travel
unlike my traveling companion, i am unable to post succinct, pithy posts about the experiences i’ve had since arriving in the united states a little over a week ago. perhaps it is the head cold that has afflicted me the last few days, although i think it’s more that i am unable to order my thoughts / experiences whilst on the road regardless of the state of my sinuses.
i had drafted a post on visiting the site where the world trade centre once stood, but my sporadic access to the internets meant it went untouched for too many days, and now the original impulse has gone. and i take seriously the suggestion that trying to travel and write is not the best way to experience either activity.
let me think.
let me sleep.
let me look around.
i’ll write something later.
what gives value to travel is fear. it is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country (a french newspaper acquires incalculable value. and those evenings when, in cafes, you try to get close to other men just to touch them with your elbow), we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. this is the most obvious benefit of travel. at that moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being. we come across a cascade of light, and there is eternity. this is why we should not say that we travel for pleasures. there is no pleasure in traveling, and i look upon it more as an occasion for spiritual testing. if we understand by culture the exercise of our most intimate self – that of eternity – then we travel for culture. pleasure takes us away from our selves in the same way as distraction, in pascal’s use of the word, takes us away from god. travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves (camus).