Sailing to Ithaca

Okay, so I claim not to believe in the parcellated mind. Nonetheless, I continue to bifurcate (mostly) my offerings on this blog: markets-related posts from Sunday thru Friday and humanities-related posts Friday thru Sunday. There come moments, however, that I read an essay so good and thought-provoking that I find it difficult to contain my excitement until the weekend; somehow, I have done so for this essay (Sailing to Ithaca). It had me champing at the bit all week!

"I have always been a book-driven traveler. When I was eighteen, two weeks after obtaining my driver’s license, I talked a friend into buying an old Dodge and setting out with me for Mexico on the sole strength of having read D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent. The Plumed Serpent had as much to do with the real Mexico as the Baghavad-Gita has to do with the real India, but I was quite sure that it and a Spanish grammar were the only guidebooks we needed. More precisely, I thought of Mexico as a guide to The Plumed Serpent. To my mind, countries existed as illustrations for books."

This essay speaks to me with its 'pursuit of the mind'. Yes, it is intellectual, intelligent, and well-written. But it is the essay's authorial flourishes -- and, in particular, the many peregrinations down mental passages and byways that resemble Odysseus' travels and are almost Proustian -- that serve to haunt me. The Odyssey, indeed!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Please feel welcome to share your comments; I am, as always, interested in your thoughts and opinions...