Katharsis

Robert Silverberg's novella "Breckenridge and the Continuum" is the story of a conventional middle-aged man who sets off for exotic places and finds himself among companion wanderers on an aged planet:

The city was extraordinary . . . an ultimate urban glory, a supernal Babylon, a consummate Persepolis, the soul's own hymn in brick and stone.

Breckenridge tells garbled myths:

Then Breckenridge said, "I suppose I could tell you the story of Oedipus King of Thieves tonight." The late-afternoon sky was awful: gray, mottled, fierce. It resonated with a strange electricity. Breckenridge had never grown used to that sky. Day after day, as they crossed the desert, it transfixed him with the pain of incomprehensible loss. ...
The aurora flashed with redoubled frenzy, a coded beacon, crying out, SPACE AND TIME, SPACE AND TIME, SPACE AND TIME. ....

Messages come to those Breckenridge left:

The third cable said: GUESS WHAT STOP I'M REALLY IN TIMBUKTU STOP HAVE RENTED JEEP STOP I SET OUT INTO SAHARA TOMORROW STOP AM VERY HAPPY STOP YES STOP VERY HAPPY STOP VERY VERY HAPPY STOP STOP STOP It was the last message he sent. The night it arrived in New York there was a spectacular celestial display, an aurora that brought thousands of people out into Central Park. There was rain in the southeastern Sahara four days later, the first recorded precipitation there in eight years and seven months. An earthquake was reported in southern Sicily, but it did little damage. Things were much quieter after that for everybody.