You apply the skills you use to produce your own book to make an anthology. Shaping. Rhythm.
Australia's arid western region, from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean coast, is a beautiful, haunting, but largely empty land. Dominated by the harsh, almost uninhabited Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, the region is known only to Australian Aborigines, a handful of white settlers, and the few travelers who motor across it.
Life's the adventure. You don't have to drop your bundle and go bush. It's about being brave within the context that you're in.
After thirty years of being 'the camel lady,' believe me: One becomes inured to the spotlight.
There are worse things than being called 'the camel lady,' I suppose.
Camels are wonderful animals. Witty, intelligent and sensitive.
Camels are still trained in Alice Springs for tourist jaunts and for occasional sale to Australia's zoos.
When 'Tracks' first came out, I was courted by Sydney Pollack. I had lunch with him, and he opened the conversation with, 'Honey, you ain't gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.' I really liked him, but I turned him down, because - well, I was stupid. I also turned down a great deal of money.
If you think of all the enduring stories in the world, they're of journeys. Whether it's 'Don Quixote' or 'Ulysses,' there's always this sense of a quest - of a person going away to be tested, and coming back.
In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj.
When I was young, I thought I wouldn't be a good mother. Now I think I would be, but I'm too long in the tooth.
People who wander are nicer to be with. Movement militates against hoarding possessions and against bigotry, because you are constantly moving across boundaries and having to negotiate with people.
I love the desert and its incomparable sense of space.
I do not mean to say that we should, or could, return to traditional nomadic economies. I do mean to say that there are systems of knowledge and grand poetical schemata derived from the mobile life that it would be foolish to disregard or underrate. And mad to destroy.
As we've lost this idea of pilgrimage, we've lost this idea of human beings walking for a very, very long time. It does change you.
My thoughts can sometimes be spurred by what I read, but my reading is extremely eclectic.
The agricultural revolution transformed the earth and changed the fate of humanity. It produced an entirely new mode of subsistence, which remains the foundation of the global economy to this day.
My own memories are packed tightly away. I very rarely bring them out for viewing.
The French word for wanderlust or wandering is 'errance.' The etymology is the same as 'error.' So to wander is to make mistakes. In other words, to make mistakes, to make errors is sort of the idea of learning through trial and error, allowing the mistakes to be part of the process.
London sort of wore me down. I can't cope with the winters!
