"The reclaiming of the past is a discovery..." -Lily H.

What has been lost?

The reclaiming of the past is a discovery: of what had been lost.

(And what had  been lost had actually been forgotten).

-Lily H.

Coward in a comic vein: "Why Do the Wrong People Travel?"

Travel they say improves the mind,
An irritating platitude, which frankly, entre nous,
Is very far from true.

Personally I’ve yet to find that longitude and latitude
can educate those scores of monumental bores
Who travel in groups and herds and troupes
Of varying breeds and sexes
Till the whole world reels to shouts and squeals
And the clicking of Roliflexes.

Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What compulsion compels them and who the hell tells them
To drag their bags to Zanzibar, instead of staying quietly in Omaha
The Taj Mahal and the Grand Canal
And the sunny French Rivera
Would be less oppressed if the Middle West
Would settle for somewhere rather nearer
Please do not think that I criticize or cavel at a genuine urge to roam
But why, oh why do the wrong people travel when the right people stay back home
And mind their business.

Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What explains this mass mania to leave Pennsylvania
And clack around like flocks of geese
Demanding dry martinis on the isles of Greece
In the smallest street, where the gourmets meet,
They invariably fetch up
And it’s hard to make them accept a steak
that isn’t served rare and smeared with ketchup
It would take years to unravel, ravel, ravel
Every impulse that makes them roam.
But why, oh why do the wrong people travel when the right people stay back home
And eat hot doughnuts
when the right people stay back home
with all that lettuce
when the right people stay back home
I sometimes wonder
why the right people stay back home

Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What peculiar obsessions inspire those processions
Of families from Houston Tex
with all those cameras around their necks?
They will take a train
Or an aeroplane
For an hour on the Costa Brava,
And they'll see Pompeii
On the only day
That it's up to its ass in molten lava!
Millions of tourists are churning up the gravel
While they gaze at St. Peter's Dome,
But why oh WHY do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay at home."
and play canasta
when the right people stay back home
won’t someone tell me
why the right people stay back home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAMYAjLZwB8

from "Sail Away" (1961)



* In 2013, to update the lyrics, Guangzhou and Beijing could be alternates for Omaha and Houston.

Coward in a pensive vein: "I Travel Alone"

The world is wide, and when my day is done, I shall have at least traveled free.  
Led by this wanderlust
That turns my eyes to far horizons
Though time and tide won't wait for anyone,
There's one illusion left for me,
And that's the happiness I've know alone.

I travel alone.
Sometimes I'm East, sometimes I'm West
No chains can ever bind me
No remembered love can ever find me;
I travel alone,
Fair though the places and faces I've known
when the dream is ended and passion has flown,
I travel alone.

from "London Calling" (1923)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J_eipF5y7U

Javert decrit par Victor Hugo ("Les Miserables")

L'ecrasement d'une probite irresistiblement lancee en ligne droite et se brisant a Dieu.

illustration  http://whenmysoulflyinthedark.tumblr.com/