Travel

What do you think of when you think of travel?

I instantly think of being lost in somebody else's city, roaming through the twists and turns of streets with unfamiliar names, different food smells, and another language adorning every sign and every tongue. I think of doorways and stairways leading into unknown buildings, the very fact that I do not know where they lead urging me to explore. I think of exciting glimpses into someone else's world as I pass by, little slices of life, brief and illuminating.

That's the most important part to me: looking into someone else's world for just a moment- not enough to understand it (which would take a lifetime) but merely life at a glance. I'm excited by the idea that this foreign, completely alien place is somebody else's home. I'm walking through their back yards, in a sense. The strange calls and noises of the street are a thrilling caucophony to me, but to those who live there it's the background music of their daily lives. What for me is another turn on a meandering day-trip is for them the road home- every crack in the sidewalk familiar, every step taken a million times before. I like the idea of sharing that for a moment. I like to think that I am collecting those moments as I travel, arranging them into a kind of mosaic. Some peices are small, such as a peek into a half-open doorway or down a narrow side street. Other peices are larger- sharing a conversation or a meal with someone I've never met. Together there are a variety of sizes and colors and textures, all unique and separate, united only by the fact that they are part of my mosaic.

I'm no expert. I'm writing about travel because I think about travel, and I think about travel because I am only a novice. I hope to learn more- not only from travel, but about travel- as I go on. And of course, I will go on- I'm going to Dublin, Ireland in April. I don't know where I'll go after that, but I will go. When I think of all the things that I may do in my life, elaborating and increasing that mosaic seems to me the most important.

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - St. Augustine, via Trisha

"You will travel to many exotic places in your lifetime." - the coolest fortune-cookie fortune I ever got