Saturday, May 25, 2013

Quote of the Day (James Morris, on the First Travelers, Adam and Eve)



“Travel began as a precise landlord's retribution, and no matter how plush the circumstances of movement have become, lodged still in travel's DNA are the traces of a sweet deal gone sour: The big plane will shudder, the high-decked ship rock, the Segway reverse course. And physical shocks are the least of it. Our errant first parents had only each other to endure. But we move in the company of ... others, and it costs us. The assorted penalties of contemporary travel are evidence of how long the Almighty can hold a grudge.”—James Morris, on how Adam and Eve became the first travelers, in “Off the Road: When Did the Travel Bug Become Such a Plague?” The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2007

(The image accompanying this post comes from The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, a fresco by the Italian Early Renaissance artist Masaccio, painted around 1425 on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.)

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