for some reason the sighting of this lone ferrari 328 in paris reminds me of the masterful paul bowles prose le bapteme de la solitude. having purchased a vintage ferrari within the last year, i can almost equate the following passage with the experience of purchasing, owning and driving a ferrari… stupid, i know. there is something broken about a man who decides to buy a ferrari… a self destructive and nihilistic act… here it goes: “It is a unique sensation and has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here, in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for awhile is quite the same as when he came. Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is : Why Go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can’t help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast, luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in comfort and money, for the absolute has no price.”
