Sartori in Paris
I’d wanted to read this for many years but reading doesn’t come easy these days. 4096 miles on a budget airline in an aisle seat flying over the wide blue expanse of the Pacific did the trick. The only in flight entertainment being Australian fishing shows. I split my reading time between Sartori and Joseph Campbell’s Reflections on the Art of Living. Both insanely good for very different reasons. Kerouac’s unveiling of the insecure and fearful self was enlightening. His drinking now fairly obvious as self medication.
Oddly, his story is built around a cab driver working on a Sunday to provide for his family- something I was unaware of as this day began at 5 am with a conversation with a Lyft Driver who told me that he was working an early Sunday morning to take care of his family. Also strange to have Kerouac mention Redding, CA – the town I graduated high school in- I had no idea he had ever been there. Campbell’s work, of course, filled with extraordinary advice for living distilled from his 80 years and given on his 80th birthday. I’d been unaware he was a friend of Steinbeck’s and actually that the party given in Cannery Row was based on a party that was thrown for him.
All of these scribblers and poets who so influenced me- so connected, not just with one another but also with me. The connections go deeper the further one is willing to look.Both of these works, incredibly appropriate as I set out on this journey. And both very useful as well – one laying out a map and the other a cautionary tale of what happens if you lose your way.
(This and other posts are being created on https://vagobond.app.bio where they can be collected as NFTs. They are free and it’s a fun way to share my trip. Link for this one is below the photo of this rakish vagobond)
