Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me Download Epub Mobi Pdf Fb2 12
Osman Blunt
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I wasassured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When yearsdescribed me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middleage I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I amfifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Fourhoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck andset my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, eventhe clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder,the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomachhigh up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in furtherwords, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I setthis matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me download epub mobi pdf fb2 12
DOWNLOAD ---> https://shurll.com/2yMH2O
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a waywardman, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, thevictim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason forgoing. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-ingarden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time andspace, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implementthe journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of theprocess is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomersto bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think theyinvented it.
Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factorenters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity,different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament,individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two arealike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takesus. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable,dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only whenthis is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go alongwith it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey islike marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. Ifeel better now, having said this, although only those who haveexperienced it will understand it.
My plan was clear, concise, and reasonable, I think. For many years Ihave traveled in many parts of the world. In America I live in New York,or dip into Chicago or San Francisco. But New York is no more Americathan Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I didnot know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America,was working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpyreservoir. I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass andtrees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality oflight. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers. But more thanthis, I had not felt the country for twenty-five years. In short, I waswriting of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in aso-called writer this is criminal. My memories were distorted bytwenty-five intervening years.
Once I traveled about in an old bakery wagon, double-doored rattler witha mattress on its floor. I stopped where people stopped or gathered, Ilistened and looked and felt, and in the process had a picture of mycountry the accuracy of which was impaired only by my own shortcomings.
So it was that I determined to look again, to try to rediscover thismonster land. Otherwise, in writing, I could not tell the smalldiagnostic truths which are the foundations of the larger truth. Onesharp difficulty presented itself. In the intervening twenty-five yearsmy name had become reasonably well known. And it has been my experiencethat when people have heard of you, favorably or not, they change; theybecome, through shyness or the other qualities that publicity inspires,something they are not under ordinary circumstances. This being so, mytrip demanded that I leave my name and my identity at home. I had to beperipatetic eyes and ears, a kind of moving gelatin plate. I could notsign hotel registers, meet people I knew, interview others, or even asksearching questions. Furthermore, two or more people disturb theecologic complex of an area. I had to go alone and I had to beself-contained, a kind of casual turtle carrying his house on his back.
With all this in mind I wrote to the head office of a great corporationwhich manufactures trucks. I specified my purpose and my needs. I wanteda three-quarter-ton pick-up truck, capable of going anywhere underpossibly rigorous conditions, and on this truck I wanted a little housebuilt like the cabin of a small boat. A trailer is difficult to maneuveron mountain roads, is impossible and often illegal to park, and issubject to many restrictions. In due time, specifications came through,for a tough, fast, comfortable vehicle, mounting a camper top--a littlehouse with double bed, a four-burner stove, a heater, refrigerator andlights operating on butane, a chemical toilet, closet space, storagespace, windows screened against insects--exactly what I wanted. It wasdelivered in the summer to my little fishing place at Sag Harbor nearthe end of Long Island. Although I didn't want to start before LaborDay, when the nation settles back to normal living, I did want to getused to my turtle shell, to equip it and learn it. It arrived in August,a beautiful thing, powerful and yet lithe. It was almost as easy tohandle as a passenger car. And because my planned trip had aroused somesatiric remarks among my friends, I named it Rocinante, which you willremember was the name of Don Quixote's horse.
Since I made no secret of my project, a number of controversies aroseamong my friends and advisers. (A projected journey spawns advisers inschools.) I was told that since my photograph was as widely distributedas my publisher could make it, I would find it impossible to move aboutwithout being recognized. Let me say in advance that in over tenthousand miles, in thirty-four states, I was not recognized even once. Ibelieve that people identify things only in context. Even those peoplewho might have known me against a background I am supposed to have, inno case identified me in Rocinante.
I was advised that the name Rocinante painted on the side of my truck insixteenth-century Spanish script would cause curiosity and inquiry insome places. I do not know how many people recognized the name, butsurely no one ever asked about it.
Next, I was told that a stranger's purpose in moving about the countrymight cause inquiry or even suspicion. For this reason I racked ashotgun, two rifles, and a couple of fishing rods in my truck, for it ismy experience that if a man is going hunting or fishing his purpose isunderstood and even applauded. Actually, my hunting days are over. I nolonger kill or catch anything I cannot get into a frying pan; I am tooold for sport killing. This stage setting turned out to be unnecessary.
It was said that my New York license plates would arouse interest andperhaps questions, since they were the only outward identifying marks Ihad. And so they did--perhaps twenty or thirty times in the whole trip.But such contacts followed an invariable pattern, somewhat as follows:
There was some genuine worry about my traveling alone, open to attack,robbery, assault. It is well known that our roads are dangerous. Andhere I admit I had senseless qualms. It is some years since I have beenalone, nameless, friendless, without any of the safety one gets fromfamily, friends, and accomplices. There is no reality in the danger.It's just a very lonely, helpless feeling at first--a kind of desolatefeeling. For this reason I took one companion on my journey--an oldFrench gentleman poodle known as Charley. Actually his name is Charlesle Chien. He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained inFrance, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quicklyonly to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and thatslows him down. He is a very big poodle, of a color called bleu, andhe is blue when he is clean. Charley is a born diplomat. He prefersnegotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad atfighting. Only once in his ten years has he been in trouble--when he meta dog who refused to negotiate. Charley lost a piece of his right earthat time. But he is a good watch dog--has a roar like a lion, designedto conceal from night-wandering strangers the fact that he couldn't bitehis way out of a cornet de papier. He is a good friend and travelingcompanion, and would rather travel about than anything he can imagine.If he occurs at length in this account, it is because he contributedmuch to the trip. A dog, particularly an exotic like Charley, is a bondbetween strangers. Many conversations en route began with "What degreeof a dog is that?"
The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long agoand rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, andconversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving todeath on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, willcheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to atotal stranger who claims to be lost.
Under the big oak trees of my place at Sag Harbor sat Rocinante,handsome and self-contained, and neighbors came to visit, some neighborswe didn't even know we had. I saw in their eyes something I was to seeover and over in every part of the nation--a burning desire to go, tomove, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietlyof how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored,not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heardthis yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every Americanhungers to move. One small boy about thirteen years old came back everyday. He stood apart shyly and looked at Rocinante; he peered in thedoor, even lay on the ground and studied the heavy-duty springs. He wasa silent, ubiquitous small boy. He even came at night to stare atRocinante. After a week he could stand it no longer. His words wrestledtheir way hell-bent through his shyness. He said, "If you'll take mewith you, why, I'll do anything. I'll cook, I'll wash all the dishes,and do all the work and I'll take care of you."
b1e95dc632