Janine Pommy Vega (1942–2010)

Travelogues are a phase I go through. As I get older and pickier about what I read, I am less and less likely to pick up a diary of "How Fab-U-Lous am I for being where you are not?" and his or her companion Bored T. Tears.

Janine Pommy Vega's book has a fantastic and promising title and delivers on it. She travels light, it seems to me, and is more concerned about seeing the world as it moves around than being seen out in the world. She chooses destinations based on the serpent that she tracks in symbol and temple. The serpent is a symbol of the Goddess, and Ms. Pommy Vega is very much in touch with her inner divinity, though not in any egomaniac way.

Her descriptions are lucid and intriguing. I would like to see the places that she has seen. I would like to be as flexible a traveler as she is, and now have some sense of what that would involve. Much of it is not very pretty. Most of it reminds me that, unlike her, I will likely not travel alone.

It is a weekend read, yes, but a long weekend that does not involves chores or distractions.… (mer)