Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

On being restless

... variety of actions, objects, air, places, are excellent good in this infirmity and all others, good for man, good for beast.... peregrination charms our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety that some count him unhappy that never travelled, and pity his case that from the cradle to his old age beholds the same still; still, still the same, the same....

--Thomas Browne, from The Anatomy of Melancholy, 2nd part., sec. 2

***

Consulting maps, assembling charts, drawing calendars; making lists of border towns, searching out accomplices' addresses; phrasebooks, timetables, gazetteers; a milky blue lake set among mountains; anthills along a red earth road; a river that bounds the known world....

"From here," he said, waving across the rice paddies, "It is straight to Argentina."