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

Impermanence

My iPod can hold a vast number of songs in its 32 GB. I've been adding to the music on my computer for years, adding any song that I happen to hear on the radio and like, sometimes downloading entire albums because I like one or two songs from it. Even after all of this, my iPod is in no danger of being full at any point in the immediate future. And if it were, I could buy the 160GB model and spend a lifetime filling that up. What all of this has led to is the convenience of listening to pretty much any song I want, any time I want. Every song I've ever liked, no waiting. Similarly, TiVo records programs I can watch later and, failing that, there's always the Internet to make available any missed episode of House or Lost. Shows that barely warranted reruns twenty years ago are now available on DVD so you, too, can watch "Roseanne" and "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" anytime you like.

This isn't a rant, mind you. I like this availability. It's great not having to plan an evening around the airing of a TV show. As for my iPod ... well, it's tough loving something that can never love me back, but I'll get by. But with all of this anytime, anywhere availability, I often find myself fascinated by the idea of impermanence. There's something very exciting about things that won't last forever, that I cannot record and take with me.

Food is one example. The old maxim about having your cake and eating it, too, is true of all things tasty. Without getting too graphic, any money you spend on good food is all flushed down the drain the long run- but in the short run, in that infinitesimal fraction of your life you spent eating that meal, it was worth every penny. Plus gratuity.

I stepped outside this past February weekend into an unusually warm breeze, part of Illinois' tantalizing, schizophrenic game of peek-a-boo we call "weather". It was wonderful, but what excited me most was the knowledge that it wouldn't last; I enjoyed it more because I knew it would be gone soon. That kind of now-or-never excitement can only exist when there's no way to record or store except for memory.