Sahara Chronicle

"The immense desert territory of the Tuareg was split in five by the colonial empires, covering substantial areas of Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger and Chad. Tuareg existence is transnational by definition. They worked out a system of information, itineraries and topographic literacy to manage the most valuable resource in these latitudes: mobility. Revitalizing tribal bonds across borders, the nomads quickly organized the transport of migrants into an efficient network. On the Atlantic coast, new migration systems are emerging as the Straight of Gibraltar is sealed off. Here different networks intertwine and reorganize themselves as border regimes change."

- "Sahara Chronicle" is a collection of videos on mobility and the politics of containment in the Sahara. The multimedia exhibit is part of the geography of transterritories exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute.

"Wanderlust"

"Our paths long ago diverged. But two decades on, the most recurrent features of my love life remain airplanes and letters. I've met people who can't separate love and lust; for me the tricky distinction is between love and wanderlust. They're both about wanting and seeking and hoping to be swept away, so lost in the moment that the rest of the world recedes from view.

Some people spend their lives looking for anchors. For years, I cut ties as fast as I formed them, always struggling to be free...

'Wanderlust,' the irresistible impulse to travel, is a perfect word, adopted untouched from the German, presumably because it couldn't be improved. Workarounds like the French 'passion du voyage' don't quite capture the same meaning. Wanderlust is not a passion for travel exactly, it's something more animal and more fickle - more like lust. We don't lust after very many things in life. We don't need words like 'worklust' or 'homemakinglust.' But travel? The essayist Anatole Boyard put it perfectly: 'Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live... in our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.' "

 - From "Wanderlust" by Elisabeth Eaves in The Best Women's Travel Writing 2010, given to me by my Father Dearest and which has been my main road trip reading.

"Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy."

"Dear Peter,

Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country, but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret—their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects, and they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home. Young men who travel are exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home. The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood—it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. Their eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost, and its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first and most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects here, and they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy. Add to this that a habit of idleness—an inability to apply themselves to business—is acquired and renders them useless to themselves and their country. These observations are founded in experience. There is no place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little obstructed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any, wherein the virtues of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened. Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you will not want the aid of traveling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I repeat my advice to take a great deal of exercise, and on foot. Health is the first requisite after morality. Write to me often, and be assured of the interest I take in your success, as well as the warmth of those sentiments of attachment with which I am, dear Peter, your affectionate friend."

Written by Thomas Jefferson in 1787 to his nephew.  Found here: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/stay-home-young-man.php

"Anyway, so the pilgrim learns how to pray the way these very mystical persons say you should -

- I mean, he keeps at it till he's perfected it and everything.  Then he goes on walking all over Russia, meeting all kinds of absolutely marvellous people and telling them how to pray by this incredible method.  I mean, that's really the whole book."

"I hate to mention it, but I'm going to reek of garlic," Lane said.

"He meets this one married couple, on one of his journeys, that I love more than anybody I ever read about in my entire life," Franny said. "He's walking down a road somewhere in the country, with his knapsack on his back, when these two tiny little children run after him shouting 'Dear little beggar!  Dear little beggar!  You must come home to Mummy.  She likes beggars.'  So he goes home with the children, and this really lovely person, the children's mother, comes out of the house all in a bustle and insists on helping him take off his dirty old boots and giving him a cup of tea.  Then the father comes home, and apparently he loves beggars and pilgrims, too, and they all sit down to dinner.  And while they're at dinner, the pilgrim wants to know who all the ladies are that are sitting around the table, and the husband tells him that they're all servants but that they always sit down to eat with him and his wife because they're sisters in Christ."  Franny suddenly sat up a trifle straighter in her seat, self-consciously. "I mean I loved the pilgrim wanting to know who all the lades were." She watched Lane butter a piece of bread.  "Anyway, after that, the pilgrim stays overnight, and he and the husband sit up till late talking about this method of praying without ceasing.  The pilgrim tells him how to do it.  Then he leaves in the morning and starts out on some more adventures."

From Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, which I read for the first time today.  I liked it very much, and not at all just for the passage above.