Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Empty highway

Finally, I saw The Motorcycle Diaries, after wanting to for months. It’s the story of a few months in the life of Che Guevara, when he was traveling around South America with a friend.

Movies about travel and what you learn from it always get to me. Maybe it’s because travel is a form of longing made physical by movement. I’ve always wanted to travel more than I have (though I’ve traveled more than most people: England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Mexico, plus the East Coast, the West Coast, the Deep South, and parts in between), and I’ve only ever been content once in my life, when I was living in England my third year of college. I felt that I could stay there forever (though my roommates were a little freakish; maybe they could have been replaced).

One of them was rich and always had great pot. After that year ended, he went on a walking tour of Kashmir. Can’t do that anymore because of the war over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. The others all got high on acid one day and “decorated” the flat. Then they had to clean it up.

One of my favorite places to be is on a train or in a plane, in the in between, as Sherman Alexie says. I always feel so free there. Driving down an empty highway creates the same effect but requires more work on my part. I like feeling that I’m not really anywhere, that I’m enclosed in this space that’s away from where I’m supposed to be. And when I’m in that space, I always want to stay there.

So I guess I could never travel just for travel’s sake. I don’t travel to get somewhere; I travel to get away from somewhere. And I suppose, if I ever traveled for long enough, that I’d start traveling to get away from all these new places that were supposed to be an escape to begin with.

***
Got the check back from the contractor the next day.

posted by Price of Silence @ 10:47 PM