Always on the Move...

Train adventures "No reminders that those eyes were intimately tied to a body and mind that would travel with me whenever I went and that might, over time, assert their presence in ways that would threaten or even negate the purpose of what the eyes had come to see" (On Anticipation). Something occurred to me the other day as I was trying to find various Florence activities to fill up my weekend. If I’m honest with myself, I spend more time looking up places to go- reading about them, looking at pictures, finding their locations, seeing how much it costs- than actually actively going and exploring. My list of “places to see before leaving Italy” exponentially grows every week and the overwhelming feeling that I might miss something worth seeing has me in constant anticipation. So in my efforts to actually follow through with my plans, I have been dubbing certain days as “Florence day” dragging my friends along on my excursions. After quite a few of these “Florence days,” I found I was not quite as impressed as I thought I would be after reading the descriptions of certain sites. In fact, on a few occasions I was left thinking “That’s it….?” and was eager to move on to the next thing on my list. Perpetually in the future, I think I could take a lesson from the Europeans who enjoy each moment as they come and just RELAX. "No sooner had [Baudelaire] returned to Paris from his Mauritian trip than he began to dream once again of going somewhere else.... this question of moving is one that I'm forever entertaining in my soul” (On Traveling Places). My New York mentality of “always on the go” is in quite a conundrum here. Or perhaps it’s my entire life of constantly being on the move, never quite settling down enough to let things soak into my core. Instead, my mind is already onto the next unknown destination, knowing that my stay is short lived anyway. As Baudelaire stated how “this question of moving is one that I’m forever entertaining in my soul,” I’ve never had problems with moving. People always ask me, “Wasn’t it hard growing up like that?” Honestly, I never had any real issue with it; I would actually get a bit antsy after about a year and a half and have this urge to uproot and move on. As a side note (and a possible explanation for my own behavior), my dad is also the type that never truly settles. The last time I visited my parents for winter break in Hawaii, my dad was already talking about the next place the army might send him. My parents had only been in Hawaii 3 months at that point. Yet, he was already looking ahead, absolutely at peace with the inevitable, even welcoming the time of departure. "What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home” (On the Exotic). I’ll let that line speak for itself. Although, one thought about it… What happens when you don’t even think you have a home at all? A question that has been a constant in my mind these days as I look for this “exotic.”