Day 14
Trip Start
Sep 12, 2010
1
15
Trip End
Sep 25, 2010
Littleton, Colorado
Saturday, September 25, 2010
This morning was especially for Mike J as we visited the La Fonda hotel in the Taos Plaza. La Fonda is the only place in the world where you can view representations of DH Lawrence's forbidden art collection (DH Lawrence is one of Mike J's favourite authors).
The original collection consists of nine oil paintings from an exhibition of thirteen that were confiscated by the police in 1929 from the Dorothy Warren Gallery of London. At that time, Lawrence’s reputation was already shrouded in negative publicity around the suppression of his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) and the seizure of another novel, The Rainbow (1915).
Though the images are mild by today’s standards, early 20th century Victorian England viewed DH Lawrence as a rebel and a spokesman for sexual freedom. As a result, the paintings were deemed obscene and banned in London August 8, 1929. The paintings were in danger of being destroyed until Lawrence, who was living in Italy at the time, agreed to remove them from English soil never to be returned, a ruling that exists today.
After a few hours wandering round the sleepy streets of Taos, we returned to our minivan for the last journey. Soon after, we were crossing the border back into Colorado (hello Rocky Mountains!), back to Littleton, and back to Meeno, our cat who had been wonderfully cared for over the two weeks by Mike's daughter, Tina and his granddaughter Lucia. As we have all through the trip, Mike J and I received a rapturous round of applause from the back seats as we pulled through the gates. We shall miss that wonderful show of appreciation, especially as we arrive at the local grocery store.
We are left to reflect on hundreds of pictures, leaflets, laundry ... and of course, our memories.
The Art of Wandering
The road is not a line between places; it is a place between places, a place of its own. You cannot understand the ravishments of the road unless you overcome the logistical way of looking at things, which is perhaps the most powerful impediment that our hustling way of life puts in the way of experience. Since we cling to a mainly instrumental view of the road, we have forgotten how to be travellers and we are tourists instead, sitting still before the window and watching the world speed past, when in fact we are the ones who are speeding and it is the world that is still, for those who possess the capacity for stillness. We are too enamoured of destinations. We hunger too much for arrival. We treat the road as an interval between meanings, an interregnum between dispensation, and so we are blinded to the richness of meanings and dispensations in the road itself.
Leon Wieseltier
from the liner notes of "Songs From The Road" by Leonard Cohen
