O, MOBILE!
When the mind starts to wander, and doubt, and dredge up old bad things and convince you that it is a good idea to drunkenly stare down old homes that hardly matter, it is time to take the cure: literature. Read something someone else wrote about what you’re trying to write about. Relieve yourself of the pressure of being witty or poetic or engaging. Tomorrow I am going to Mobile, Alabama. Who has written about Mobile, Alabama? Henry Miller!
“Mobile is a deceptive word. It sounds quick and yet it suggests immobility — glassiness. It is a fluid mirror which reflects sheet lightning as well as somnolent trees and drugged serpents. It is a name which suggests water, music, light and torpor. It also sounds remote, securely pocketed, faintly exotic and, if it has any color, it is definitely white. Musically I would designate it as guitarish.” Excerpted from My Dream of Mobile, an essay in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, a collection of Miller’s travel writing. His experiences were apparently less positive than I hope mine will be.
Ah, Mobile! Ah, Henry Miller! Why did I bring a tent, a sleeping bag, this wool shirt, this pair of socks? I should have packed books — novels and essays about all kinds of things worth reading. When I am not out on the bike, craning my neck around to look down side streets and gape at mansions and burned-out homes with equal enthusiasm, I should have my nose in a book. Being out of graduate school — though technically I am not, I am merely out of classes — has softened me, and also taken me out of my world of books.
Sure I’ve read a lot in preparation for this trip: mapmaking books, travel books, books about writing, books about motorcycling, essays on anthropology and architecture and cities and etcetera else. But I have neglected so many other works. Henry Miller, for one. He is funny, isn’t he? “Musically I would designate it as guitarish.” I wonder now if I’ll think about that when the city skyline (what can be called a “skyline” at a mere 10 feet above sea level) emerges in the distance. Will I, too, decide that Mobile seems faintly guitarish?
Of course, Miller wrote his essay while laying on a cot in France, dreaming about Mobile. He wasn’t there. He pictured it all in his head, a fantasy about Southern life, especially life on the Gulf. When I get to Mobile I doubt I will spend my nights dreaming about it — I’ll probably dream about other places instead, or fall asleep watching cable television, as I like to do when I stay in motels. And I love staying in motels.
Tomorrow I promise to do these two things: send the tent off, or leave it here. And go buy a book. Probably Henry Miller. Until then I am snug in my sleeping bag on the floor of a house in New Orleans. The house is painted purple. My sleeping bag is purple. The cold air seeps up through the floorboards but my sleeping bag is warm as well as being purple, and resting on top of a yoga mat, which I now realize is also purple. There’s a lot of purple going on here. Sure, this is camping. Tomorrow coffee and books. A few hundred miles on a motorcycle. Lunch in a cheap diner, dinner in a cheap motel room. Mobile, sounding faintly guitarish in the distance.
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