An Engaging Title! (or, The Art of Reverence, le preface)

Finally, there came a time when not traveling became too taxing, too opaque, too much to handle. It was enough of the same already. There lay the world, out there the beautiful and the wise and the old places, and the razor's-exactness of unrepeatable experience they held, there at the heights of reverence that cannot be known by any other means. And there was but one way up. To be reverant is art: beautiful, wise, old as the places of the world, places I once walked before I became this me, this time, this little thought-bubble in this little place. All at once it was not possible to stay in my little place without seeing it fresh with the Eyes of the World. The wanderlust had got me! For there is movement and there is the lack of movement, and the one is as worthy as the other is treacherous.

It was time to cut my blackthorn and leave the girls of Tuam, broken hearts and all.