I believe that it's in Ecclesiastes. Yes, 1:18. "For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" (KJV). Today I tasted that sorrow, the sorrow that can only come from a certain kind of knowledge, a knowledge of deception, and I wondered why I hadn’t discovered it before. Perhaps I was too caught up in what the symbol represented to cast a critical eye at the symbol itself, a symbol of the archetypal individualist who, forsaking the oppressive knavery of modernity, forges his own destiny. That symbol is, of course, none other than the American Hobo, rider of rails, dreamer of dreams.
But the Hobo, had he ever existed, is dead.
Honestly, when was the last time you saw an honest-to-gosh Hobo? The kind with the Hobo briefcase (stick and bandana)? The kind fluent in the Hobo Hieroglyphics? You haven’t.
Maybe you’ve seen impostors at the mall or pushing shopping carts filled with recycling up the street but those, and it pains me to say it, are just bums. And bums, like everyone else, are born free but everywhere enchained (tho throw in a little Rousseau). The Hobo was the exception.
Certainly, my friend. Without doubt we can dream of them as we do leprechauns, unicorns and tasty prunes, but the truth, the sad truth, has forever altered us.
