The mixed blessing of America is that anyone with a car can go anywhere. Travel is mostly about dreams - dreaming of landscapes or cities, imagining yourself in them, murmuring the bewitching place names, and then finding a way to make the dream come true.
Paul Theroux
6 comments:
So true...
I love this . . it made me smile as it reminded me of my time in America with a car . . .
I found that quote in an article in New Yorker magazine (one of my fav reads!), and wrote it down. The joke is that I'm constantly saying to people, "wait, I have to write that down!". So many good words, so little time to find them all!
Gypsy: thanks for the Aunt Margaret relish! Special, and delicious! (and the other stuff, too)
Deborah: in some places in American, sad to say, you must have a car to get around. We have such a love affair with our cars! Otherwise, I don't read Paul T anymore, he's so unhappy.
Years ago I realized that it isn't just the folks who live in the country who are hardy -- it's the ones who live in the big cities, too. The city-dwellers very often rely on their feet for transportation in order to get to public transportation or to anywhere else less than a couple of miles away, no matter what the weather.
City folks ARE hardy! Seems that every time I'm on an urban-vacation, I walk manymany more miles than I do when I'm at home, car available to whisk me away! I'm wondering about people in big cities, on their way to public transport, on days the rain is coming down in buckets...
I see more details when I walk. Do you?
Hah! As a one-time city girl, in NYC, when the rain started coming down in buckets I ALWAYS had to buy another umbrella! So we walked with umbrellas. And walked fast. Other times, yes, I saw more than when I rode, of course. Although the places I walked in the city -- I never rode those streets.
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