Chelsea's blog

Like little sand castles

Mia stepped off an absurdly small plane and onto the boiling tarmac with all the eagerness of a young person on the brink of “real life.” She had been waiting for this moment for years, ages, eons—to step out of her old, confined, all-American life and into a new, worldly, adventurous one. She had been aching to shake off the house that still stood in Yuma, weathered and ordinary and now slightly less crowded with her absence. She had been counting down the days until she could leave her too-noisy, too-numbered family in the dust of a North African-bound Boeing 767—and now, standing wide-eyed beneath a sky that had looked bluer in the air, the erratic movement of her heart assured her that the moment had finally arrived.

The instant her Keds touched the oil-spill of pavement that served as the runway, Mia decided that she liked this place infinitely more than she had ever or would ever like Yuma. It wasn’t exactly a difficult decision; she hated it there. She hated the yucca plants, the unnatural amount of palm trees, the stagnant air and the slow people. She hated that house, stuffed so full of children she thought it would burst. She hated how her father was so condescending towards everyone and everything; nothing was good enough for him. The elderly were lazy, as were the youth; there was too much out-sourcing and incompetence in the work place; people bought too much and earned too little. There was always something to complain about. Even worse than the bitterness of her father was the passivity of her mother. She loathed how her mother quietly accepted her father’s criticisms, and how she allowed Mia’s five younger siblings to run rampant through the house and the neighborhood. It was all too oppressive and embarrassing to bear, and so she found a way out.

Hackney, London

"There is no way to return. I know I am on a journey to collect the bricks to build my life. I just need to be strong. No crying baby anymore. I pull down the windows, and sit down on my seat." (Pg 168)

The above passage. from Xialo Guo's A Concise English-Chinese Dictionary For Lovers, was one of the most striking, for me. It is located immediately after a short dialogue between Z and a man named Pete, whom she met in Berlin only a few hours before but does not want to leave because she "feel[s] so lonely." When he tells her she doesn't have to leave, she refuses this idea, weakly insisting "but I have to go." I was touched by this dialogue and the passage that follows it, because it seems to put into a nutshell the inner conflict that often accompanies travel, with which I often struggle myself. It is the idea that you can't quite have your cake and eat it too - you can't sail around the world and collect memories of adventure, and also experience a quiet, comfortable home life with your family (unless you are Allie Fox - though that 'home life' was neither quiet nor comfortable). While traveling is often exhilerating, fresh, and completely worthwhile, every moment you spend abroad, exploring your world and your own capabilities is another moment not spent with your friends and family (and, in Z's case, lover), a moment you cannot reclaim. It can even become wearisome to spend several weeks, months, or years without the company of your own countrymen, or without hearing your own language spoken or tasting your country's food.

A painting of the Tuscan countryside

I was a little surprised by how closely Hazzard's novel,The Evening of the Holiday, was related to Leopardi's poem, The Evening of the Festival Day. A major theme in both works seems to be the pain that accompanies the passage of time and the sickening, dull, nostalgic ache that permeates so many memories. Tancredi, for instance, lives part of his life in mourning for his past life; he dreads the passage of time, and looking back on old memories, of a beautiful sister, for instance, or an unpaved path or even simply sunlight falling on an empty countryside, actually hurts him. The forced ephemeral quality of his relationship with Sophie causes Tancredi to resent and fear time even more, knowing that it will eventually wrench him from his new love. For a moment, he believes Sophie to be outside of time and so engrossed in the present moment that she does not concern herself with questions about the future and the pain that will accompany their inevitable parting. He both admires this quality, considering her love for him to be "perfect" for its agelessness, and is frustrated with it because he does not share it. When he realizes that he was wrong, that Sophie does dwell within the bounds of time and has been quietly concerned with her fast-approaching departure all along, he is disappointed and suddenly feels anew his despair, now intensified, over the inevitable loss of love. 

 A Venetian Courtyard

"It asked to be explored, but explored alone, without consultations with, or obligations towards a companion. To step down there now as if completely free, to be released from the arduous states of play of psychological condition, to have leisure to be open and attentive to perception, to the world whose breathtaking, incessant cascade against the senses was so easily and habitually ignored, dinned out, in the interests of unexamined ideals of personal responsibility, efficiency, citizenship, to step down there now, just walk away, melt into the shadow, would be so very easy." (page 106)

I found the above passage in The Comfort of Strangers to be the most arresting and relatable of all. This idea of immersing yourself in life and the moment is in some aspects what travel is all about. To break free from the daily grind of common life, to ignore that personal responsibility, forsake efficiency, disregard citizenship - that is so much of the allure of travel. Time spent abroad is meant to be time spent truly living and enjoying life, collecting and exhausting every moment, appreciating the details of that moment (the smell of the city or the fields or the jungle, the taste of the air, the sensation of sunlight or rain or humidity or salt water) and enjoying your own life, for yourself - not necessarily for the benefit of another person (unless your travel has a humanitarian bent) but for personal growth and satisfaction.

A match made in heaven?The following is based on the study question: "When Aschenbach sets out on his journey from Munich, he does not have a destination in mind. What ultimately leads him to Venice?'

The Fox's

While reading the Mosquito Coast, I began to wonder if we could consider adding a new category (perhaps a sub-category) to Cohen's categories of reasons for travel. It is made very obvious throughout the novel that Allie Fox is feels alienated from his American center; he is extremely critical of all things mainstream and modern, and has essentially withdrawn himself and his family from American society, even while living in America. However, his attitude towards traveling away in hopes of locating a new, more authentic center struck me as very different than that of the characters we've been introduced to in our other readings. Port and Kit, for instance, seemed tormented by their alienation from their center, regretful and disillusioned with the state of the world. Allie, on the other hand, seems not so much tormented as disgusted, and painfully arrogant. He is proud not only of the fact that he is more intelligent and sensitive to the country's development than mainstream society and the people who comprise it, but of the fact that he is leaving it behind. He indulges in the notion that "most Americans are homing pigeons, and none of them has the conviction to do what we're doing - picking ourselves up and going to a different country for good." Allie repeatedly describes himself as the "last American" or the "last man". He sees himself as something between a heroic retro-pilgrim and a martyr (page 84). Perhaps his sub-category, beyond being alienated from his center, could be this: he travels for the bragging rights, and to feel more accomplished, more worldly, more intelligent, and simply "better" than those who do not travel - those he leaves behind.

The Root of All Evil?

While reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness, I began to wonder about the effect travel can have on a person's character and, conversely, the effect the travels of other people can have on the "natives" of the visited land (and whether or not the natives become "corrupted" by contact with tourists, as the list of study questions asked). We have encountered a few examples of travel's power to change tourists in some of our previous readings; in Sheltering Sky, for example, Kit undergoes a complete and rather dark transformation. Heart of Darkness, however, seemed to revolve from the very beginning around the changes a traveler can experience, with some focus on the changes the natives undergo, as well.

Travel's power to change people was acknowledged very early on in Heart of Darkness, when the physician comments on the changes that "take place inside" (p 13) and when Marlow considers how the wilds of Africa may turn even a "gentle, quiet" man such as Fresleven into an animal (p 10). Marlow even begins to experience these changes himself; he can feel them creeping inside of him, enveloping him more and more the longer he remains in this foreign land. 

the traveler's best friendThe desire for authenticity, stemming from feelings of both disillusionment with the sate of human society and alienation from one’s own society, is one of the primary motivations for travel and tourism; it launches ships, planes, and people to far-off locales, stranding them in a world not their own. This strange and exotic world frequently offers the authenticity-seeker disappointment and danger in lieu of the genuine experiences and the spiritual "center" they so crave, leaving them disenchanted and perhaps more lost than they were when they first arrived. The idea that it is both futile and dangerous to travel in order to authenticate one’s existence is supported by several novels and sociological articles, and one must then wonder if there is perhaps a safer and more practical way of locating authenticity in life, and if travel is best left to those who do not wish to claim pieces of foreign locations and cultures, but merely wish to appreciate them for what they are.

Route 66: Some get their kicks on Route 66

"I was itching to get on to San Francisco."

"The time was coming for me to leave Frisco or I'd go crazy."

"Beyond the glittering streets was darkness, and beyond darkness the West. I had to go."

"...all I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go find out what everybody is doing all over the country."

"I wanted to pursue my star further."

Shanghai Micky D's"The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no charm, no beauty, no ideals, no culture--nothing, nothing."

These words, spoken by Kit as she vented her frustrations regarding the destructivity of war, made me pause. While they were offered up very candidly, wearily, and perhaps even lacking in conviction, a piece of them rings very true in the modern world.