8 July

Today’s thoughts on travel come from G.K. Chesterton. I’m a stationary traveller, I travel from my couch. This will seem a laughable thing to a travel culture, but bear with me. Here’s me at the Devil’s Marbles, in the NT, courtesy of Google Maps. Why a stationary traveller? Chesterton said distant things are only appropriately loved, from a distance. That travelling to them violates this love. Examples from human relationships help, say you admire, even love, a celebrity. You imagine being in a relationship with them, having children even, sharing a life. Now this is one time when the distant, the abstract, is more real than ‘the real thing’. Because I can promise you, if you travel to the celebrity’s home to try to pursue this dream of yours, the only place you’ll end up seeing is the inside of a jail cell. You’ll be a stalker. Your abstract from a distance perception of them as a lovable person may be well be true, that may be what they are. But they are DISTANT to you, not just in spatial terms, but in relationship terms. So the most ‘authentic’ relationship you will ever have with them is from a distance. You will not experience any of their amazing qualities if you go to see them, ‘in person’. Tourists are stalkers, of places. The glorious culture of Paris they admire from afar eludes them when they visit, because they’re not part of that culture. They’re forced to be a spectator, in person. There are so many stories of tourists arriving at their dreamed locations, and then standing there and trying to make the experience match their imagining and pictures they’ve seen. Many more will pretend this isn’t true, that their visiting was transformative, ‘amazing’. Most of it is bullshit, PR for their folks at home forced to wade through their travel pictures. Even if it was a strong experience for them, it isn’t the experience of actually occupying that place, as a home. We not only have no right to see lots of places, going there doesn’t give us the experiences we want anyway. It can’t, they’re not our places.