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When we get
out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels
in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we
shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in....
...If people
and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not
be much point in moving from one place to another. For my part,
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s
sake. The great affair is to move. Wandering re-establishes
the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
If you come
to a fork in the road, take it. If you reject
the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people,
you might better stay at home. The use of traveling
is to regulate the imagination by reality, and instead of thinking
how things may be, to see them as they are. I travel a lot;
I hate having my life disrupted by routine. The real voyage
of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having
new eyes. A good traveler
has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. This was the
moment I longed for every day. Settling at a heavy inn-table, thawing
and tingling, with wine, bread, and cheese handy and my papers,
books and diary all laid out; writing up the day's doings, hunting
for words in the dictionary, drawing, struggling with verses, or
merely subsiding in a vacuous and contented trance while the snow
thawed off my boots. There are only
three things which make life worth living: to be writing a To travel is
to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. I dislike feeling
at home when I am abroad To awaken quite
alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in
the world. “What place
would you advise me to visit now?” he asked. “The planet
Earth,” replied the geographer. “It has a good reputation.”
Too often...I
would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what
they had seen. ...travel is
more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep
and permanent, in the ideas of living. Better far off
to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and
to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often
again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love
them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections. I never travel
without my diary. One should always have something sensational to
read in the train. We wander for
distraction, but we travel for fulfillment. A good holiday
is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than
yours. It is far easier
to travel that to write about it. ....and performing
our one and noble function of the time, move. ..It is almost
axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
...wherever
one is, some part of oneself remains on another continent. ...Destination
is merely a byproduct of the journey. All journeys
have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. ....He won’t
fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won’t fly on
any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation. The map is not
the territory. It is not down
in any map; true places never are. One does not
discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore
for a very long time. Jet lag is for
amateurs. Only by going
alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart
of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and
baggage and chatter. The skies and
land are so enormous, the detail so precise and exquisite, that
wherever you are you are isolated in a glowing...and the clocks
stopped long ago. Only the river
is free, always changing but always the same... The first experience
can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first
South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of
sense. ...the grand
tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home. Like all great
travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more
than I have seen. There is nothing
like a comfortable adventure to put people in a good humor.... It is not the
path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which
is the path. Our battered
suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to
go. But no matter, the road is life. I haven’t
been everywhere, but it’s on my list. *Floaty pen from the private collection of Cynthia Fontayne
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• The Thoughtful Traveler•
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tolerably
good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be travelling
south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.
