A sick kid, packing, and the insidious business of life have monopolized time and energy. The car ships to Seattle today and the men from the moving company, punctilious looters, will fill boxes with our earthly goods. They load the truck on Thursday and begin their journey to the Northwest, while I drive to my last day at work in Houston in a rented car. The boys and I spend Thursday and Friday nights in motels. I close on the sale of the house at noon Friday. The realtor promises to serve sandwiches. We are Seattle-bound Saturday morning.
Moving is not travel. Pleasure is incidental, though I look forward to flying over the Rocky Mountains and spying Seattle and Puget Sound for the first time, and remind myself not to be absorbed by fleeting inconveniences. For true travel and undiluted pleasure, I’m rereading Montaigne’s Travel Journal, based on his journey to Rome by way of Austria and Switzerland in 1580-81, when Shakespeare was 16. Part of the book’s charm is the frequent charmlessness of much of the journey. Montaigne suffers from kidney stones and is forever lamenting the pain, searching for cures and scrutinizing the contents of his chamber pot. He loves food and books and revels in both. Hawk-like, he pays attention to everything. He’s pious, skeptical, contentious and satiric. As a kvetcher, Montaigne is sometimes brother to Smollett and Waugh:
“The cost of living in Southern Germany is higher than in France; for by our reckoning a man and horse cost at least a sun-crown a day. The landlords reckon, in the first place, the meal at four, five, or six batzen each for table d'hôte. They make another item of all you drink before and after these two meals, and even the smallest collations; so the Germans commonly set out in the morning from their inn without drinking.”
And this, also about the Germans:
“We did not see one beautiful woman. Their clothes are very different from one another’s. Among the men it is hard to distinguish the nobles, for their velvet bonnets are worn by all kinds of people, and everyone wears a sword at his side.”
I’ll allude to the passage by Elizabeth Bishop I cited Tuesday and characterize Montaigne as a friend – reliable, competent, never dull and always good company. He teaches without laboring at it and instills in us a wish to follow his example and even please him. In his introduction to the 1983 North Point Press edition of the Travel Journal, Guy Davenport writes:
“We all lead a moral inner life of the spirit, on which religion, philosophy, and tacit opinion have many claims. To reflect on this inner life rationally is a skill no longer taught, though successful introspection, if it can make us at peace with ourselves, is sanity itself. The surest teachers of such reflection, certainly the wittiest and most forgiving, are Plutarch and Montaigne.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Seeing Puget Sound for the first time? Lucky you! Suggestion: On a clear day, take the ferry to Orcas Island, and drive to the top of Mount Constitution. You can look down the Sound, and take in all the zillions of piney islets, the Cascade Range to the left, the Olympic range to the right, and Mt. Ranier dead center behind Seattle's skyline. Turn around, and look up the channel into Canada's only slightly less marvelous scenery. It's the most beautiful spot I've ever beheld, and I really hope to go back someday.
Post a Comment