Roads we don't know (by Timm)

Figuring out the future course of his life was perhaps Timm's most restless, undecided, and obsessional work. For some, life's template is almost handed them from birth. They grow up and are schooled with a clear goal in mind - to work in the family business, to raise a family, to be a pilot or president. Timm's ambitions never were so clear. He like church work and music and photography, yet none offered a gig that paid the bills well enough.

Timm loved the notion of living in the heart, of loving and working and serving in devotion to a divinity he felt deeply in his chest. He wanted his career to be so defined; if he did not feel it deeply, he did not want to be working there. Perhaps it was out of this profound need that Timm kept looking; kept asking; kept seeking.

Timm's true adventure was not in some distant capital but deeper into his own feelings - for better and for worse. That his life ended as it did is to me richly symbolic, for we can say he was cut down exactly where he wanted to be the most.

* * *

Timm wrote the following poem in his journal flying in to Khazakstan in March 2004. I can see him sitting there by the window of his plane, watching new territories unscroll beneath some three miles down, revealing an interior he knew from deep within, or wanted so much to know.

Following the poem are more pictures from the trip.

* * *

ROADS WE DON'T KNOW

Timm O'Cobhthaigh

Roads we know
others we don't
some converge
while others split apart

One we want to take
but can't make the turn
For reasons unknown
we're compelled on.

Sun of glittering mountain
moon of placid sea
don my life
with thy tranquility.
Bring to life again
that parts that were lost
so long ago
so long ago

Eastern realm of
ancient kings
Temples of the long
forgotten gods.
Point to the other
the numinous I seek.

Not the treasures of Marco
who plied your landlocked seas
or the power of the Khans
that tried to subject thee

But the "othering"
that few have ever delved.

Take my by Your hand
oh great eternal
speaking out a call
only my heart can hear
I wish to follow
the eternal plan