The Untraveller
Ok, so this is too weird. I have a friend coming to visit me, a dear friend of many years and tequilas.
She is anxious about coming here, crossing the invisible border between me and her, on a plane, alone, seeing me for the first time in like, my natural habitat? because I have always visited her and she hates big towns, crowds, people, buses,not being in control and she has been most happily married forever.
And thats all good but---
She will travel against her will. She does not like travelling.
She is not a traveller. She is not a traveller. It astounds me that one of my best friends dreads travelling and is not familiar with the codes of air travel as well, we all are?
That there is someone like that in MY life is short of paradox. No, wait, it is paradox and that is a word and concept I do not like particularly. But it will do.
What we know to do by the time we take a seat on that plane, take off from the gate, leave the airport--the things we do not know how we know we do. Some people don't.
Is this the moment to quote a favorite quote of mine, culled from Ian McEwan's The Kindess of Strangers, which I wish I could live up to but have been touched on very tangentially, still I know what it means:
Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it." -Cesare Pavese
Oh, yeah. And a gift and a skill.
She is anxious about coming here, crossing the invisible border between me and her, on a plane, alone, seeing me for the first time in like, my natural habitat? because I have always visited her and she hates big towns, crowds, people, buses,not being in control and she has been most happily married forever.
And thats all good but---
She will travel against her will. She does not like travelling.
She is not a traveller. She is not a traveller. It astounds me that one of my best friends dreads travelling and is not familiar with the codes of air travel as well, we all are?
That there is someone like that in MY life is short of paradox. No, wait, it is paradox and that is a word and concept I do not like particularly. But it will do.
What we know to do by the time we take a seat on that plane, take off from the gate, leave the airport--the things we do not know how we know we do. Some people don't.
Is this the moment to quote a favorite quote of mine, culled from Ian McEwan's The Kindess of Strangers, which I wish I could live up to but have been touched on very tangentially, still I know what it means:
Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it." -Cesare Pavese
Oh, yeah. And a gift and a skill.
posted by EvaB at 9:42 PM
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