My imagination had taken me so far, that I could've, without leaving, already imagined myself there, and returning. So that all this mental preparation is startlingly converting to tangible reality- leaves me gasping for breath and wide-eyed, in a momentary flash of anxiety. Going places that I have only read about, remotely, and only recently that are real and will materialize before me in matter of days.
I think that's why traveling is so awesome. It lights a fire in the pathways of my brain and continues to burn for years and years. So that even now I think about my first trip out of the states to Belgium, and how I bore my friends incessantly with my trip to Turkey. They remain significant because the experiences are unique and not a matter of routine. That if I ever allowed myself time and inclination I could go back there and just revel in the weird fact that i was in some other time and place and people.
Not just I suppose to tick off the list of places gone and wonders of the world seen, because ultimately that only leads to disillusion. The mona lisa is small, carpet sellers are annoying, one tumble of bricks is ultimately like any other tumlbe of bricks lying in ruin... but I suppose it's the unexpected. How you relate a song, cloudy days, the particular taste of hollindaise, to wherever and who ever you were at the moment. And it's memory, but in a way for me more vivid than childhood- a choice to alter the fabric of your life in a way that you were unaware of when you were 5.
3 comments:
Not to mention the history. And the adventure of it! Plain and simple.
Yes. Exactly what you said, M. The unexpected - sights, sounds, tastes, people. All of it.
And the being away from home.
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