AVIUM – The Pathless Region & New Domain

Long Time No Post!

You’re probably wondering about my radio silence… well I’ll explain that over a series of posts. Most of the silence was due to me not having much to say or not taking the time to sit down with my thoughts and sort them out. I have many essay drafts and short stories, but my relationship with my creative pursuits had honestly deteriorated in some ways and flourished in others. For example, all of the pictures I use on my blog (unless directly stated otherwise) were taken by me. I’ve always enjoyed photography from a distance, but recently got a nice camera and took a step towards developing some skills in the discipline. That said, music and writing have taken a back seat… until now!

So I rebranded the site to be more along the lines of something I feel I would like to explore and something that is more all-encompassing. This site has spent more time covering my views on life than it has directly covered philosophy. This change also captures an idea that I’ve toyed with for a while now.

What follows is a partial explanation of the tag line:

Talking Story

Back in my senior year of college, I had stopped by a friend’s place to talk story. That friend’s name is Mary. She’s an incredible person and an embodiment of the concept of a global citizen (she introduced me to that idea as well). Somehow we got to talking about life and she shared with me a story about a difficult and formative experience she had a few years prior. At some point, she talked about the feeling of being lost in a spiritual wilderness and how that led her to a deeper relationship with God.

This idea of being in the wilderness, metaphorical or otherwise, has always meant something valuable to me. Following that conversation, I mulled over that idea for quite some time. At that point in my studies, I was meditating every morning, studied the Tao (and related philosophies) regularly, and had an active relationship with nature. I mention this because, in my eyes, to live in accord with the Tao is to engage with the spiritual wilderness. It is in that wilderness that I come to better understand the wholesome and horrible parts of myself. I am standing in that wilderness when I do things that make me uncomfortable or demand me to be the kind of man I would look up to. That wilderness is a pathless region in which every action we take plots a point on the would-be map of our own lives. For me, this is when I am most engaged with the Tao, or what I see as God.

DEUS EX AVIUM?

After reflecting on that idea for a while, I looked at the phrase DEUS EX MACHINA and toyed around with translating God from the wilderness to Latin. Ultimately this was to succinctly capture this idea while also planning for a future tattoo (obvs). After a ridiculous amount of time spent finding the perfect word (thank you hyper-focus) I settled on DEUS EX AVIUM. AVIUM in this context is the pathless region more specifically instead of the wilderness. I found that to be a much better fit.

So, that’s the partial story of this site’s return. In a future post, I’ll dig into why I chose Wayward Folk as the new site name. It’s related to my experiences as a kid and up until now. No more spoilers! This will be covered in a post about the concept of the cultural nomad.

Thanks for reading!

To the wayward folk out there: Welcome!