WANTED / FOUND (1)

Less than 24 hours before departure.

Gathering and packing things.

Tomorrow at 9.30 am the search starts.

A quest for “the source of melancholy”.

Melancholy is a feeling; we can agree on that.

But what exactly is it?

And where do we find that source?

The first, short, stopover is in Sint-Niklaas.

There it is always a bit like Balkan.

Maybe that source can be found somewhere there.

In the middle of the Grand Place?

If so, we are done by tomorrow afternoon.

Or maybe we can ask the almost eponymous holy man.

He roams a large part of the world year after year.

Surely he must have come across that source somewhere?

But ok, a search of half a day is not immediately something to write about. So onward. 

Tomorrow evening, we are expected to be in Tübingen, 650 km further.

There are a number of famous educational institutions there.

Kepler (astronomer) and Hegel (philosopher) taught there. And one Ratzinger, that stern pope. 

(He probably regularly drank a few firm sips from that source.)

Maybe one of those men…

In every search, these are the options:

• one searches and one finds. (Hopla, done! Now back home*.)
• one searches but one does not find the sought after. (Bad luck! Back home* then?)
• one does not search at all and one therefore finds nothing. (Better to stay at home*?)
• one does not search and yet one finds something. (What to do?)

Or is it again: “whoever finds something, has searched badly!”

Wondering what it will be.

*melancholy is related to homesickness