Where have you been?

 Where have you been? 

Drowning. That’s where I have been.

In Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, that’s the way Jack Burden talks about his drive to California, when he runs away from it all: he’s drowning west. He’s running away not from the horrors of what just happened, the assassination of the Boss by his friend Adam Stanton and the death of Adam Stanton in the attempt; he’s running away from what he may learn about himself and how that may change who he is.

     There are two things we fear more than anything else: ourselves and change.

07.30.17