BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TRAVEL #2

SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA

“Soweto was designed to be bombed –that’s how 
forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. 
The township was a city unto itself, with a 
population of nearly one million. There were 
only two roads in and out. That was so the 
military could lock us in, quell any rebellion.
 And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried 
to break out of their cage, the air force could 
fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone. 
Growing up, I never knew that my grandmother 
lived in the center of a bull’s eye.”

Trevor Noah. Born a Crime 
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EVERY SAILOR NEEDS A FRIEND
“Somewhere in the Southern ocean, as the immortal 
Captain Joshua Slocum recounted in his journal 
Around the World in the Sloop Spray, he was touched 
to discover that his loneliness was ephemeral. 
An intrepid spider in the cabin was spinning 
sidewise while he spun forward, and the knowledge 
of their companionship inspirited him for the rigors 
that lay ahead.”

S.J. Perelman. “ Looking For Pussy” in
 Eastward Ha! (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977)

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ON THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD TRAVEL
travel (v.)
late 14c., "to journey," from travailen (1300) "to make a journey," originally "to toil, labor" (see travail). The semantic development may have been via the notion of "go on a difficult journey," but it also may reflect the difficulty of any journey in the Middle Ages. Replaced Old English faran. Related: Traveled; traveling. Traveled (adj.) "having made journeys, experienced in travel" is from early 15c. Traveling salesman is attested from 1885.
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Etymological Dictionary On Line
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WOBURN, MASSACHUSETTS

“I had come from Woburn, Massachusetts, a fine 
New England town noted for its rambunctious biker
gangs, its indicted and convicted mayors and the 
worse toxic-waste dumping grounds in the United 
States. But it’s also an old colonial city with 
a bronze minuteman on the town green guarding the 
white-shingled Methodist church and a great 
ivy-covered library with a statue of Count Rumford
 on its front lawn.”

Eric Bogosian. Drinking in America (New York:
Vintage Books, 1987).
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FOR THE FANS OF THE LEGEND & LORE 
OF KING ARTHUR

“ A cold, wind driven rain soaks through my parka as I
walk across a narrow foot-bridge that links the Cornwall mainland in southwest England to a rocky promontory
overlooking the Bristol Channel. Far below this cantilevered span, waves crash against the cliffs and swirl
inside a grotto known as Merlin’s Cave.”

Joshua Hammer. “The Forever Legend” in Smithsonian
Magazine (September 2022)
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People also ask

“What is inside Merlin's cave?
Inside Merlin's Cave contains Numerous poems, commentaries, prophecies and plays, including the full text of Thomas Hardy's Queen of Cornwall, that establish Cornwall not just as the birthplace of King Arthur but as a source of all Arthurian themes.”
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REMEMBER THIS PASSWORD?

“ Dildano's password, "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch", 
is the name of a real village in Wales, United Kingdom. It's also the United Kingdom's longest place name.”

IDMb trivia to Barbarella (1968)

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JOHN JAY AUDOBON TRAVELS THROUGH FLORIDA

“At Indian Key I observed an immense quantity of
beautiful Tree Snails of a pyramidal or shortly conical
form, some pure white, others curiously marked with 
spiral lines of bright red, yellow and black. They 
were crawling vigorously on every branch of every 
bush where there was not a nest of the White Ibis.
Wherever that bird nested not a live snail was to 
be seen; hundreds lay dead underneath.”

John James Audobon

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NOT EXACTLY ABOUT INDIA


‘This novel isn’t about India. I don’t know India. I 
was there once, for less than a month. When I was 
there, I was struck by the country’s foreingness; 
it remains obdurately foreign to me. But long before 
I went to India, I began to imagine a man who has 
been born there and has moved away; I imagined a 
character who keeps coming back again and again.
He’s compelled to keep returning; yet, with each 
return trip, his sense of India’s foreigness only
deepens. India remains unyieldingly foreign even to him.”

John Irving.”Author’s Notes” to A Son of the Circus
(New York: Random House, 1994)
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SAILING DOWN THE RIVER AMUR

Sailing down the River Amur,
I started to dream of Dorothy Lamour.
I cried out: “Leave her alone, Bob Hope.”
“Wake up,” my wife sd, “and quiet down, you dope!”

LJP

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