not at the skinny, but muscular age of 13. Still, now that I am considerably older, and I have read more important works and have increased my "departure moments" is there a correlation between a given pattern of defection and the more you know?

Put another way--why is it that men and women have "departed" from their collective societies, or formed new ones in the process of their respective departures? If we are honest, as much as we can be, we may all hold opinions on the matter of exile, but few are willing to embark on its demands. And here is where it hits us! What exactly does exile demand from us?

Is there such a thing as the exile moment. A time-space "pause" where one chooses to go? What about non-choice exile and the like? Is it a romanticized view of the "down-time" or the "leave me alone" moment? Again, I pose these inquiries because I think that the older I get and the more intel I gather--I realize I know less and less, and the places left for such discovery of my true self are to be found in the forms of exile.

The issue here is not what more can we say on the position[s] of exile, but of those that have "tasted," "seen," and "heard," and ultimately become addicted to such a departure--are they ever coming back? Am I?

F.