I finished reading the Michael Robbins book, The Second Sex, which was his second poetry collection following his Alien vs Predator debut collection back in 2012. I was slightly disappointed with this volume. I felt it lack the cohesion of Alien vs Predator. If I happened upon this book without any indication as to which was published first, I would have said The Second Sex. The poems felt all over the place kind of like being in the back of a Landrover Defended going cross-country over rough terrain.
Unless, of course, he intended for the ride to be rocky.
I also spent time with the Richard Halliburton book, The Royal Road to Romance. No I haven’t gone soft on you and reading romance novels, this is a pure adventure travel classic.
A quiet, normal life was never in the cards for Richard Halliburton. While the rest of Princeton’s Class of 1921 was busy matriculating into more “respectable” lives, Halliburton stuffed his diploma into a backpack and set off on what he hoped would be the adventure of a lifetime. As it turns out, his hopes were wildly understated.
His story doesn’t end. At the age of 39, he dies in the middle of an expedition to sail a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco, but that’s another story. Halliburton is making me nostalgic for a simpler time in my life, one filled with youthful exuberance, recklessness and a constant eye on the horizon. Once when asked what his profession was, Halliburton answered: ‘I’m a professional horizon chaser.”
And of course, you know that fired me right up! I want to be a professional horizon chaser too. I think I’ve spent the past few years looking for that edge Hunter S. Thompson talked about:
“The Edge…There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”
It’s a dark road that leads to the edge. And as David Lee Roth calls out in ‘Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love’:
“i’ve been to the edge/and there I stood and looked down/You know I lost a lot of friends there, baby/I got no time to mess around.”
I want to come back into the light and chase horizons.
On another note…
I’m not much into cars, vintage or otherwise. My main requirement for a motor is that it gets me from point A to point B and back. It was always this way. As a teenager and into my early twenties I was into American Muscle cars – the Ford Mustang, Pontiac Firebird, and my all time favourite, the Chevy Camaro. My first car was a Camaro Z-28. Loved it.
My little town of Southam held it’s annual Retro Revival today. It’s look back to the 1950’s. On hand were a variety of vehicles from cars to howitzers to tractors and mint vintage condition. They had the hula hoops out and 50’s music blasting from the centre stage. The cars carried the event, but there were people who really got into and got all guy and dolled up in their 50’s threads. I didn’t see any Fonzys though.
The Retro Revival Festival 2017
Soundtrack:
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