innerfictions

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Newfoundland II

Signal Hill, St Johns, Newfoundland. Contingency - walk past the Canadian embassy in London - an exhibition of abstract art - a Newfoundland painter - booked my flight the next day. Newfoundlanders secure in who they are, on the rock. But cods stocks dwindle, and...


"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"

from Questions of Travel, Elizabeth Bishop.



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