We Desire Travel

POST :: 107 :: Our desire to look at a ruin is proof that nothing is finished.

We desire travel.

We are as susceptible as anyone. We want to lay our four eyes on fresh sights. On triumphs of man and nature, over nature, reclaimed by nature — sunset pyramids, black sand shores, stone temples torn open by roots and time. Places to strike us dumb with awe. We beg for such kicks to the chest. Awe, send us over the ledge, we say, tumbling into a life changed, charged, renewed.

We desire travel, but the desire grows up foolish alongside us. It’s foolishness, once distant, now walks beside the desire, two travelers themselves, with no destination. Death could be the destination — a view, a tree, an owl in flight, and our foolish desire decides to call it enough. No topping that, let’s turn back.

Death may not affect them at all. We are not unique. Our desires are communal, or copies on loan. We die, they go on.

Lovely, you say.

The world is small, we tell each other. Small. Getting smaller. We joke that soon it will all smell like Subway bread, like a Peppermint Mocha, like old piss, wet concrete, and fresh plastic. We are coping. I tell you, there is no need to see the Sagrada Familia. You tell me, there’s no need to see Borobudur. One is unfinished. The other? A ruin. Our desire to look at a ruin is proof that nothing is finished. We can watch things crumble forever from our stoop.

We are readers. Readers cope best. We’ve traveled far at Walden Pond, we tell ourselves. If we can’t find our awe at the local park, how could we find it at the gates of Angkor? Is that tear-down-the-cheek pushed from us, or sucked out by the world? We will not let some far-away wonder sell us what we already own. We walk to the park. Move me! We shout at ducks and raccoons.

We tell ourselves the sights have all been seen. What we would feel there, others have felt. The experience has been dumped into the communal well of human emotion, over and over. We think the wall is sick of wailing. Our tears would water down the brew.

We are coping. We are not better people. We only turn the world into another stimulating scroll.

We say, we are Americans, our pilgrimages are over. They were a disaster.

We are bombs. We’d arrive everywhere as bombs. We don’t need to kill. We need to explode. We celebrate our anniversary the same as our nation. Blow it up in the sky. Spectacular war games, belly full of BBQ. Bisesquicentennial, boom, boom, boom, have we not had our fill?

Never, we say. We say, we are Americans. Violence is freedom. We will explode at home

You tell me we could never see it all. We could spend our whole of our lives seeing nothing twice — and we have — and we would still die a pair of mad lovers — and we will — knowing we’ve not taken a chip of it. Not swallowed a sip of it. Better, cheaper, lower carbon footprint, to die mad with you here. We don’t know if we are brave, or cowards. Yes, you said. Yes, I agreed. We do not debate.

We travel each other, after all. Two islands, growing infinitely from the inside. Intermezzo. Billowing — begging each other to keep charging into the mist.

We desire travel.

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Till next time, be well.

— Sean Jewell