sum of everything

this will most likely be my last post before our final departure . . . so. . . here's what all this euro trippn' totals:

• # of days: 40
• # of countries: 5 {england, france, monaco, italy, & the vatican!}
• # of cities: 16 {london, dover, calais, paris, lyon, nice, monte carlo, venice, lido, murano, florence, fiesole, rome, cinque terre, orvieto, & oxford}. we also spent a little time in ventimiglia, milano, pisa, aimens, & marseilles, but not nearly enough time to say we actually went to these places!}
• # of modes of transportation: 10 {plane, train, taxi, ferry, waterbus, rowboat, metro, city bus, double decker bus, & WALKING} sadly no moped, motorcycle, or bike. . .
• # of nights we went with 2 or fewer hours of sleep: 4, soon to be 5 {trip from clt - nyc -london, a certain miserable night in lyon, shared twin bed in florence hostel, stanstead airport all night, & the trip home most likely}
• # of notebooks filled: 2 {i love my moleskine sketchbooks a little too much}
• # of books finished: 3 {me talk pretty one day, extremely loud & incredible close, & the heart is a lonely hunter}

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the journey is everything

"montaigne believed the journey, in itself

was the idea. yet from this moving plane

i look down on the dazzle of the world,

conscious of his words but wondering

when, when shall i be here, at journey's end?

the journey, said montaigne, is everything.

two hours ago the setting out began

with words of love. it is too soon to be

in love with landscape, altering below-

the flight upriver and the dwindling hills-

as if i came for this, a traveler,

and every wisp of cloud were an obsession.

it is too soon! the journey is myself,

concerned with where i was, where i must go,

not with the clouds about me (what of them?),

not with the morning skies - nor would montaigne

have noticed them, his mind on other things.

the journey is my heartbeat in this plane.

yet with more time? were the excursion longer

to the cote d'azur et d'or, perhaps, la mer,

the hyacinth fields of haarlem, tanganyika,

the river lethe or the serpintine,

the fortunate isles or nepal- anywhere,

i might discover what his words still mean:

the journey, in itself, a thing apart.

but no. these words are older than montaigne's:

the sky changed. i have not changed my heart."

- helen bevington

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au revoir-

g.

{p.s. i think i would like to study drawing at oxford for a year or two one of these days. . . i kinda fell in love with it yesterday}