Pilgrimage

We don't have a concept (graceland) of pilgrimage. In secular times we don't have—we are not obliged in one's life to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. I just read "Yoga for people who can't be bothered" by Geoff Dyer. I wasn't going to check it out of the library but it is inscribed to me. I once read in a self-help book to just go to the section in the bookstore and the right book will speak to you.

My favorite quotes from this book:
they asked "Are you an alcoholic?" she answered. "I should hope so, after all the time and money and effort I've put into it."

Emptying Your Mind
"Oh I haven't got that far yet"
"How far have you got?"
"Not far at all. 'Near' would be more accurate than 'far'."
"So how near have you got?"
"I am near to where I started-but I am even nearer to giving up."
"How Come?"
"My mind is too empty."

A prophecy was in the process of being fulfilled. "Life: said the face in the mirror, "is taking its toll. All the disappointment and regret, all the bitterness and rage that you have tried to keep hidden, is now breaking out, eroding the last patina of handsomeness and hope. You are no longer a handsome man. This is the fate of all those who place an undue value on physical attractiveness. You will become one of those people-one of the hundreds of people to whom you paid the bare minimum of attention simply because you did not like the way they looked."

TRAVEL
I lay in bed, preoccupied by the age-old questions of travel: Why does one do it? What am I doing here? These questions generated a third: What do I want out of life? The answer to which was: to be back home, to stay put, to stay in, to put my feet up, to watch telly. For at least 6 months before coming to Libya I had been feeling what I suspected might be the tug of middle age....an intensifying wish for the familiar.

TOURS
I simply do not like tours. I detest being lectured at and told things, even by an amusing guide. I like going at my own pace, and besides, at some level I already knew everything-that is nothing that I ever needed to know, and if there was anything I didn't know that I felt I did need to know, I could look it up later, when I was back in the comfort of my own home, surrounded by books I did not yet possess.

I need to look up this guy Frank O'Hara's "I do this I do that" poems.
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I wish I could put down my thoughts as easily as writers do. (okay I know it is not easy and they do revision after revision but I love connecting with a good book...and I am grateful for writers. They will always be on my gratitude list.