not all who wander are lost.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

vagabond.


Vagabond.

My Aunt Kate called me a "vagabond" yesterday. I looked it up in the dictionary to get a specific, politically correct definition...and I guess I'm kinda vagabondish. Dicitionary.com had somewhat of a negative connotation towards Vagabond, but I liked Wikipedia's definition..so we'll just go with that one!

Wikipedia says...

A Vagabond, or drifter, is an itinerant person. {Itinerant: a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home} Such people may be called drifters, tramps, rogues, or hobos. A vagabond is characterized by almost continuous traveling, lacking a fixed home, temporary abode, or permanent residence. Vagabonds are not bums, as bums are not known for traveling, preferring to stay in one location.

Historically, "vagabond" was a British legal term similar to vagrant, deriving from the Lation for "purposeless wandering". Following the Peasants' Revolt, British constables were authorized to collar vagabonds and force them to show their means of support; if they could not, they were jailed.

By the 19th century the vagabond was associated more closely with Bohemianism. The critic Aruthur Compton-Rickett compiled review of the type, in which he defined it as men "with a vagrant strain in the blood, a natural inquisitiveness about the world beyond their doors." Examples include Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Leo Tolstoy, William Hazlitt and Thomas de Quincey.


SO...yeah, I guess I'm a vagabond. There's lots of words for it, though I prefer "World Citizen"! So for all of you nomad's out there, I raise my glass to you. Let the adventure begin.


"Con mis pezuñas de cordero ,
me propuse recorrer el continente entero ,
Sin brújula, sin tiempo, sin agenda"
- Calle 13 'Pal Norte'

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