Sometimes I get a wierd contracting feeling in my stomach when I think about something I am not supposed to think about. When I think about something that I did that was particularly embarrassing, or stupid or something I felt that I wish I didnt't feel - thats when my stomach will oddly pull back into a selfish ball.
Today I was thinking about travel again, which is something I do habitually, and I got that old odd pull to pull me back into the office world of here and now. Oddly I was thinking about some old picture in my head from a 1990s travel add. Sandals probably. Of some wild grass and bamboo house somewhere against a purple silhouetted sunset. Something utterly unreal like that.
That is not to be daft or moronic and say I actually belive in that sort of thing - trust me I don't. I have traveled enough of the world to know a fake image; however in my head that kind of image has come to serve as my "graphic user interface" for travel. In the little computer of my mind, whenever I click the Icon to think about travel and my travel, that obligatory image pops up. The image is so absurd itself that it almost provokes laughter.
I remember very well living in Taiwan, Argentina most recently and going more transiently to other places, but isn't it odd my friends that that one image, that one marketing, fake and plastic-poor reflection of what travel is remains the internal image? Isn't it strange that the fake has superceeded the true to be etched into my thoughts?
Well I think so.
In any casy I am thinking about travel, my mind full of airports and terminals and learning which is what I long to do. To be utterly lost in a crowd of swirling forigen bodies is a delight; its almost like being a random orange leaf uncaring and light. That was a feeling I got in Taiwan, that I could caper where I wished amoung the giant comanding facades of Chinese characters ringing the streets. I was only a today not a forever.
Argentina too had her own kind of incremental freedom that gripped me. That is to say Argentina has a style completely opposite of the confrontational Taiwan. Where Taiwan lurches face first intense at the traveler brandishing its neon lights, night markets and stinky tofu, Argentina hangs back with a cigarrette in her hand. Argentina moves her long sunshine and cream dress and sits down at some park and sips coquette at her wine, then she will look you in the eyes and take your soul. The traveler might not even notice at first, but Argentina is a very clever woman and before long she will seep into every corner of you subtley. You will miss that phantom lady.
And I do miss her. I miss Argentina and the other travel bitches enough which I have known that I habitually think about leaving my own little Hobbiton (which is currently NYC or the Hudson Valley depending) and embarking on a new adventure.
Mark me that I mean to.
