Page 57 - Vol V. #8

Enter a hot sense of identity fraud: who we were at home (reasoning, thoughtful, benefit-of-doubt- giving) versus who we become in the airless concrete cell of a stifling Munich hotel in humid summer (where the window won’t open more than an inch). Or when gypsies almost (not quite) make off with our wallet in a Paris metro. Or when an unknown guide drives us through a deserted outback in Turkey and we realize we could easily be robbed, killed, and left there with no one any wiser.
Mortal Reverb, Cellular Memory, and the Unanswerable Question
As countdown to departure looms, if you are planning to travel far, those dear to you begin to look more precious, a bit shrunken. You search their eyes. They search yours. Everyone’s choked by something no one dares name. The surround- ing air in those moments grows still.
“Writers have an immense stake
in their image as aneurs or roving scribes, head- ing out into blue yonder to soak up material.”
It’s mortal terror. The act of going away removes us, with no guarantee of return— imitating its metaphorical brother, sleep: a Petit Mort, a Little Death. Now we have the spectre of the 2015 Paris massacre to decorate our imaginations.
But the ethos of Travel Trumps All stands tough, indestructible (externally, at least). No one slaps departing friends on the back and cracks don’t forget to avoid suicide bombers in the same way they might chime don’t forget your phone charger or don’t forget to text. Yet we invest farewell cel- ebrations with unspoken, ghoulish significance: this may be the final goodbye.
Alright then. Why do it? Why go?
I have asked that question, of myself and others, ten thousand times.
When I was young and poor and feckless, no such question occurred to me. Without a flicker of hesitation, travel on any terms was snatched
up. I’d go anywhere on a dime—and I never had more than a handful of dimes. I went to West
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