I love to travel. Not any place special, or particular. In fact, I think visiting someplace tropical like the South Pacific or the Caribbean would be kinda...boring. The reason I like to go new places is because I like to see places that I'm unfamiliar with. Just streets and strip malls and grocery stores, residential areas and small commercial districts, big cities with metropolitan downtowns and ugly industrial areas. I just love seeing them, walking around in them, feeling a part of them if only for a few brief moments.
The reason that I love them, and don't necessarily prefer cliche vacation spots, is because I'm fascinated by the idea that life is going on everywhere at once, and not on a giant, newsworthy scale, like we see on...the news...but small scale: people buying meat at a butcher for dinner, a mom giving in to her kids and stopping in at a McDonalds I've never been to. All these people I've never met, and will never meet, all doing things and thinking about things and making plans and just living out their lives. New places just seem so pregnant with possibility. Although, if birthing possibility is anything like birthing humans, I'll wait in the lobby. Call me after you've wiped it off.
I think I heard a saying somewhere that familiarity breeds contempt. The only difference between these places I'm so fascinated with and Tacoma, where I live, is that other places are new. These new places don't really offer any more or less possibility than my hometown (cue Springsteen song), they just seem to because they are new and unfamiliar to me. It probably helps that I usually travel in nice weather, sunshine makes any place look nicer.
But the reason I thought of all of this is, I was walking back from KMart to work, and I looked over at 72nd and Portland ave from an angle I don't usually get. It was kind of an unfamiliar sight, and it evoked the same sense, if greatly diminished, that being in a strange place does. Maybe my whole fascination with travel is not a fascination with travel at all, but instead a fascination with change and newness. Life is on everywhere, I just have to see through the familiarity and realize that.
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2 comments:
Ponderous observation on the idea of scenery, and on your brain.
You know Mike...that is the way I like to travel ! When we traveled to the E. Coast, I took the time to ask people about their community, what jobs were important, etc., I found it interesting we could be so similar, different , and far away from each other all at the same time. There were differences and many similarities. Thanks, KathyB.
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