I love to read. I mean, I really love it a lot. I posted earlier this week about movies, and now NaBloPoMo‘s writing prompt addresses books. I am thrilled, let’s see what happens:

Take a random book, open it to a random page, and then post the passage that begins at the top left. If you want to go further, tell us if the passage you posted sheds any light on your life at present.

… stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.

- excerpted from “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac

Wow how strange! My favorite city out of the places I’ve visited thus far is by far San Francisco. I realize that by choosing my random page out of a Kerouac book increase the odds of something about San Fran being mentioned increase a lot… yet still I really love that city. It’s kind of magical that this passage chose me. Just yesterday I wrote about travel and the questions I’m asking myself about it. Now I take a passage from one of the greatest road trip books of all time and my favorite city is described in such beauty, that I am again drawn to visit SF and see it for myself. It reminds me why people don’t stay at home with their mom’s their whole lives. There is something very important about seeing beauty first-hand versus seeing it on TV or reading about it in a book. It’s a whole different type of experience when your body is actually there. When you are witnesses something with your own, unique set of eyes.

Everyone becomes disillusioned by staying in one place for too long. It becomes very hard to look at your surroundings with wonder or amazement when you feel you’ve seen it too many times. I want a breath of fresh air I have never breathed before. Something amazing always breaks us out of old patterns and habits. It’s a jolt to our senses. Don’t we all need that sometimes? Like the cold blast of water at the end of a hot shower. I feel like this city is slowly lulling me to sleep, and I’m not tired. I’m not ready to fall asleep here yet. I’ve got lots of living to do. I’d like to travel so I can stay awake to the world.

I must thank Kerouac for reminding me to keep seeing things with my own eyes. For there is nothing else in the world that can see the way I see. The only thing unique to us is our perspective, it would be a damn shame not to use it!

Knowing your purpose for traveling (or not) is important. What’s your reason?

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