Martha says
It'll be a Martha Gellhorn sort of day.
I've been up since forever trying to get my head around a structure for a good piece about Sikkim (start with the American Queen Hope? The recent opening of the Netu La Pass? The prophesies? The envelope from the palace? The town at the edge of the kingdom and end-of-the-road, Yuksom?).
So far, ideas are flying - why I'm not qualified to relate or link any of them is paralyzing, and nothing but really bad writing and a mess has come of it so far.
So will go with what I know, good quotes.
Gellhorn had many; these just from her most popular (late), almost-memoir: Travel With Myself and Another. She wrote it in later years and, having gotten much of the venom out of her system (thankfully, not all), her wit is pure and intact.
From Bill Buford's intro, Why she traveled:
“Martha was fundamentally a loner...Her social life, true to character, was conducted mainly through letters, written late at night, in solitude, and these stories were first told in letters home – letters Martha recovered to write this book.”
From her own intro:
“As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
“I had been a traveler all my life, beginning in childhood on the streetcars of my native city which transported me to Samarkand, Peking, Tahiti, Constantinople. Place names were the most powerful magic I knew. Still are. And I had been hard at the real thing since my twenty-first year, when I decided that it would be a good plan to see everywhere and everything and everyone and write about it.”
On why she travels to write:
“At home, wherever home is, there are interruptions. I settle in temporary furnished quarters in foreign places where I know nobody and enter into a symbiotic relationship with a typewriter. This is stationery travel in contrast to traveling travel and I love it.”
On our embedded traits:
“How odd that one bends one's own twig and it stays bent. Who could have foreseen the permanent effect of childhood journeys ... No manner of living has interested me so much and so long and I will surely go on until I drop trying to see more of the world and what's happening in it.”
From “Mr Ma's Tigers”, reflecting on her own tone in a letter to her mother:
“Then I hear the unchanging voice of my soul (in another letter to my mother)...”
On her love of snorkeling:
“...I have watched underwater scenery and fish with joy all these years. Fish must perceive me as a rowboat.
It is not that easy in life to find an unfailing source of joy.”
On luggage:
“Luggage being a proven misery, I took only one suitcase and a cosmetics case for medicines but I was worried about books. Solitude is all right with books, awful without.”
On the ugliness of the drab (in Cameroon)
“Douala is shabby, sprawling, and hideous. There is a huge cement church, little rows of shops, empty spaces, more shops. Worse, this is not strange and exciting; I've seen it all before, only more attractive, in the Carribean.”
On being alone (in Africa):
“To note: it takes time, great determination and a lot of money to escape civilization. To note further: there (Africa), one is really alone. This has nothing to do with the familiar being alone – lighting on a hotel in a strange city or village in Europe, traveling by oneself, having no friends, working, reading, looking. This solitude: the difference and distance between me and these blacks is too great to cross; it almost makes me feel blind and deaf, so complete is the isolation.”
On boredom (in China):
“This feeling of being clamped in a boredom is as acute as pain, and as solid as prison walls, is something I felt before...”
On happiness:
“Happiness is a good deal better than the absence of pain. To me it feels as if the quality of my blood has changed, something new rich strong is pumping through my veins and exalting my heart, my lungs are filled with sunlit air, the world is too beautiful, I might easily spread my wings and fly.”
On infinity and eternity (of the African sky):
“...This was infinite space. The idea of no boundaries, no end, is terrifying in the abstract and much worse if you are looking at it. The far-off stars were an icy crust; the darkness beyond the stars was more than I could handle. The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky. After sunset, the Africans jammed into their round huts and closed everything to keep out the night; if I understood nothing else about them, I understood that.”
On the energy of individual countries:
“All countries have a feel which you sense at once by some emotional osmosis.”
There, no floosie she.
C
I've been up since forever trying to get my head around a structure for a good piece about Sikkim (start with the American Queen Hope? The recent opening of the Netu La Pass? The prophesies? The envelope from the palace? The town at the edge of the kingdom and end-of-the-road, Yuksom?).
So far, ideas are flying - why I'm not qualified to relate or link any of them is paralyzing, and nothing but really bad writing and a mess has come of it so far.
So will go with what I know, good quotes.
Gellhorn had many; these just from her most popular (late), almost-memoir: Travel With Myself and Another. She wrote it in later years and, having gotten much of the venom out of her system (thankfully, not all), her wit is pure and intact.
From Bill Buford's intro, Why she traveled:
“Martha was fundamentally a loner...Her social life, true to character, was conducted mainly through letters, written late at night, in solitude, and these stories were first told in letters home – letters Martha recovered to write this book.”
From her own intro:
“As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
“I had been a traveler all my life, beginning in childhood on the streetcars of my native city which transported me to Samarkand, Peking, Tahiti, Constantinople. Place names were the most powerful magic I knew. Still are. And I had been hard at the real thing since my twenty-first year, when I decided that it would be a good plan to see everywhere and everything and everyone and write about it.”
On why she travels to write:
“At home, wherever home is, there are interruptions. I settle in temporary furnished quarters in foreign places where I know nobody and enter into a symbiotic relationship with a typewriter. This is stationery travel in contrast to traveling travel and I love it.”
On our embedded traits:
“How odd that one bends one's own twig and it stays bent. Who could have foreseen the permanent effect of childhood journeys ... No manner of living has interested me so much and so long and I will surely go on until I drop trying to see more of the world and what's happening in it.”
From “Mr Ma's Tigers”, reflecting on her own tone in a letter to her mother:
“Then I hear the unchanging voice of my soul (in another letter to my mother)...”
On her love of snorkeling:
“...I have watched underwater scenery and fish with joy all these years. Fish must perceive me as a rowboat.
It is not that easy in life to find an unfailing source of joy.”
On luggage:
“Luggage being a proven misery, I took only one suitcase and a cosmetics case for medicines but I was worried about books. Solitude is all right with books, awful without.”
On the ugliness of the drab (in Cameroon)
“Douala is shabby, sprawling, and hideous. There is a huge cement church, little rows of shops, empty spaces, more shops. Worse, this is not strange and exciting; I've seen it all before, only more attractive, in the Carribean.”
On being alone (in Africa):
“To note: it takes time, great determination and a lot of money to escape civilization. To note further: there (Africa), one is really alone. This has nothing to do with the familiar being alone – lighting on a hotel in a strange city or village in Europe, traveling by oneself, having no friends, working, reading, looking. This solitude: the difference and distance between me and these blacks is too great to cross; it almost makes me feel blind and deaf, so complete is the isolation.”
On boredom (in China):
“This feeling of being clamped in a boredom is as acute as pain, and as solid as prison walls, is something I felt before...”
On happiness:
“Happiness is a good deal better than the absence of pain. To me it feels as if the quality of my blood has changed, something new rich strong is pumping through my veins and exalting my heart, my lungs are filled with sunlit air, the world is too beautiful, I might easily spread my wings and fly.”
On infinity and eternity (of the African sky):
“...This was infinite space. The idea of no boundaries, no end, is terrifying in the abstract and much worse if you are looking at it. The far-off stars were an icy crust; the darkness beyond the stars was more than I could handle. The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky. After sunset, the Africans jammed into their round huts and closed everything to keep out the night; if I understood nothing else about them, I understood that.”
On the energy of individual countries:
“All countries have a feel which you sense at once by some emotional osmosis.”
There, no floosie she.
C
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