There, like the wind

This is a trip for the imagination, and for seeing old friends and new places across the northern hemisphere. This blog is about what connects and disconnects them: sounds, tastes, customs, art, structures, climates, landscapes.

The flights are from Melbourne to San Francisco, Toronto, Paris, Cairo, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and finally Melbourne. On land there are trains to New York, Ljubljana, Basel, the Moorish past and once-modern art of Spain, the deserts of Jordan and Egypt, India’s north-west and the Malacca Strait.

But first there are preparations and this is where the story starts, except to say that Patrick White instigated everything. The Tree of Man tells of life and its brevity and my first edition copy tells of it on foxed pages inside a chipped and faded jacket. The novel’s title is taken from a verse by A.E. Housman:

There, like the wind through woods in riot,

Through him the gale of life blew high;

The tree of man was never quiet:

Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

from A Shropshire Lad, quoted in Patrick White, The Tree of Man.