I love to travel. I love packing my little suitcase full of all the necessities for the road. I love making special music mixes that seem appropriate for specific trips. I like pulling out the map and planning my route, but in the end, I love looking out into the openness of it all and letting the road pull me where it will.
As some of you know, I recently returned from a weeklong trek across America’s mid-Atlantic region. This is an annual excursion for me, but I saw some truly wondrous things this go around: I spent long moments staring at the black and white stills of Andre Kertesz at The National Gallery in Washington DC. I wandered through the winding paths lined with cherry blossoms at Arlington National Cemetery, I sent and received text messages from across the ocean while standing beside JFK’s grave, (yes, I know… hell awaits me). I bought a Ganesh finger puppet -pictured - (Note: originally, I thought it was Vishnu, apparently I don’t know my Hindu gods as well as I thought) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I saw the world’s largest colon at the famous Mutter Museum (also in Philadelphia).
But I think the highlight of my trip this time around might have been my time spent on the big-carpeted bus that carried me from spot to spot. When you take a lengthy trip by road, such as this, the bus becomes your home. Even more so than the various hotels, which become little more than places to sleep, shower and make mid-breakfast phone calls, the bus becomes the safe spot where you can immerse yourself, ever so briefly, in your own stuff while the world goes by at a relatively safe distance. This year, I found myself loving the lengthy bus rides where I could press my ear up close to the phone and attempt to retell stories from the road amidst the din the engine and the sound of foreign horns beeping in the background or, more frequently, simply put on my headphones and lose myself in the task of writing note after note, in horrific (“bus-ruined”) penmanship, to those who I wished were occupying the seat next to me. It seems strange when I consider that the things I will remember most from this trip aren’t the actual destinations themselves, (although the giant colon was really quite something) but rather the time spent sharing those places with far away people who seem to appreciate the way I see the world.
I once read a story about a group of friends who planned a summer trek across America in a compact car with no air conditioning and a stereo whose radio did not work properly but whose cassette player functioned fine. However, between them, the clan only had one cassette single: "Roam" by The B-52's. The story went on to talk about how they listened to that song for the duration of their trip… at first thinking that they would soon make a stop to buy more music, but then coming to think of it as the soundtrack to their journey – at moments continuing to listen to it if for no other reason than to prove that they could endure it. I think of this story every time I prepare for a journey of my own and find myself thankful that while I often find myself lost in the company of a single song for days at a time, that it's never been that particular song. This year, as always, music played an important role in my trip. And this year, as always, I packed my little CD case full of the music I thought I would want to listen to: Nick Drake, Beck, Rufus Wainwright, Trespassers William, The Innocence Mission, Depeche Mode, The Von Trapps and even a Barenaked Ladies compilation that I made many moons ago. Instead, however, I found myself listening entirely to The Crash Test Dummies and The Beloved. (I was amused to find that CTD had made the “one hit wonder” list that was created in my absence). I always find it fascinating to consider the music that I choose when on any sort of journey. Sometimes, I know it’s just a matter of my mood or the season dictating the music that accompanies me along the way. Other times, I pick the songs that help me fill a void left by the people and things that I cannot pack neatly alongside the necessities of the journey ~ the people and things whose mere presence make any place, (even the tight confines of a single seat on a brightly carpeted motor coach) feel a little more like home.
Anyway, thanks to the people (ok, person) who filled in for me during my absence. Please, feel free to wash the last remaining remnants of me from your fingertips.
It feels good to be home.
posted by: Lindy (reply)
post date: 04.24.05 (12:07 pm)
More stories please. I am afraid I am having difficulty wrapping my brain around the bit about the giant colon... ummmmmm.......
Well... it was a preserved human colon... so, you can make your own assumption regarding its make-up. As for pictures, well... I personally would never be so tasteless as to link to something that awful *cough* http://asylumeclectica.com/sightseer/us/pa/mutter/mutter3.jpg *cough* on my blog! Who do you take me for??? Lindy????
I love to travel. I love packing my little suitcase full of all the necessities for the road. I love making special music mixes that seem appropriate for specific trips. I like pulling out the map and planning my route, but in the end, I love looking out into the openness of it all and letting the road pull me where it will.