Good morning, Friends!
I got an email from Janet Penley this morning asking if I like to stay in touch with my friends back home, or whether I'd prefer to stay in the moment. Definitely, I prefer staying in touch--it keeps me in dialogue rather than monologue!
On the road, alone, I have lots of conversations with myself: that's what writing is for, right?
But if you stayed on the road too long, you'd just start believing everything you told yourself. Questions and news from home remind me of who and what get to return to after this journey, and they keep me connected to the ongoing conversation with the people I love!
Here is a good snippet from her email I want to share:
Gertrude Stein.and Alice Toklas are living in Paris. They are helping the Red Cross during the war and driving along in a two-seater Ford shipped from the States. Gertrude likes driving but she refuses to reverse. She will only go forward because she says that the whole point of the twentieth century is progress.
The other thing that Gertrude won't do is read the map. Alice Toklas reads the map and Gertrude sometimes takes notice and sometimes not.
It is going dark. There are bombs exploding. Alice is losing patience. She throws down the map and shouts at Gertrude: THIS IS THE WRONG ROAD!
Gertrude drives on. She says, "Right or wrong, this is the road and we are on it."
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