Page 54 - Vol V. #8

The first thing I do these days, when planning travel, is to want not to go.
Mortal risk, hindrance. Bad idea.
member the music, or even the substance of the thrill. As a writer, I regret this. Writers have an immense stake in their image as flaneurs or rov- ing scribes, heading out into blue yonder to soak up material. But rarely have I experienced that quality of rich reflection I once supposed to be
I’m not proud of this unpretty, animal panic, this dumb shuttered obstinacy like a dog’s.
a natural byproduct of journeying—the orderly, stately insights flowing from the mouths of Henry James and Somerset Maugham narrators, a depth and acuity only accessible, presumably, while they are “free.”
There are plenty of reasons for it. They all make sense, in a “life is hard and then you die” way.
I can only describe a developing malaise that in- trigues me partly because it is so unpopular.
In the actual moment? A traveler craves relief from constipation or shin splints. She frets about why an ATM won’t work, sore and swollen lymph glands, where to print a boarding pass, or (wak- ing with a craggy rock lodged in her throat) whether she has contracted tonsillitis. Or that local pharmacies or ticket counters or grocery stores are closed. Or that she’s arrived, with no time to spare, at the wrong terminal. Or that
the contemptuous German passport agent now screaming at her may fine her thousands for breaking the Schengen 90 days rule. Or that se- curity personnel in the sleepy Idaho airport will step forward (as she stands innocently in line) to select her for a special test—swiping the palms of her hands with circular white pads which set off alarms on the test machinery because apparently, logically and conveniently, the hand lotion on the skin of her hands triggers those alarms, so that she’ll be led to an isolated questioning/pat-down center—after which every single thing in her luggage will be removed, and only when officials have satisfied themselves that she and her be- longings pose no danger to the American popula- tion, will she be asked to repack.
Everyone loves travel. Everyone is proud of that. Say the words We want to travel. Watch people nod and smile: conspiratorial, intimate, eyeballs glassy. We’re all sophisticates here. Of course you want to travel. Everyone wants to travel.
Except when, after a while, you don’t. Or not so much.
Shake Me Up, Judy
You may cut me off; call me grinchy or spoiled. You may remind me that most normal people would sacrifice a body part just to be able to con- sider—let alone consider abstaining from—the luxury of what is called “leisure travel.” In fact I would have been you cutting me off, not long ago.
Not for me. Reflection—and its fruit, new under- standings—tends to arrive in the much-much-lat- er, the months and years that follow: in solitude, peace, and perfect privacy.
Innocents imagine that travel brings wisdom; that they’ll be rocked by electrifying insights as they gaze on exotic vistas. In reality a traveler’s think- ing lapses into a vacant trance whenever it can, a spaced-out suspension of wits (to give wits time off before the next urgency).
You’re No Good in These Situations, Are You?
I will allow that travel does also give moments when beauty arrives; beauty so large, so boulever- sant as to feel like pure revelation—indeed like “all ye need to know.”
But these transcendent bits, in my experience, slip away. They’re like a concert you recall having been thrilled by though you can no longer re-
(All the above happened.) It gets stranger.
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Joan Frank