Tracks Quotes Flashcards
The trip was…
…beginning to lose its simplicity
Suddenly it seemed as if this trip…
…belonged to everyone else but me.
And I felt very…
…small and very alone suddenly in this great emptiness.
It [the trip] was changing me…
…in a way that I had not in the least expected.
The trip was easy…
It was no more dangerous than crossing the street, or driving to the beach, or eating peanuts.
But I found it hard to relax, especially when…
… I had to face being introduced as someone with a label - something that always instigates an identity crisis.
From the dizzy heights of joyous success to…
… the gloomy pits of hideous doubt and self-hating in one hour.
The last burning bridge…
… back to my old self collapsed. I was on my own.
All I remember of that first day alone was a…
…feeling of release; a sustained, buoyant confidence as I strolled along.
They were gorgeous photos, no complaints there…
but who was that Vogue model tripping romantically along roads with a bunch of camels behind her
They… commented rudely on my appearance…
…as if I were a sideshow for their amusement
The self did not seem to be an entity living somewhere inside the skull…
…but a reaction between mind and stimulus
When there is no one to remind you…
what society’s rules are… you had better be prepared for some startling changes.
Camel lady had that…
nice patronizing belittling ring to it.
The most difficult part of any endeavour is…
…taking the first step, making the first decision.
It was essential for me to develop beyond…
…the archetypal female creature who from birth had been trained to be sweet, pliable, forgiving, compassionate and door-mattish.
I liked myself this way, it was such a…
…relief to be free of disguises and prettiness and attractiveness.
And I honestly could not…
…remember, or put into context, etiquette.
But worse than all that, I was now a…
… mythical being who had done something courageous and outside the possibilities that ordinary people could hope for.
‘You have done something I would have…
… liked to do, but never had the courage to try.’
I found for the first time in my life that I…
…really did enjoy the company of animals better than people.
Because of my isolation, Diggity…
…had become a cherished friend rather than simply a pet.
It is a frontier town…
…characterized by an aggressive masculine ethic and severe racial tensions.
He is biased…
…bigoted, boring and, above all, brutal.
They would remain quaint primitives…
…to be gawked at by readers who couldn’t really give a damn what was happening to them.
And I wondered as we walked along…
…how the word ‘primitive’ ever got to be associated with people like this.
I wanted to do the thing on my own without…
…outside interference or help. An attempt at a pure gesture of independence
All around me was magnificence…
Light, power, space and sun
I wanted to shout to the vastness…
‘I love you. I love you, sky, bird, wind, precipice, space, sun, desert desert desert.’
The country I was travelling through…
…held my undivided attention with its diversity
The country seemed alien…
…faded, muted, the silence hostile, overwhelming
And as I walked through that country, I was becoming…
…involved with it in a most intense and yet not full conscious way.
Before I went to Alice Springs… I had never, in all my life…
… done anything which required manual dexterity, patience, or a sense of functional design
And I realised that this trip…
…was not a game. There is nothing so real as having to think about survival.
That cowardly self had discovered…
…an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past.
I loved them all…
…with an anthropomorphizing devotion. No matter how much I discovered about them, there was always more to learn.
where men are men and…
…women are an afterthought
It is such a female syndrome…
…so much the weakness of animals who have always been prey
I had been sick of carrying around…
…the self-indulgent negativity which was so much the malaise of my generation, my sex and my class.`
I walk, I lift up…
…I lift up heart, eyes, to down all the glory of that magnificent heaven
It would seem that the combination of elements…
… woman, desert, camels, aloneness, hit some soft spot in this era’s passionless, heartless, aching psyche
I was now a feminist symbol…
…I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer
