I’ve been to a few places. More than many — probably more than average or slightly above. Definitely more exotic.
Most recently, I traveled to Jordan on a 10 day excursion from Amman and Jerash in the north, down to the desert of Wadi Rum in the south, and to Petra on the way back up. This was in January, their wet season, when tourists are rare and midday naps are common.
Although I will eventually adopt a modest anti-travel pose, several memories of the trip strike me as I write. The sheer grandness of Petra is difficult to convey but thankfully engraved in my memory like the steadfast hovels in its cliffs. I walked the multi-mile path through the divinely sculpted crevasse called The Siq — “The Shaft” — following the ancient water gutters along the walls until the final bend, where the utterly magnificent Treasury peeks through the narrow gap. The feeling repeats at the Monastery, a similarly magnificent facade at the top of the Nabatean city, reached by a Bedouin-lined sandstone staircase. Another: a spontaneous trip up a staircase in the capital, off one of the winding lower streets. An open air garden and a co-op cafe operated by a young British woman nestled somewhere inside. I remember the two-level bookstore/cafe called Kawon next to our final stop in Madaba and the sterile tour around Jesus’ alleged baptism site.
In the journal I inaugurated with that trip, I write about the Bulgarian family that camped in the desert with us. “The woman’s name was Tsvetelina, or Lina for short. Apparently, Lina is the meaningless part of the name but it is easier for foreigners to pronounce. She sacrifices her identity for the convenience of my crude tongue.” That night, Tsvetelina’s daughter sang us a folk song around the fire. I had none to reciprocate.
“It is for want of self-culture,” Emerson says, “that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans.”
Americans lacked a strong culture, in Emerson’s day, by nature of its youth. Now, a growing heterogeneity between its states, regions, neighbors, and ideologies means its culture is almost entirely defined by its negatives. We have no myths, folk heroes, or shared melodies. We eat Papa John’s pizza and drink 7-Up.
In fact, it may be that what little is shared by Americans is corporate culture, hanging with loose affiliation to the pilgrim’s threads of Puritanical etiquette and the Protestant work ethic. At the top of Petra is a goat’s hair tent occupied by a Bedouin named Akef, who offers tea and conversation to those who made the trek. Two women in heeled Doc Martin’s made their way down the twisting staircase as I made my way up. I overheard: “I think this would make a great spot for a company retreat, bring everyone up here to have tea.”
Emerson’s pointed attack on travel is worth quoting at length because it seems so suited to critique the corporate archetype: “The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes, the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and not like an interloper or a valet.”
His idea of self-reliance rests on developing one’s individuality, a divine uniqueness that must be cultivated but, once having done so, will permeate any and everything one does. The corporation as a concept collectivizes and subsumes these individualities. The corporation does not bring its individuals qua individuals to a destination, but rather hopes the destination will serve as accelerator for further deindividuating.
This can apply also to the solitary, affluent traveler (can apply, since I’m assuming the average person lacks the self-reliance Emerson writes about). Their self-culture becomes a collection of fragments, in photos or in journal entries, in my case. The progressive case for travel is that it broadens one’s perspective and builds an appreciation of the world and its peoples. But then again, so can sitting in silence, marveling at the infinite depths and spontaneous creation that occurs unendingly within you and everyone else.
I’ll travel again. But it’s only after coming to terms with the fact that, social pressure aside, I prefer waking up in my bed, brewing a cup of coffee, and reading for an hour, every day. I increase my capability to be myself by doing that, instead of an anxious search for experience.