Poem of the Day

A wind’s in the heart of me, a fire’s in my heels,
I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;
I hunger for the sea’s edge, the limits of the land,
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.

Excerpt from “A Wanderer’s Song”
by John Masefield, Salt Water Ballads

Crowds

Charles Baudelaire
(Translated by Arthur Symons)

It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude: to play upon crowds is an art; and he alone can plunge, at the expense of humankind, into a debauch of vitality, to whom a fairy has bequeathed in his cradle the love of masks and disguises, the hate of home and the passion of travel.

Multitude, solitude: equal terms mutually convertible by the active and begetting poet. He who does not know how to people his solitude, does not know either how to be alone in a busy crowd.

The poet enjoys this incomparable privilege, to be at once himself and others. Like those wandering souls that go about seeking bodies, he enters at will the personality of every man. For him alone, every place is vacant; and if certain places seem to be closed against him, that is because in his eyes they are not worth the trouble of visiting.

The solitary and thoughtful walker derives a singular intoxication from this universal communion. He who mates easily with the crowd knows feverish joys that must be for ever unknown to the egoist, shut up like a coffer, and to the sluggard, imprisoned like a shell-fish. He adopts for his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that circumstance sets before him.

What men call love is small indeed, narrow and weak indeed, compared with this ineffable orgie, this sacred prostitution of the soul which gives itself up wholly (poetry and charity!) to the unexpected which happens, to the stranger as he passes.

It is good sometimes that the happy of this world should learn, were it only to humble their foolish pride for an instant, that there are higher, wider, and rarer joys than theirs. The founders of colonies, the shepherds of nations, the missionary priests, exiled to the ends of the earth, doubtless know something of these mysterious intoxications; and, in the midst of the vast family that their genius has raised about them, they must sometimes laugh at the thought of those who pity them for their chaste lives and troubled fortunes.

Pretty Small Road Trip

Today I received a newsletter from AARP (because, yes, I’m that old) featuring an article titled, “The 27 Prettiest American Small Towns.” (It’s a bit of a cheat because three of the 27 towns are located in Essex, Connecticut but we digress … )

The List:
Bisbee, AZ
Fredericksburg, TX
Natchitoches, LA
Franklin, TN
Dahlonega, GA
Summerville, SC
Mount Airy, NC
Middleburg, VA
Shepherdstown, WV
Berlin, MD
Cape May, NJ
Essex, CT
Brattleboro, VT
Goshen, NY
Charlevoix, MI
Mineral Point, WI
Dyersville, IA
Eureka Springs, AR
Lindsborg, KS
Durango, CO
Cody, WY
Park City, UT
Virginia City, NV
Pacific Grove, CA
Solvang, CA

Using my handy-dandy Road Trip Planner app (or RTP as the kids call it), I plotted a road trip that hits all 25/27 towns. 9,262 miles round-trip.

As I’ll be starting from Arizona I chose to map the trip passing through the Southern states first (for reasons we won’t go into here), and then circling up North(ish), before sliding down the coast of the Golden State.

First obstacle to my grand adventure: No car. When I moved to Portugal last October I sold my trusty 2018 Honda Hybrid Accord. It served me well. So many miles. So many coast to coast road trips.

Second obstacle: I’m in Portugal.

Solution to obstacle one: I’m looking into purchasing a used 2022 Chrysler Pacifica.

(Isn’t she pretty?)

Solution to obstacle deux: I’ll be returning to the States later this month to attend to matters to which I need to attend (don’t be nosy).

Boom—obstacles eliminated!

25/27 Prettiest American Small Towns, here I come!

Stay tuned!

(Also, I’m open to suggestions for side-adventures along the way)

A Literary Recipe

Chili Reinas

Roast large bell peppers until the skin turns black. Wash in cold water and rub off the blackened skin. Cut around the stem and remove the seed and coarse veins. Take some dry Monterey cheese, grated fine, and with this fill the peppers, closing the end with a wooden toothpick.

Prepare a batter made as follows: Beat the yolks and whites of six eggs separately, then mix, and stir in a little flour to make a thin batter. Have a pan of boiling lard ready and after dipping the stuffed pepper into the batter dip it into the lard. Remove quickly and dip again in the batter and then again in the lard where it is to remain until fried a light, golden brown, keeping the peppers entirely covered with the boiling lard.

Take the seeds of the peppers, one small white onion and two tomatoes, and grind all together into a pulp, add a little salt and let cook ten minutes. When the chilies are fried turn the remainder of the batter into the tomatoes and boil twenty minutes, then turn this sauce over the peppers.

This is a most delicious dish and can be varied by using finely ground meat to stuff the peppers instead of the cheese.

Mexican restaurants of the present day in San Francisco are a delusion, and unsatisfactory.

—from Bohemian San Francisco by Clarence E. Edwords, 1914

Quote for the Day

“We met at the time in my life when I desired franker speech and freer relationships with all manner of men than I then had. Not everything they did was flawless in my eyes. Not everything I did was flawless to them. But somehow I came early to feel that my life would have been definitely impoverished had I not walked with these travelers on the low road.”
– Frank O. Beck, Hobohemia (1956)

Quote for the Day

“You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things: you are experiencing, you are connecting, you are being transformed, and you have the trinkets and photos to prove it.”
– Agnes Callard, “The Case Against Travel”