Travel reflections

Seattle's light rail, which I frequently praise, has let me down with respect to my trip tomorrow morning to the airport.  The rails are being modified over the weekend, to allow a connection with the new line, under construction, that will tie Seattle to the suburbs east of Lake Washington.  No rail traffic through downtown, which means I'd have to make connections with a shuttle bus, carrying heavy luggage, and then a second connection back on to the rail.

Instead, I'll do it the old fashioned way, and take an airport shuttle.  Unfortunately, this means making an earlier start, so I'm off to bed now.

But first -- I've been reading portions of Paul Fussell's book Abroad, about travel writing between the world wars.  He points out that much of what we consider travel literature from that period is actually collections of essays on various topics, tied together by the author's travels.  Essays, as such, back then like now, were unmarketable.  But travel was popular.  Thus, writers churned out essays with enough travel thrown in to help the medicine go down.

I realize, of course, that much of my writing about my travels follows that course precisely.  And nonapologetically.  To do otherwise, would be simply to write a diary of what I saw and did, without reflection.  You'd be better off reading a Rough Guide.  Travel invites -- even forces -- reflection on what one sees, on what one feels, on what one's philosophy and beliefs might be and how new experiences reinforce those beliefs or cause them to be reconsidered. 

If they didn't, you might as well avoid the discomfort of travel and simply buy a picture book.

If I weren't in a hurry to get to bed, I'd develop this thought more eloquently.  Instead, I'll rely on Fussell's reflections on the reflections of another author, Samuel Hynes.

What distinguishes the travel books of the 30's from earlier classics ... is the way, Hynes says, these writers between the wars "turned their travels into interior journeys and parables of their times, making landscape and incident -- the factual materials of reportage -- do the work of symbol and myth -- the materials of fable."   And since the journey is "the most insistent of thirties metaphors, one might say that the travel books simply act out, in the real world, the basic trope of the generation."  Acting out a trope, like perceiving the metaphor lodging always in the literal, is the essential act of  poetry.  It is also the essential act of both traveling and writing about it.

Heady stuff, and not much of my travel writing (or maybe even my travel experience) lives up to it.  But I do try to blend my exterior observations with my interior reflections -- the continuing, unconscious work of the introvert.

I doubt if my summary of my trip to Chiang Mai will be much more than a summary of a diary.  But I'll try to more consciously "act out the trope of our generation" in some of my travel writings in the future.  (But don't call me on it!)