I was intending to write about a specific letter but I changed my mind.
Travel is peculiar and few people REALLY travel. Driving or flying to a tourist trap and wandering down the marked paths IS NOT travelling. I shall for my own purpose define travel as the act of joining a new culture ((I am tempted to call this wayfaring instead.)) I have always been a traveller and my wanderlust is not fading with age.
Culture shock is the term they use for when you find yourself somewhere truly foreign. Then there is the reverse culture shock when you come home. I dislike both these terms. I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something unsatisfactory about them. Every summer, for as long as I could, I have traveled. By bike, car, bus, rides from strangers, or whatever. I feel a need to go.
This would not seem to be an initially bad thing, people praise the traveler "all the stories you must have." Allow me to reveal a little secret that many of the epic wayfarers keep; When you go, really go, you will never come back. It is like moving out of your parents house. That space will never be your home again. It will never feel the same. And once you have slept in enough beds, under enough stars, in enough parking lots, you will have no home.
This is not a bad thing. It just gives you a different frame to place things in. Everywhere you go there is a timer. No matter how moved in, it feels temporary because you know at some point you will be living somewhere else. This is isn't home yet.
I will confess, this might be a sysmptom that everyone feels. Maybe it is the aimlessness of being a mid-20 in USA. But I know travelling is what made me really feel it. Waking up in a distant cousins, friends house, sliding on your shoes and leaving a quick note then hopping the back fence. that is truly going. Walking barefoot down Carlisle in New Orleans bound for a coffee house where the people you met have become good friends for a week. And in 16 days you will be somewhere else. They are friends with a timer and it is a lifestyle with a timer. In 17 days you'll be on a bus bound for Memphis to see friends. Might just get an egg timer, that one will be counted in hours.
I am sorry I've lost focus somehow. and so I will now end this post and begin writing a travel narrative from my road trip the year before last.
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7 comments:
I liked your definition of travel as being the act of joining a new culture, instead of falling into guided tourist traps.
I define travelling as going somewhere I have never been whether or not someone else has tredded these same steps a million time before me.
Some would have argued that I didn't see the "real" New Orleans or whatever city it may have been, because we were limited to certain areas, but I believe I did. I believe the cliche tourist market is just as much apart of the city as the obscure coffee shops,gritty streets and abandon houses, because of the people within them. Just because I am a tourist does not mean I have to act like an ignorant consumer, filling my bag full of useless do-dads and glitzy souvenirs.
I thought it funny, not ha ha, but funny strange, when I and a group of others entertained ourselves in a mask shop and had the tourist label thrown at us in the negative. I often think people over analyze the fun out of things.
Why is one person's experience deemed as more valid than another's? It's not.
I think in order to live and breathe a city you have to live there at least six month's, and I'm being generous. So until that happens, you're still a tourist.
To be homeless...homelessness as a state of mind not just a state of being. I once welcomed the idea during a woe is me stroll up the Flint river. The freedom that a homeless person has is incredible in comparison to most. No bills, resonsibilities, or obligations to tend to, absolutely free from and of society. I get excited just thinking about it. And who gets excited about being homeless?
I must say that I found your view of relationships with people as a traveler a little harsh, and maybe even somewhat contradictory. If as a traveler you initiative is to join a culture, how can you do that if you have an internal timer ticking away. Are you really letting people in knowing that your time with them will be short.
Travelling is attaching vs. homelessness which is detaching, a state of constant flux and unrest.
I don't know. I can get to feeling like a regular pretty fast. It helps to have a guide, but I actively just wander and try to meet folk who seem to be legit so I acclimate fast.
Homeless does not mean forsaking responsibilities in this case. I am talking more of a mental state of homelessness where you feel out of place. Or maybe out of sync is a better term.
Again, it is NOT a bad thing for me. Just true. I made good friends in NOLA and I would go out of my way to help them while I was there. But when you are in the world of a traveler you normalize quickly but know you will let go when you go. It is only bad if you are greedy and don't want to accept that people can be happy without you.
"It is only bad if you are greedy and don't want to accept that people can be happy without you".
I like this...very thought provoking. I may quote you in the future.
I am guity of getting attached. I've had several important people leave my life without me really knowing them and vice versa. I think my gluttony comes from a self conscious place rather than a self centered one. I often struggle with if I'd be happy without certain people rather than the other way around. I'm working on the letting go part, and appreciating the time spent. But I am finding that I enjoy giving myself to self people, yet I usually release myself to others in incriments. I find a sick beauty in one's vuneralbility.
What is your definition of a legit person?
Do you always let go completely? Do you ever find yourself holding on to customs, attitudes, memories? I thought you were right about Montagu wishing to construct her own culture, and I wonder if you find yourself wishing or doing anything like that?
I definitely am changed by it. I know I have tried to bring home several things from New Orleans in particular. At the same time I k now they are different and MUST be different. If the world were to homogenize all the interesting things about the world then it would be no different from a shopping mall.
Howdy, friend!
I just wanted to comment on your mention of culture shock. I think you should do something that would warrant a more severe "case" of it at some point. Maybe hit up Beijing in August '08 with me?
Being in a culture so foreign where people stare at you and almost get themselves in accidents, or where children swarm you saying "Hello! Hello!" over and over again. I have seen people go through culture shock and some people be completely impervious to it, but I think that for some it is definitely shock. Even if they know what to expect, the actual situation is different.
It's tricky trying to get into a culture when you're always considered foreign. I think that's one of the biggest factors of culture shock "when you find yourself somewhere truly foreign."
Just some thoughts of mine...
~abc
I want to be a fish out of water more than anything else. I would love a chance. Summer '08 is so far free. '09 I need to go on another US roadtrip I think.
I do acknowledge that I have not had a chance to be really foreign and I know that having that opportunity would definitely give me more insight.
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