The previous post got me thinking about this:
THOUGHTHAWK
she’s learned the winds in order to betray
the winds. today she drifts less frugally,
this unknoxed, disencalvined, no-god’s-prey
whose spirals widen centrifugally…
Which far more effectively expresses what I was trying to say.
“We were cut off from comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember, because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign – and no memories” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone, young and wilful and wild hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad light figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish” James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I disagree with Conrad’s explanation for it, but he so eloquently captures the feeling. I’m not talking simply about the feeling of being different that comes from speaking a different language. Having grown up in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society, I am aware of that it is entirely possible to have completely unrelated languages and yet share a largely common identity. This also contributes to my rejection of the idea of a unitary identity (defining the self in terms of just one facet).
Travelling makes you feel different in a deeper manner. Things which are so natural and taken for granted at home, which are so familiar that they feel like instinct, no longer work. It can be frustrating when all your weather-sense – which works so well at home, your ability to predict fairly accurately, based on cloud formations and wind patterns and temperature, what the weather will do during the day, no longer matter. Suddenly familiarity with the plant-life, knowing what insects are likely to sting, even your sense of direction, are all irrelevant.
The cumulative effect of those little things is a sense of alienation. Being different in a strange country is not just about not being able to speak the language or finding certain cultural practices strange. It is about being “cut off from comprehension of [your] surroundings”. Travel is often a humbling experience because this alienation, this lack of comprehension can leave one feeling impotent, frustrated and, frankly, silly.
But there is a delicious freedom in this alienation, too. Suddenly, removed from all familiar instincts, the all-too-familiar socialised norms fall away, too. It is the alienation of travel that makes it okay to try new and sometimes previously-taboo things. It is the alienation that makes it possible to overcome fears and prejudices in order to do something new. Someone said that travel is not just about learning more about a new place, it’s about learning more about yourself. The alienation of travel, the fact that you cannot fit in and you have no hope of, you are cut off from, really comprehending your environment, creates a wonderful space to recreate yourself.
The glorious freedom of being alone, being anonymous and being alien is one of the deepest and most precious joys of travel. I suppose it is really what turns an ordinary trip into an adventure.
“A man who leaves home to mend himself an others is a philosopher, but he who goes from country to country guided by blind impulses of curiosity is only a vagabond” Oliver Goldsmith, quoted by James A Michener in The Drifters
One of the things I love about Michener is that he uses his novels as a space – in between narrative and prose – to steal a few moments of the reader’s time and give voice (or pen) to some of the beautiful places in the world. This particular book is propvol of descriptions like that. The reader is swept along on his voyage through Spain and Portugal, Mozambique and Morocco. At one point, he stops to describe increadibly evocatively a beautiful bridge and two ancient red towers that stand like sentinels on the approach to the white spires of Pamplona. He is the only writer who has ever raised in me any interest in witnessing the running of the bulls. Although I imagine I’d have to find new travel companions for that – I can’t see any of my current collection of fabulous travel-hungry friends being keen.
People leave home and visit new places for different reasons. During my recent foray into the wonderful world of the tourism industry, I found myself sitting in an SA tourism seminar where they talked about research suggesting that the primary driver for South Africans to get off their assess, to break out of their comfort zones and head for new places, is the strong recommendation of friends and family. In some countries in the world they decide to go on holiday, then go online or visit a travel agent to find a place they like the look of to visit. South Africans tend to work the other way around. Once someone tells us about an amazing place they think we should go, we’ll start looking into getting time off work and planning the possibility of taking a holiday and going there. By the time we got to the internet and the travel agent we’ve already decided and are ready to book.
In both cases, however, people tend to travel because they like the sound of the destination based on referrals, brochures or the word of someone who has been there. There are not that many people who will pack up and set off – with just a backpack and a guidebook – simply because they’re curious about a new place. I know a few of them – and they’re the most fantastic and sometimes the most frustrating travel companions. I’d travel anywhere with them and often be reasonably happy to set off on a whim at a moments notice.
For myself, when I travel by myself – and partly because I come from a country where it’s really not that safe for a woman to go anywhere by herself – I’m unlikely to embark on such an adventure. Which is perhaps a bad thing. I generally prefer to have a few specific goals in mind – things and places I’m determined to do and see – and to build the rest of the trip around these as I go along.
Predictably with me, they tend to be historical. I’m drawn to places that I’ve read and learnt about. I had difficulty explaining this when I was applying for work in Russia last year. “Why do you want to come to Russia?” “The reason I’m keen to come to Russia in particular is because you have a fascinating, long history but particularly with respect to the 20th century history of the country and the manner in which the Bolshevik period has been overlaid on the Tsarist era – especially in big cities and very rural areas – and how the transition to a managed democracy has affected this as well as how that transition differs from South Africa’s transition to democracy.” No. People are not generally that overjoyed to hear that you’d like to visit their country because you think they’d make fascinating subjects of historical and socio-political research.
It was The Drifters that first sparked my interest in Mozambique. Some of Michener’s descriptions are exquisite and he particularly aroused a longing to see – and which I still plan to return and see – Ilha de Mozambique. But it also excited in my an interest in Mozambique (and quite a lot of the rest of South Eastern Africa) as the site of conflict but also of mingling and integration of three of the world’s great modern cultural forces – Western, African and Arab. It was in the back of my mind, something I spent hours thinking about, the whole time I was in Mozambique. I’d love to return to Mozambique and explore that theme in context and produce research and writing which would add to the world’s store of knowledge and ideas.
But for now my trips are not journeys of intellectual discovery except in a very limited and very personal sense. For now I’m just another vagabond, soaking up the wonder and joy of new places and new experiences without giving anything back or contributing anything of much significance as a result of my travels. Perhaps that’s not really the point. Perhaps my longing to contribute is really more symptomatic of my desperate desire to return to the warm embrace, the challenges and hardships and the welcome distance of analysis that make academia so appealing. Perhaps one day I will find a way to combine the two.