Travel Notes: turning my attention towards Crawford, Zornoza, Lopez, quantum tunneling, journal mining & the self-referential meaningless of destinational pursuit

now that we've «settled» in [at Plymouth & Anchorage] i hope to not be going anywhere for a spell [famous last words i've said before i'm sure] | this is the 9th place we've lived in since being in NYC but the first place outside of Manhattan | i doubt i'll be venturing much into Manhattan except maybe to run or to get decent sushi | maybe i'll make a pact to travel thrU Manhattan but never stop or stand in one place on THAT island | yesterday i ran all 5 bridges connecting Brooklyn & Queens to Manhattan in one stitched circuit [Bklyn—W-burg—Pulaski—Q-boro—ManH] but running is not really traveling | running is like a hamster running on a wheel & the bridges are the tunnels of it's Habitrail [the only world it knows]:

i wore my Nike Vomero's for the last time—the pair i bought last March while visiting NYC | those shoes have since taken me many miles through the Karuna forest in Nairobi [acquiring a red tinge] & around Kenya & Ethiopia & Mali—Timbuktu even | those shoes have pounded pavement in the bay area & New Mexico & in Bangkok & around the Akasaka palace in Tokyo & around Hyde Park in London & along the cobblestoned banks of the Tiber in Rome & then up & down the westside of Manhattan when i started training for this marathon | after running all 5 bridges in one run i'm officially retiring these shoes for more pedestrian purposes | which is to say i won't run for the sake of running in them | sometimes i run anyway to places just to save time | things are further apart here in Brooklyn | it's a long way to the post office or Trader Joe's or to the shoestore to get new shoes | when i got new shoes the other day my intention was to actually get a haircut | but the barber i googled was next door to a White Castle & some «human hair wig» shops that scared me off | anyone that's been downtown around Fulton street knows what i'm talking about | i got cold feet & decided to get some new shoes instead | i went into a shop with a wall full of fancy «running shoes» that were even labeled as such | i asked the guy working there if they had running shoes & he didn't even blink an eye knowing what i meant—that i was that kind of wise-ass white guy asking for running running shoes & he said «sorry this isn't that kind of place» | there's a dozen other athletic shoestores around downtown Brooklyn with «running shoes» sections but none of them have shoes that you'd run in for no other reason but to run | not that i'm picky about my running shoes | i finally just got what felt most comfortable & no i'm not one of those idiots jumping on the barefoot running bandwagon | our ancestors ran barefoot because they didn't have access to running shoes | we have since evolved to run with shoes & we will continue to do so | unless you want to live under a rock which is not a bad place to be i'd just rather live under a bridge right now | anyway here's my retired shoes for what they're worth:

i can't imagine they mean anything to anyone but me | the same with these names of places i'm throwing around: destinations are only interesting to those that have been there | unless you talk about what went down to get from here to there [there being t+here] | which leads me to the subject of this post & that's travel writing or more aptly: travel-based narrative fiction | the literary equivalent of the road movie | according to the all-knowing WIKI: «Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations for any purpose and any duration, with or without any means of transport. Travel also includes relatively short stays between successive movements. Movements between locations requiring only a few minutes are not considered as travel. As an activity, "travel" also covers all the activities performed during a travel (movement). Travel is a wider concept than a trip.» | it goes on to say some other things like that a roundtrip is a subset of travel & gives some reasons why people might travel or the modes of transport they might take or how travel across certain borders might require a passport | then they say the word travel has it's origins in travail which implies a laborious or toiling effort | which is to say travel requires or expends work which is interesting to think about in terms of physics | to make an object travel between points A & B requires a force or work especially when there is resistance or friction to overcome which is often the case in this real world | just like it is also interesting that we say "work" of art or "work" of fiction | it's the same thing—getting the viewer or reader from point A to point B & in the case of writing steeped from travel it would presumably mimic or ressurect the original «trip» but beyond that it would REreveal what was revealED or at least thought about on the way or allow the reader to re-experience the journey vicariously beyond just reading the sequence of events | what's got me to thinking about travel recently [in addition to our recent move & thinking about how to frame my own ARK CODEX onto a linear geographic itinerary] is that i just finished Stanley Crawford's Travel Notes: from here to there:

Stanley Crawford himself sent me the above copy saying it was from the original [& only] printing & that it fell off the back of a truck or something & that's why the spine is all twisted | i didn't know what i was getting into when i started reading it which is a good mindset to have when reading it so if you don't want the experience ruined for you then skip down a ways | not that i plan on telling you what happens | i hate when people do that | but talking about a book is necessary to get others interested in it otherwise that book might not exist [or few would know it does] & this is a book that was born in 1967 & is at risk of extinction | maybe what i'll do instead is just quote some of my favorite passages | actually before that even i'll give you some context which is already out there on the internet in this interview in Bookslut where Crawford says that Sartre said something to the effect that «history had stripped us of the right to assume the position of the god-like omniscient narrator hovering over the action as if he has nothing to do with it except tell the story. From this it follows that the narrator must be part of the story, which he can be telling to someone for stated or for ulterior motives, or both, or confiding to himself (or herself, in the case of Log) in order to make some sense of what has befallen herself or simply to leave a record of events.»

here's also this interview with Deb Unferth that will give you a good idea where he's coming from if you haven't already read Crawford [in which case you must drop everything now & read Log of the S.S.] | though Log is a sort of anti-travel book—Mrs. Unguentine travels on a boat but to nowhere in particular | definitely not from point A to point B | if anything into a brimming alphabet soup of points | the book is more about the vessel itself & the relationship between Mrs. Unguentine & her estranged husband | Travel Notes precedes Log & in a sense it documents this transition to the introspection subsequently characteristic of Crawford wherein he gets enveloped by a system that he [or his protagonist] can only see from the inside so even if they were traveling they wouldn't be able to tell [per Einstein] | he sails in a vast sea of potential without an anchor which is not to say it's unbridled stream-of-consciousness—far from it—the beauty of it is that he somehow structures it into a compelling narrative form |

so to speak

Travel Notes is really three books in one | at first glance the first section [«So to speak»] is what you might expect cracking the spine on a book entitled «Travel Notes» in that it's a narrative moving more or less between points A & B | the only problem is that as usual Crawford's narrator is far from reliable & we're not sure where point B is or for that matter point A | there's no specific mention of place names to ground you [in our real world at least] though he does have a driver & an interpreter so you can presume he is in a foreign country & there's vague references here & there of characteristics [such as green eyes] inherent to the people native to the land in which he is traveling |

in the above interview with Unferth he mentions that his editor sent him One Hundred Years of Solitude while he was writing Log & it served to boost his confidence & validate what he was doing | before then even i think you could say what Crawford was doing in Travel Notes tended towards «magical realism» maybe without him knowing it & coincidentally One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published in Spanish the same year [1967] as Travel Notes | maybe these were both products of the times in the Americas | there was no shortage of psychedelic & surreal American art in the 60s that was «far out» but Travel Notes works it's magic in far subtler ways | if you didn't know what you were getting yourself into [the unassuming cover as you can see is just plain blue—far from paisley] you'd have to stop & reread what you read to make sure it is what you thought you were reading which is what happened to me initially & not because it's 43 years later—that's the other thing is that it's timeless—there's no specific mention of anything that would ground the story into a time or place |

it starts out straight-forward enough for something called Travel Notes in that he is on a plane going somewhere—but we don't really know why he is going there | there's a lot in it that actually reminded me of Lewelling's Tortoise were i to compare it to any other Calamari book & strangely he also carries around a tape recorder like Lewelling's protagonist but instead of sitting next to a large oaf that eats his meals he is sitting next to a woman that says she is going to this place they are going to take photos | from this you can presume he is a tourist of some sort [though later when they arrive he sees this same photographer again & she is taking pictures of the moon—«she could have done that anywhere.» while there are a few close encounters with female [& male] travel companions there is a wife back home | in one scene he is shooting a pistol & startles a nude sunbather behind the dune he is shooting at & remarks: «thank my lucky stars she was not my wife, who would have made a scene, unutterable and interminable; she too travels, but never do we cross paths.»

he gets to the place he is going & gets a car & driver & an interpreter but then the car breaks down & that's where things start to get weird | a bus comes along & he decides to get on that but the bus can't get around the broken down car so they have to dismantle the bus & rebuild it on the other side of the broken down car & on the other side of some dysfunctional train tracks | i mean he calls them «railroad tracks» but when the train finally comes this is how Crawford describes it:

« ...everyone stood at the side of the road to watch the glittering approach down the railroad tracks, which were blocked at the road by a heap of side panels and windows from the bus. The wind-blown strains of music, previously neither this nor that, were becoming distinguishable, and on the odd chance that something might come through I switched on my tape recorder: a marching tune, a cheerful piece I have heard many times before but don't know the title of. Now the glittering neared, cleared and went distinct as of many shiny horns, trumpets, trombones, tubas, drums and tambourines, as played by some fifteen men dressed in colorful blue uniforms and white-plumed golden helmets and riding a long bicycle-like conveyance of a certain grace and bounciness; it was trailed by a second bicycle car, pedalled vigorously in unison by another dozen men, to which was linked a third car, all tubular and spindly but entirely empty; and as the train neared in all elegance, thin spokes flashing in the sun, banners flapping, the young woman emerged from her shed to wave. The band played on, past her, towards the blocked crossing, and now nearly there, the instruments began to fade one by one and the band members and pedallers turned at us and stared.»

the emotional punch from a description like is beyond what any «physical» description could deliver | it's the kind of beautiful & magical absurdity you might experience in a Roy Andersson film:

it gives «train of thought» meaning beyond just being a metaphor | the plans to rebuild the bus spiral into a seemingly endless project mired in bureaucracy so he decides to try his luck in a bi-plane that he & some hack pilot he befriends push away from the bus | or so he thinks:

«The engine was now started in the conventional manner, that is, by giving the propeller a good yank. It spun around a few times with a whishing noise, until stopped by air-drag. The part-time aviator repeated this gesture a number of times, to the same effect, and then said we should climb in the plane. So we made ourselves comfortable. I hesitated to point out that neither the engine was firing nor the propeller turning, except when stirred by an occasional gust of wind, and in the end I remained silent.»

meanwhile the part-time aviator acting as if they are in flight excitedly recounts all his past adventures & «though patented, are all so far-fetched and unbelievable that I cannot begin to describe them.» he again becomes disillusioned & bored with this mode of transport & when the part-time pilot falls asleep he slips away from the bi-plane |

his series of adventures follow a certain Gödelian logic | his next travel companion confesses he had invented a word or more specifically: «he had invented the word first, so as to invent the thing next. That was how he got started.» & from there it spirals into this recursive logic & were he to utter the word out loud «everything else would start falling to pieces, bit by bit, and we would never reach the capital...» | heady stuff to be sure reminiscent of Zeno's paradox | [knowingly or not] Crawford takes elements of Zeno, Gödel, Escher, Bach & Flatland & fuses them together in the context of an adventurous travelogue | the book had me thinking a lot about GEB in how self-reference & formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of "meaningless" elements [though Travel Notes was written well before GEB] | there are also numerous subtle allusions to quantum mechanics contained within for example this description of a bed:

«The bed frame consisted of an agreeable intermingling of wood and metal, and I made a mental picture of it, so as to have some notion, a clear image, of the structure which supported me when I next lay down, which i soon did. I mention this as a physical antecedent. An act. That is all. For I cannot account for what happened all of a sudden — such is the nature of the world's smallest electrical charge — but there are thoughts, a multitude of thoughts swarming at a precipice, which I could not express. Or: would not express. Now with pen and paper. Not with the jarring collision of a pen-point against the deserted plain of a blank sheet of paper, beneath the unseen amphitheater of thousands of eyes, or that single pair which might be in a next room; and whom, the so-called readers, I lead on the forced march of tourism for no reason at all, to be honest, except that we all like to travel.»

at this point the reader becomes inextricably involved as does the author | they/we become intertwined | Crawford goes on to say: «They, those eyes, you, are always there so long as the possibility exists of seeing what there is to be seen. And there is paper, it will be seen, and what is written on it.»

at which point he forsakes paper & takes to writing on his own skin | & that's how that first section ends |

after this there is less traveling but the Travel Notes [the document itself—the physical pen on paper] & his writing of them are still the common unifying thread | most of the second section [«After a fashion»] takes place in some sort of decrepit inn [that is more like the Hearst Castle in a state of ruin turned into an amusement park of sorts] where he gets himself involved in a love triangle of sorts with the inn keepers that starts to display the sort of interrelational tendencies we know & love in Crawford reminiscent of Log in it's anchorless quality | in the last section [«As it were»] our narrator [after settling into more permanent digs] implicates himself in a murder/art heist—thing is as i mentioned the narrator is far from reliable & in his attempt to speculate to the cops as to the culprit things spiral out of control | the travel notes themselves are the glue not the means to an end | they also get stolen from him as he is writing them | it's all a strange self-referential spiraling juxtaposition indeed | unfortunately [& surprisingly] the book [published in '67 by Simon & Schuster] was never reissued | this is an archaeological document that needs to be preserved if anything to show the development of Stanley Crawford's voice | it is a living organism of Crawford's transcripted DNA | so we'll see—maybe Calamari will re-issue it but if not me then someone needs to for sure |

where I stay

a different sort of non-linear travel book i also read recently is Where I Stay by Andrew Zornoza | Where I Stay is not so much about getting from point A to point B [at least not by the author] but it is a series of snapshots of point A, point B, point C, etc. [cities in the U.S. & Mexico] that include a captioned snapshot [literally] taken by Zornoza with an accompanying short vignette or prose poem in words | i published a few of these a while ago online in Sleepingfish N |

your idea of a place can be somewhat arbitrary depending on the day, circumstance, your prior associations, who you meet, the weather, the time of year or just luck of the draw | this is the sort of book that validates such thinking | each piece is titled with a date & a town/city name: {«Aug. 2, Cheyenne ,Wyoming», «Aug. 12, Rt. 93, Nevada», «Aug. 12, Los Angeles, California», «Aug. 17, Tijuana, Mexico», «Sept. 9, Odessa, Texas», etc.} | the pacing of the texts read like Zen koans—a descriptive snippet that tries to capture just a moment in place & time | the rest is left for the reader to connect the dots | the vignettes are vague enough that you can weave your own «story» tailored to your preconceived notions of the place | the captions to the photos are more forthcoming & personal | for the beach scene in Lincoln City, Oregon he says «There are many things I have to tell you. I'd like to do that without speaking.» which is what Zornoza does | the vignettes are bound together into a handsome book object [designed by Christian Peet of Tarpaulin Sky] |

as we speak i'm navigating the waters of Kamby Bolongo Mean River which would qualify as an anti-travelogue i'd say:

the funny thing is when you google «Kamby Bolongo» this book by Robert Lopez comes up when in fact historically speaking Kamby Bolongo was one of the phrases Alex Haley's earliest [to America] slave ancestors passed on by word of mouth down the line eventually to Alex Haley himself which helped him to trace his «roots» to «The Gambia River» [Bolongo means river in Mandinka] | the book has nothing to do with Alexy Haley or The Gambia [i'd love to see the expression on the face of the unknowing reader who thought it did!] | then again i'm only half-way through | but i've probably heard Lopez read most of it here & there & i think he does at some point mention this trivia leading to the book's title though it's not something the narrator is in a situation to understand & the book takes place far from The Gambia | yes «THE Gambia» just like you always say «The Bronx» | i can't think of too many other places with The in the name |

the book takes place in some sort of institution but we don't know the specifics of it as the narrator is confined within it & apparently this is the only world he knows besides his childhood in Injury Alaska but even that we can't be so sure about & if you google «Injury Alaska» the place apparently doesn't exist or gets trumped by all the personal injury lawyers up there | talk about unreliable narrators this guy's as reliable as Billy Bob in Slingblade | here's some lines from the book to further exemplify this point:

«I think I have lived an entire life beside the point but even this is probably beside the point.

This is why the sound between words is always better to listen to than the words themselves.»

if you're looking for a narrative to take you from point A to point B forget about it | it's all in the narrator's head who's name is given at some point but i forget what it is—maybe Jack or Johnny | a caller says his name at some point & this sets him off | mostly i think of the narrator as Charlie as that is who is talked about most of the time | Charlie is the narrator's brother [if you can believe him] | at some point i think he also describes what he is saying in the book as a conversation he has been having with himself for 2/3 or 3/4 of his adult life | not that the narrator is necessarily an «adult» but we can surmise that he's been thinking this up for 30-40 years |

in regards to the «here» where the novel takes place this is what is said [should the telephone ring]:

«Why I will ask people to identify themselves is because sometimes I have callers ask for people who aren't here. I don't know why callers think those people are here when I am the only one who is ever here. I am here all the time and there is never anyone here with me. As far as I know I am the only one who has ever been here.»

Robert Lopez has a knack for writing books that take place nowhere but in someone's head & that are seemingly about nothing [see also his Part of the World] | only Lopez [& Seinfeld] can make nothing seem so compelling | he also has a funny way of saying things like rather than say he will only take phone calls from one place he says he WON'T take calls from {x, y, z, ...} & proceeds to list out all the states & countries so you have to go & count the states to get 49 & then figure out which state he doesn't list | it might sound tedious but it's necessary & therapeutic | this is how the narrator's mind works [& also how the mind of Lopez works if you've ever had the pleasure of meeting him] | after you read this book the cells in your brain will be realigned as such |

where i'm writing from

so that's what i'm doing now | i'm reading | i was supposed to go to Oklahoma this past weekend but our plans were snowed out | flying to OK is not really «traveling» anyway | maybe it is according to WIKI but not me | for starters flying is not traveling—flying is the greatest human indignity you can experience in this contemporary life  | it takes you from point A to point B but you miss everything in between so it is a mere relocation | for now here i am:

down under the Manhattan bridge in the snow

staying in one place can be the same as traveling as long as you pay attention to the change | as long as there is some sort of arc to it |

Manhattan & the Brooklyn Bridge early in the morning with the moon setting

every day it seems there's a movie being filmed out our windows & all sorts of strange things are happening around the manhole outside | men with waders will disappear or snake cables down underground or drop styrofoam containers with parachutes attached down in the hole & then spend entire nights in 5° weather outside our window over the manhole | as i type there's a guy idling in his «WATER MAIN COMPANY» truck out there & here's a shot i took from earlier in the day:

if this guy looked back up at me this is what he'd see [me standing next to the I in WARING]:

only now it's nighttime & it's snowing |

i used to keep a «travel journal» that i mine on occasion but have barely tapped into [for writing writing] | i also used to diligently keep a «dream journal» that i mined extensively for Poste Restante | like Zornoza's «stories» the pieces or posts in Poste Restante each have a date & place stamp | but they are far removed from any real world events | i'm not very good at writing down my dreams anymore nor do i keep a journal now that i blog | though now that i think about it i remember my dream last night: i woke up on a hot crowded beach | i started playing with this white labrador retriever | then it occurred to me i didn't know whose dog this was or for that matter where the hell i was or how i got there | i was thirsty so i went to the boardwalk to find some water | i ran into my friend J but he looked 10 years younger & i could barely see i was blinded by the harsh sun | that's all i remember really besides the feeling of this strange beach & waking up not having a clue where i was [in the dream] & then waking up for real & it's been snowing all night & the snow plows are grinding on the streets |

here's the physical journals i used to keep before i had a computer:

travel journal spines

these sorts of things aren't interesting in & of themselves to anyone but me | just like my used shoes | that's what i'm getting at here or trying to get at is how to recount such details of getting from point A to point B to make them engaging | & by details i don't mean actual details but the emotional content | the little things that stand out in time | the sparks that detach themselves from your immediate reality & become universal symbols for something else |

for an example i'll take a journal entry from exactly 10 years ago today [when i was keeping it on computer]:

February 4, 00 – Memphis, Tennessee – Sitting here overlooking the pyramid in Memphis. J has been at her interview all day at St. Jude and is due to return. We flew out Thursday morning and after a layover in Dallas got into Memphis around three or four. We got a rental car that ended up being a smelly Toyota truck that reeked of tobacco smoke. The irony is that there is not trunk so we don't have to worry about getting locked into it (after Max’s story about his friend who got accosted and thrown into his truck when they were in Memphis a few months back). So we didn't have to worry about that. St. Judes got us a room at the Marriot, they pretty much paid for everything except for my plane ticket which I got for something like $100 bucks. We didn't have much time before H picked us up for dinner. It was really her interview time with Jess, but H insisted that I go. H is a skinny British woman with frizzy hair and high heels that looks like she could've been a rocker in her time. We went to a place called the Society Cafe. And indeed it was. All the well-to-do people of Memphis, i.e. the older White people. It was a nice dinner. I tried to not act too bored as most of what they were talking about was going over my head. But we got on secular matters such as Memphis and whether it's a livable city...

that post goes on for pages mostly about the typical sites of Memphis like the Mississippi & Graceland & strangely i did end up turning that into an «story» called Milking St. Jude that i got published a while ago in Exquisite Corpse & even stranger is that in it i'm self-referentially ruminating about lack of story in it & it's awful now that i read it & someone should have shot me | certain things should be kept hidden in drawers | here's the entry from my dream journal closest to 10 years ago:

January 21, 2000 – Tucson – I was in Guatemala with my mom. We were on some boat in the open ocean and the waves were huge. I was scared I was going to be sick, and luckily the boat turned back. We got off the boat and some older American couple singled my mom out and the woman offered my mom some animal crackers. I grabbed the box of animal crackers and threw them. I said it was pretty obvious they were trying to poison her and steal all her money. They ran into dressing rooms. The woman came our first and I started chasing her. I chased her up a lightpost, she jumped and then I caught her and killed her. I found a cliff bar in her fleece jacket and threw it on top of her so if anybody found her they would knew my justification for killing her. I’m not sure how I killed her but there was sugary blood everywhere that had the consistency of gatorade and I figured it was from all the animal crackers and cliff bars.

that to me is far more interesting than anything in the real world | i tried to mine 20 years back but i didn't always date things so it's hard to tell what's what & my memory is not so reliable | i was in Santa Cruz at the time finishing up my bachelors in math so most of what of those notebooks are full of are mathematical derivations mixed with bad poetry & doodlings & song lyrics/structures & ruminations on the likes of Gödel, Escher, Bach which i mentioned above | & the pages to the notebooks from that time are all shredded on the edges because i had this little bird that was obsessed with chewing off strips of paper | here's a scan of a page from one of those notebooks:

apparently i hadn't figured out how to write a linear narrative yet though it appears i was trying to get to the root of The Edge's magical delay setting in this ruminating gibberish | here's the closest entry to 15 years ago to the day [just after i got my first Mac so it's digital][& the Vine Deloria quote that starts it off is from God Is Red which i was probably reading at the time]:

February 12, 1995 — Axixic, Mexico — "The religious situation today eloquently reflects the American psyche— we create our own reality and we are absolutely free to do so. This condition, however, suggests that there is no reality and that we live in a completely intellectual world where the free choice of the individual determines the value and emotional content of experiences. We are at ground zero religiously with little possibility of a revelation to enable us to move on." —Vine Deloria, Jr.
History is to Nature as Time is to Space.
It's been a while since I've written. Long since finished "Clear Lake, Black Hills" (Strip Mine) still not sure about the title, but I've been editing it. More so, I've been working to pay off my debts so I can go climbing. All I thought about today was climbing— I miss it so much I almost want to cry. Just the feeling I get around granite, on a road trip, I've almost forgotten what it's like, but my soul is full of wistful longing. Lake Chapala is covered with pig-shit-eating hyacinth (lirio) and it extends like a flat plain as far as the eye can see. It looks like safari country on the African Savannah (at least what I imagine it to be like.) If the winds are right, they scatter the plants in swirls to the other end of the lake. I see this when I hike way up in the mountains. The mountain rises steep and you can quickly get a fresh perspective. When I sit in the house here in Axixic, writing, workers come through, every which way, with loads of bricks and buckets of cement. People I've never seen. It's a machine gone mad, this house, I don't know who's in charge, walls collapse or rise, roofs come down, all apparently random and who knows where the orders are coming from or whose paying them. But in my fabricated reality I don't speak a word of Spanish and I only notice them out of the corner of my eye, much as I try to ignore them.

now that i'm sedentary maybe i should go back & transcribe my hand-penned notebooks | maybe i'll occasionally post 20-year flashbacks here though the notebooks don't start with any regularity until the summer of 1990 when i first left the North American continent & started putting the time & place | better yet after they have been filtered/processed | incidentally the novel i mention above [Strip Mine] is another one those things that i'm thankful never got published | though i was revisiting it the other day to see what i could salvage for the chapter in my ARK CODEX where he lands in the Black Hills of South Dakota | though of course blurred so as to take place under water | under a whole lot of water under the bridge | ARK CODEX is definitely a travel book of sorts [not that i'm sure where i'm going with it but that's besides the point—i do know point A is the North Pole & from there i follow a rather random path around the [submerged] globe [with my flock in tow] | hence why i'm reflecting so much on travel-infused literature & reading the likes of Crawford as there is a lesson there in how to write a compelling narrative based on travel & have it be entirely something else that can stand alone |

(c) 2010 Derek White