Matthew Henry John Bartlett

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Saturday 05 January, 02008

Stay

by Matthew Bartlett @ 6:27 pm

The gift economy

From Ralph Waldo Emerson’s journals (via Kim Stanley Robinperson):

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

2 responses to “Stay”

  1. aaron says:

    the gift economy: awesome. Expresses exactly what I’ve come to think is true.

    travelling: why’d you do a road trip then?

  2. Matthew says:

    Because I like my self, for the most part.

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