Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Home/heart
Anticipating a (thwarted*) New England roadtrip, I recently re-read Travels w/ Charley. Several books ago I started jotting down not-to-be-forgotten passages, and I swear I must've transcribed half the text by the time I was through w/ this one. Among countless others, this paragraph--the very last--feels personally relevant.
An old-fashioned cop w/ a fine red face and a frosty blue eye leaned in toward me. "What's the matter w/ you, Mac, drunk?" he asked. I said, "Officer, I've driven this thing all over the country--mountains, plains, deserts. And now I'm back in my own town, where I live--and I'm lost." He grinned happily. "Think nothing of it, Mac," he said. "I got lost in Brooklyn only Saturday. Now where is it you were wanting to go?" And that's how the traveller came home again.
*A car was supposed to be involved, w/ me behind its wheel. But confronted w/ various legal obstacles, I was just today forced to surrender the cause. Unfortunate. Still, not all hope was lost: Amtrak holds the keys now. It's looking like three nights in Montreal and a night in a sweet Adirondack town (Westport), which isn't the 'night in Providence/night in Portland/two nights in Montreal/night in Saratoga' I'd envisioned, but it's not as if I'm leaving this coast anytime soon, so hey.
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