Travel Bug
An ode to the lonely traveler:
I listen to Rick Steves and House Hunters International as I type this.
Lately, I have been restless, desperately restless. I find myself pulling my passport out of the drawer and staring at it. I have only ever been to Scotland (almost a year ago, remarkably enough), but I have a list of destinations a mile long, from Iceland to Iran, Tibet to Kazakhstan, the Netherlands to Tanzania. India. Spain. Ecuador.
Scotland was magical. I left for Edinburgh in the middle of a heat wave here in the US, and there it was cold and rainy. When I spoke with locals, they apologized for the weather (as though it were under their control), but I tried to reassure them that I loved the cool breezes, the petrichor, the lush verdure, the way that it looked like the buildings were stained with rain, like the water was one with the walls, weeping with the history of the place.
My mother and I had plans to go to Iceland when my passport first arrived in the mail. When I do eventually make it to Iceland, I suspect that it will be a more mixed bag of emotions, rather than the joy that I always anticipated it being. Here I have these guides to the Icelandic language, I have a map of the country on my wall, and my mother told her coworkers that we would be going. When she got her port put in, she and I were planning where we would go when she got it removed. She wanted to go book shopping and get a margarita.
I spend my days studying Icelandic, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Persian, as well as working on my writing. I spend my time with my head in the clouds, daydreaming — maladaptive dreaming, I would say. I have the urge to go, to run, to take a picture by a waterfall, to clamber up a mountain, to speak with a local and practice asking where the bookstores are.
When I was an undergraduate, I had wanted to study in Iceland for a semester. I took out a manila folder with all my plans, ready to apply, ready to pack my bags. I asked my mother to plan it out with me, and the night that I came over, she was rolling around on the floor in pain. Being a terrible human being, I was more annoyed than concerned. It was not her fault that she had to have an oophorectomy, but I was grinding my teeth and angrily canceled my plans. This has always been a great regret of mine, not going abroad and rather reacting with selfishness while my mother was facing surgery.
The idea of studying abroad is one of the big reasons I am considering graduate school, to be a visiting student. To study or not to study, I am torn and looking for the experience of life. To live, as one would say in the beautiful Japanese film Ikiru.
In fact, I was writing in my journal the other day that I have merged my goals into one ball of living and experiencing. Somehow, my writing goals are wrapped up in the travel goals, in the language goals, in the mathematics goals. It all comes together. And I think a lot about a Joseph Campbell quote: I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. Wise words, indeed.
My mom liked the sounds of bagpipes. We were going to do it all, to walk around Edinburgh and Paris and London and Dublin. Perhaps I am in the stage of grief where I am sometimes angry — this was too senseless. It isn’t fair.
But I have my rainboots ready for when I go to Iceland. I have my adapters, my suitcase with a scarf threaded through the handle like it is a knight’s favor. I have my passport tucked in with all my important documents. I have my heart, which follows the sun.
Wherever I go in this world, however much time passes, I will miss her. I will always miss her.
