BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TRAVEL

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)
**
an excerpt from "The Accidental Hotel," 
about The Atlanta Hotel, a budget hotel in Bangkok. 

"It was the kind of place travelers were always looking for,
 a combination restaurant, café, and bistro, where you could
 get a good, inexpensive meal, linger for hours over coffee,
 or while away a hot afternoon over beer. It was a natural gathering place, and what was best about the restaurant was
 what was best about the hotel: the mix of people. In an 
age of niche marketing, The Atlanta was an anomaly,; it cut across the usual segregating categories of age, class, and lifestyle. There were has-been hippies and would be hipsters, clean-cut college students and backpacking grandmothers, budget-minded families and middle-aged men on a Bangkok debauch, German scholars of Thai Buddhism, Swedish relief workers on R&R from Cambodia, blue-collar Brits, freelance writers, one or two indigents, and on the sidelines, quietly studying the show, a contingent of local day trippers that included, every Sunday at noon, a small group of That Baptists from a neighborhood church."

From:
Donald A Ranard
The Accidental Hotel
The Best Travel Writing 2005
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THE TRAVAIL OF TRAVEL
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.

Etymological Dictionary On Line
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CLOSER TO HOME

“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)
**

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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TRAVELING IN SCOTLAND IN THE 1600's

In the 17th century,
Sir William Brereton published 
his Travels in Holland, etc, (1634-1635), and
alas! he was not so enamored of the household smells 
of the good citizens of Edinburgh:

 "...their houses and halls, and kitchens, have such
 a noisome taste, a savour and that so strong, as it
 doth offend you so soon as you come within their
 walls; yea, sometimes when I have light from my
 horse, I have felt the distaste of it before I have '
  come into the house; yea, I never came to my own
 lodging in Edinborough, or went out, but I  was
 constrained to hold my nose...."

**
TRAVEL

Travel begins
Where I am,
With the world
Lieing like 
A barnacled sea
Scraped with knowledge
Severe & kind,
This wide-spread space
Holding us together.

Another way is
To tunnel in:
Go in, go out, go far.
To stop is to die,
Strut where spirit
Falters, mind boggles,
Another eye will
Follow you, 
Another's hands 
Will hold you.

Travel, sail forth,
Kiss & be done.
The briar is not so harsh
As standing still,
Or thorns, stream
Of evenings at our windows
Knocking, rush of moon
Flaking foreign pines
On dense hills beyond.

Travel begins
When the eye roams
Star-jutted with
The constant sweep
Of cloud, Magellan
Spray, space after
Space enduring
Human forms, or light
Alone, Venus-edged.

My bags are packed,
I shall turn & 
Say farewell.

Louis Phillips

**