Origins of Wednesday xlvi: The road uproariously taken

I am acquainted with people
who come from large families,
and while I try not to let on
that I envy their diversifica-
sion of hereditary risk, it's
even more difficult to conceal
my awe at prospects they enjoy
for a specialization of labor,
among these strands of siblings
they flaunt, as so many bubbles
from a blow-pipe. Having grown
up with no more than a single
sibling - and he, of an avoca-
tion too precarious for memoir -
and the barest minimum of par-
ents, there never was any ques-
sion of one's father's turning
to young Evremond, for example,
You be responsible for Physics,
and on to sweet Clytemnestra,
You account for English travel
writing. Rather, it put every-
one's feet to the fire of the
basics of the orderly mind, to
have to do the reading for one-
self. The shelves expand, as
you'd fear, with prejudicial
speculation in both directions;
but with the diversions, not to
say procrastinations of experi-
mentation favoring scholarship
by conveyance, I still find my-
self slipping onto a carousel,
back studiously to the window,
to read in the travels of Bos-
well, Fielding, Byron, Durrell, 
Bedford, Chatwin, Paddy, Maugham,
Rory Stewart, and Graham Greene.
I never knew a tongue to spread
itself afield so fabulously, and
turn the telling phrase on time.

Tell me, Clytie: where am I now,
unless this is still Afghanistan? 

      We were well prepared. Bunches of chains, three spades,

      a pick, and stout ropes to prevent the lorry falling o-

      ver the edge, were quickly in action. The next mile took

      four hours. Some dug; some hung on to the ropes; some 

      cast down branches of a peppermint-smelling herb as though

      before the Saviour's ass. The day was almost gone when a

      zigzag spurt and cheers brought us to the narrow saddle of

      the Sauzak Pass. 

Robert Byron
The Road to Oxiana
1937
Paul Fussell
  introduction
1982
Rory Stewart
  preface
2006
Oxford University Press, 2007©

i Stanley Kubrick, photography
1947