Page 55 - Vol V. #8

Together with the fantasy of diving into a well of clear, deep thought, I’d nursed the notion that my own natural sense of apartness—a writer’s lone- liness—might be rescued by a smarter setting. That is, my sense of alienness in my own coun- try (a hopeless, permanent Quasimodo-ness) would somehow blend perfectly inside another language and different cultural norms—even be cosseted there. To use a bloated analogy: think
Often, this is where the bickering begins. I am routinely guilty, it seems, of something called cat- astrophic thinking—a term supplied by the physi- cal therapist I visited after a sudden, prolonged vertigo attack. At the time of the attack (floors tilting, walls spinning, me vomiting) I feared I was having some life-threatening brain event. It turned out, after tests, to be an unfixable inner- ear event. Meaning I must live with the vertigo (now a vexing but manageable dizziness). Given a life-threatening brain event or vertigo, I’ll take the vertigo. But the episode still reminds me how terrified we’ve all learned to be, defensively, most of the time. Because—sorry—crazy-awful things happen to people for no reason, all the time. Electing risk, alongside this knowledge, becomes something of an art form.
of James Baldwin in Paris, or Shirley Hazzard
in Positano. If my own culture viewed me as a gloomy boho, surely a certain savoir faire else- where would recognize, and tend warmly to, the visiting artist.
Instead? Savoir faire zooms past, hellbent on earning a living, hooking up or breaking up with people, raising kids, finishing school, nailing a job, or finding a nice piece of fish at the market.
It’s also considered—unfairly and romantically, in my view—a measure of character.
Product Failure, Stopped Time, Catastrophic Thinking
“You’re no good in situations like this, are you?” is the accusation I can’t deny, but hate hearing.
It means I’d be the last choice of whom to be stranded with, whom to face problems with. This shames me. Hate accuser, hate self. Lose-lose.
To travel is to become an astronaut—ambulant, self-sustaining—since there’s no guarantee that any stopover, any backdrop, will supply what you need.
Then the zipper on the (“durable!”) travel wallet fails, going off its track. The wallet flops open from its dangling position around your neck, grinning at strangers, exposing all its credit cards, passport, multicolored paper currency. You have to use rubber bands to close it, maneuvering them complicatedly around your wrist while extracting what’s needed as the wallet splays shamelessly, flaunting its innards. Husband stares at the bro- ken wallet as if its failure represented some moral lapse of your own. In fact you’d obsessed about purchasing that wallet. In truth, you’d fetishized the getting of all your travel gear—researched, analyzed, agonized—finally choosing what you judged would be right.
But that backdrop, remember, is why you’ve gone.
You’ve gone to meet the new. You’ve gone to place yourself voluntarily inside the crunching maw of newness. In many ways it’s a video game. Stuff comes at you. Think fast. Duck, parry, deal. No shying away. No tranquil withdrawals, no calm reflection. Oddly, very little privacy comes with travel. You’re theatrically visible, On with a capi- tal O. You must be alert, navigate, negotiate— mindful where you are and who’s around and what happens next, forced to make fast deduc- tions and choices that do not (contrary to ads) invigorate. Too bad if you are hungover or sick. Where do we buy tickets? Which kind? How does this machine work? They cost that much? Where did you put them? Did we miss our stop? Whose fault is that? Where are we now? Whom should we ask? You have the language; you start asking.
The right gear, you’d assumed, would make
travel easier.
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