Café de Flore, and reading Kerouac for the first time ever and lingering over coffee and the heat is building because it's late morning and it’s August -- and because we're young and reading Kerouac, it's time to leave like everyone else. Flogging the Fiat down to Juan-les-Pins, and we do it non-stop except for coffee and gasoline in stations where you're invited to Mettez un Tigre dans votre Moteur as though it would help. Cars and dust and white cups at metal tables.
Arid August hills and distant ruins,
winding roads descend
in complicated turns
Driving too fast for the car,
we skitter,
revving a bit too high
and suddenly
in the V of the hills
a blue-white glimpse of sea
and the road screamed YES
as we came down.
And all those mornings. My sandals and my woven mat; coffee in a bathing suit and all those Paris girls down for the summer.
It must have been wonderful to have a friend to share the open road.
ReplyDeleteFrom Whitman's "Song of the Open Road:"
"AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, 5
[skip]
Strong and content, I travel the open road.You road I enter upon and look around! I believe you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here.
It was nice to be 20!
ReplyDeleteThis time of year, I'm prone to remember all the old friends not here any more and the list bets bigger. . .