Gray Line: sweet, sweet 3d composite

*will add the photos I took tomorrow when I have the USB cable

New York City is the only place I want to be eight months of the year. The unfortunate fact is that, as much as I consider myself to be a resident of this city, I will have to return to Long Island in May and resort to being a commuting, though very infrequently so, member of the bridge and tunnel crowd. I will have to look at pictures to refresh my memory and satiate my eyes. New York will exist as a fantasy in my mind. All dramatizations aside, I’ll probably only be able to come in a heaping handful of times. For the summer at least, I will be an outsider. I will long for the days I can walk around the Village. However, these fantasies will exist to me like those that appear in the minds of foreigners who have only seen the exaggerated splendor of the city in the movies.

AutorouteSaving the best for last, eh? The premise and the happenings on the trip are so simple and yet Julio Cortázar and Carol Dunlop (or should I say el Lobo y la Osita) create a tremendously engaging work with hilarious observations and fantastical insight. I haven’t quite enjoyed any of the other travel narratives as much as this one. The passages regarding demons had me laughing out loud. The whole journey appears to be solely for the purpose of light-hearted entertainment. The writing is just so endearing without any pretension or air of hierarchy or importance (as seen somewhat in Mahoney’s Down the Nile).

I guess this work embodies what I like about travel: the carefree nature of exploration and discovery. El Lobo and la Osita appear to discover that all the rest stops are different and serve as legitimate escapes from the autoroute. “You see, this isn’t the smell of the autoroute anymore, here’s the entrance to another world” (57). The two look forward to being able to find a shady location to sit and write. They spend a lot of time thinking abstractly about nature, including a few passages about the insects they encounter. This shows how distant they’ve grown from the autoroute itself, with the focus moreso on learning about each rest stop.

Oh my, I'm tired. I was excited to read this Kincaid essay because I've read essays of hers in the past and really enjoy her writing style. Semi-colons galore. Now, in this essay, Kincaid's feelings were more than apparent in her direct attack on tourists visiting her beloved Antigua. What I can assemble from her idea of a tourist is that one is completely blind to the place's history and in this ignorance, they are experiencing a place that exists as a selective reality. To the "tourist" Kincaid speaks to in the first section, Antigua exists as a sort-of oasis; it exists to provide comfort and pleasure to White Americans who need a break from their "hard lives." We've deconstructed who a "tourist" is and what the other options are, and Kincaid just takes it all very personally, with good reason.

dreaming track

I don’t like disliking authors because my admiration overpowers any potential negativity I could have. I only wish I could travel to Australia and learn more about Aboriginal culture and the fascinating songlines. I love that music is so important to certain cultures in its connection with the earth. Chatwin is clearly interested in learning from Aborigines themselves about the songlines, however, the actual text seems to be, for the most part, the time in between meeting with people to discuss them. I guess I just wanted to hear more of that, which is no fault of Chatwin’s. In fact, it shouldn’t really bother me because he has an impeccable sense of wit when describing characters and his prose flows well.

He tells of the most ridiculous situations. Hanlon is still my favorite character. “Hanlon looked at me for what seemed like a full minute and said, ‘Get your fucking fangs into that steak!’ We ate without speaking” (83). Every Australian seems to question Chatwin and push his buttons. He’s an easy target.
Unfortunately, the text seems to drop off around the middle and the second half seems thrown together. I don’t enjoy reading his notes. My head hurt when I reached that part. There are some great quotes in their, and some interesting passages, but I really don’t care about most of it. As we discussed in class, there’s clearly a “performance” element to the book, which, in my opinion, outweighs the tremendous subject matter. I need more songlines, Bru’.

social travel

The notion of travel always conjures up the want of self-reflection. An escape from the trite norm of everyday life becomes a necessity, and this feat can’t be accomplished without engaging in some reflection. Different landscapes and unfamiliar faces encourage this kind of thought. Now, self-reflection is great and all but one can’t possibly spend an entire trip like that, scraping at the recesses of their brain for explanations of their innermost thoughts; they’d undoubtedly go stark raving insane. Authentic travel requires travelers to interact with their surroundings; otherwise they are merely passive observers and nothing more. Meeting people, making friends and engaging in conversation, even if not completely intentional, are things that Rosemary Mahoney, Paul Theroux and George Orwell deal with in their narratives, unaware as to how it will largely affect the overall experience of their respective journeys.

Theroux on a train

I really like Theroux. He gets it. He’s arrogant and acts in such a manner as to place himself above every single person he encounters, but he’s being honest. So what if he’s an asshole? He’s a funny asshole. And to be fair, I can’t really blame him if his mood as depicted in his writing was off, because riding on an Amtrak train for a long distance is absolute torture. I posted about this earlier in the semester, but nothing ever goes right on these trains. They are always running late for some mysterious reason. I love Theroux’s observational humor. The funniest part so far was his bluntly stated “No, it’s not” in response to the old man’s comment about the train being like the Trans-Siberian. He just seems completely unaware of his actions.

I just think the whole premise of writing about the trip itself is great. The introduction made his point very clear. I really liked Theroux’s exchange with the raw-foodist-nondairy vegetarian. Though it was hilarious, he came of as incredibly arrogant, attempting to squander everything she was saying just because he didn’t believe it. And because she was a college student, he could easily take advantage. Aside from that, I’m really intrigued as to where this story is going to go. Theroux could be sitting around reading or sleeping but instead he actually talks to people. Even if he’s being a total asshole, as far as we know, the people he encounters are being themselves. I don’t think train travelers really put on a guise of self-importance, after all, they could potentially be flying coach or something.

tramp: Tramp, right?After finishing the novel, I’m going to have to pretend that it doesn’t say fiction on the back cover. It clearly has some fictional elements, but what memoir doesn’t? Memory isn’t a perfect tool. In any case, I just really want to believe he actual went through all this because I think it’s remarkable. Orwell’s admittance that he merely scratched the surface of truly understanding what it means to be in the positions of actual tramps and beggars seems to validate his experience. I could care less that he’s part of the bourgeoisie and could go back to his normal life at any time. What he did was pretty brutal. I don’t care to analyze his reasons or intentions for putting himself in a position of poverty.

One of my favorite parts in the text is when Bozo responds, “No, not necessarily. If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, ‘I’m a free men in here’… and you’re alright” (165). A page later, Orwell says: “With all this, he had neither fear, nor regret, nor shame, nor self-pity. He had faced his position, and made a philosophy for himself” (166).  The American majority looks at beggars [okay, so they're not really beggars but I like typing the word] with negativity, saying things like, “Why don’t they get jobs?” Well… begging is their job. As per societal conventions, begging is negative. However, this is only by comparison. Bozo doesn’t say that he enjoys his lifestyle, but he still has books to read, ideas, and a freethinking mind, which seems to be all that’s necessary. I think the idea of being a tramp comes down to a return to the primitive, nomadic state of nature. It’s also somewhat ascetic. This may be getting too much into it, but isn’t there something somewhat meditative about being a tramp? Something that Orwell didn't experience.

Also, I find it highly amusing that the second to last chapter reads like a travel guide. Orwell ranks the lodging houses, describing the best and worst features of each-- like an AAA guide. Hilarious.

Down and Out in Paris and London reads like fiction, and I love it. The pure absurdity of some of Orwell’s encounters is incredibly entertaining. My favorite part of writing is the capturing of uniquely ridiculous moments by an author. In the very beginning, Orwell explains how there are eccentric characters to be found everywhere in Paris. One of my favorite moments so far is Charlie’s story of love. How, “at twenty-two I am utterly worn out and finished” (10). Charlie relishes the idea that he has experienced the highest of the senses… after violently having sex with a prostitute in a brothel.

I think what separates Orwell’s novel from the others is its lack of objectivity. In the style that it is written, it plays out without too much reflection on the events happening. Or maybe that’s not it and I’m just tired. In any case, it flows very smoothly. Orwell is in the story, and not too far removed from it. I think. To me, the idea of traveling somewhere, becoming poor, and having to survive in a different country is brilliant. You know, within reason. Orwell and Boris are scraping by, but at least they’re scraping by.

nile

There seem to be a few reasons why Mahoney wants to depart on this trip. As touched on in Flaubert’s work, as well as in de Botton’s reflection on it, the main draw to a foreign place is the “exotic,” a word that means nothing but says everything about a place when put in a descriptive context. Since she had previously been to Egypt, she had experienced the basic encounters of a fish out of water.

When I’ve traveled to other countries, I’ve done a lot of things that I do regularly at home. What fascinates me is exploring routines in different locations. As great as it is to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and look at classical paintings, it is a surreal experience to view a painting such as Boticelli’s Birth of Venus at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The idea is doing something ordinary in an extraordinary place.

Part of what draws Mahoney to performing and completing this task of rowing down the Nile River, seems to be the thrill of doing it in its particular location. This is pretty obvious, but her feat is not about rowing down the longest river in the world, but rowing down the longest river in the world, in Egypt. Being a woman facing this task in a land where men laugh at the thought of her attempting to row down the river, heightens the experience.

What strikes me about Flaubert in Egypt is how honest his reflections appear to be. In reading any sort of memoir, one may easily be fooled into trusting the words to be true. As we’ve discussed in class, travel narratives, in particular, are prone to hyperbole and exaggeration. Because Flaubert’s accounts are presented in letters and jagged, fragmental notes, they seem really honest and truthful.

What I find ironic is how vividly he paints descriptions of the landscapes (“The sun was rising just opposite; the whole valley of the Nile, bathed in mist, seemed to be a still white sea; and the desert behind us, with its hillocks of sand, another ocean, deep purple, its waves all petrified” (p.52).), but claims not to care for them. He says that he is “very little impressed by nature here—i.e. landscape, sky, desert (except the mirages)” (p.42). I would never write so intensely about the land, with such positive imagery, if I didn’t care for it. Why isn’t he impressed by the nature? Maybe the desert isn’t so “impressive,” but it should be appreciated in its context.

Huntington Harbor

Alain de Botton can do no wrong. I am endlessly entertained by his cynicism and the eloquently dramatized accounts of his travels. A quote that stood out to me was one by Baudelaire: “Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds: this one wants to suffer in front of the radiator, and that one thinks he’d get better if he was by the window. It always seems to me that I’ll be well where I am not, and this question of moving is one that I’m forever entertaining with my soul” (p.32). I am fascinated by the idea that humans have an innate desire to travel. Or is it possible that we have a short attention span for those things in our lives that become increasingly familiar, as they remain stationary and constant? I don’t know the answer to that, though the answer seems to slowly come into focus the more that I think about it.

Hey! Wait a second! They look happy, right? RIGHT?!

My family and I have never had good luck with Amtrak. I attempt to find humor in mostly everything, however, when the sewage tank backed up on a painfully long Amtrak train ride from Chicago to New York, the joke wasn’t really that funny. It smelled bad.
Until I was sixteen years old, I had never been on an airplane. For some reason, my parents never wanted to fly. My dad’s family lives in Madison, Wisconsin, approximately nine hundred and seventy-five miles away from our home in Huntington, NY. We decided to drive. We drove there two different times that I can remember. It took a very long time. We had to stay in hotels and such. For our next trip, we decided to upgrade our travel means. No, not upgrading to air travel. My family would take the Amtrak. Now, I’ve always been a fan of trains. Taking the Long Island Railroad into New York City from Huntington only takes an hour. The ride is comfortable. I guess I’m desensitized to the train experience. We boarded the "Lake Shore Limited" (sweet name!), attempted to get comfortable, and at some point, fell asleep, or at least tried to. The air conditioning was on full blast, creating arctic conditions in the car. We had to buy Amtrak blankets because they wouldn’t turn the A/C down. What the hell were we going to do with Amtrak blankets after the trip?! In the morning, I expected that we would have arrived in Chicago, the transfer station, at that point. To my wonderful surprise, we would be on the train for eight more hours! Damn it. On the way back, when we took the train from Chicago to New York, the sewage tank for the toilet in our car backed up. The smell was horrendous. In an attempt to correct the situation, a conductor came by and started spraying Lysol. The car wasn’t ventilated. Lysol smells better than it tastes. The situation made no sense. At some point the tank was fixed (I think) and all of the passengers lived happily ever after (I think). We now fly when going to Madison.