a rebel with a cause

Notes and inspirations extracted from Bruce Chatwin’s (published letters) Under the Sun

restlessness

The search for freedom is very likely the most violent known to man

His mind goes off on a tangent, usually interesting, but usually irrelevant

Such a versatile personality, resisting categorization

Some invisible power carried him away – open, fair, free-minded, ruthlessly honest: some anti-conventional promise of an adventure

Enthusiasm was a constant and remained undimmed

He forever questioned restlessness: Who looks outside, dreams, Who looks inside, awakes

Why wander? To settle natural curiosity and an urge to explore; feed a compulsion to just be on the road

Change is the only thing worth living for. Never sit your life out at a desk!

One’s independence is so fragile a thing that money hardly matters. Penniless: a happy state of affairs but not likely to last.

It’s ridiculous rationalizing that which appeals to irrational instincts, such as wanting a way of life that is largely an imagination. And, why ever not?

Rapidly liberating oneself of all possessions: renunciation of everything but the most portable things

For a long time he was looking too closely at works of art. Was suggested to try long horizons. Africa, perhaps (: and so, he went..

Inspired by the kind of avidity for the undiscovered

There are two Timbuctoos. One – the tired caravan city where the Niger bends into the Sahara, the meeting pace of all who travel by camel or canoe, though the meeting was rarely amicable. And then there is the Timbuctoo of the mind – a mythical city in a Never-Never Land, an antipodean mirage, a symbol for the back of beyond!

Remains elusive but suggests an intrigue

Achieving the means for total mobility

He always contemplated really long and slow trips elsewhere, by the most obscure frontier posts and along the least frequented routes to make all fragmented diaries into episodes of travels

The form of the book must be dictated by the journey itself – to say the least – unpredictable and no point in even trying to guess what it will hold

alas, he knew himself very well: once at a destination, the footsteps always lead to other horizons

On his way he lands in strange situations; people and books tell him strange stories which hold up to form a message

Travel gave him immediate pleasure, writing – only satisfaction; but it’s a combination he longed to have

~ ~ ~

you can say we’re a “love match of literary variety”

Only.. we seemed to have missed each other by several decades and continents

“From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation.

Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us.

The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality.

Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility.”

- Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize Laureate 2010, Peruvian novelist

One of my all-time favourite quotes is Mark Twain’s wildly famous:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I knew I had it in me to just get up and go looking for something I wasn’t even able to define at that age..

From that moment on I had my vagabond shoes in place and I set on the way – which way? Every way. Any way.

New ways.

And exciting ways.

And wrong ways which felt amazing.

And right ways which lead higher.

And dead ends which made me realize that the game is never over.

And challenging ways which drew blood, sweat and tears but in the end elicited laughter.

And those that defined me, broke me in and carved out my persona.

Because the road is my confidant.