words & roads

...what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

Hey, I saw your post about Toulouse-Lautrec's painting of the couple in bed. I thought it might interest you to know that the people he was painting were prostitutes. Probably the very ones he visited, as he spent most of his time in the are of Paris where they worked (Montmartre.) That specific painting was of two prostitutes who had formed a lesbian relationship and so were a little like him perhaps in finding love in hard circumstances.