The Culture of Travel

I feel like a brat for saying this, as many cowgirls don’t get the luxury of travel I have had, but I am so tired of being in motion.  I am tired of airports, traffic jams, and being enclosed for hours in planes, cars, and trains.  The act of traveling is usually my favorite activity.  Completely alone but in the midst of many strangers, I find my best thinking, writing, and reading get’s done. 

The thinking is promoted by the combination of whatever is stressing me out at the current time combined with an engaging podcast flowing through my ears.  To me, there is nothing like a good podcast.  I am of course, a proud member of NPR nation.  Can’t go a day without some snippets of Morning Edition, Terry Gross’s soothing interviews, or the nerdy humor of Wait Wait Don’t Tell me.  With eclectic shows sharing random information about the week, I find myself connected to the places I am moving in and out of.  I find that traveling is the best time to catch up on shows that I don’t have enough time to listen to during the week.  This past week, stuck in the Nairobi airport waiting for my flight to Kigali, I listened to an excellent This American Life based about sacrificing animals.  It’s more than it seems: check it out. 

The over thinking combined with the more relaxed activity of podcast listening lends itself to filling up a notebook.  I always feel like I am at a stage of transition when I am traveling; heading to the next place where I will spend some juncture of my life.  It is therefore a great time to put down what has been going on and generate hopes for what might come.  When I am having serious writer’s block, which I have suffered through a lot in the last four years, I just start writing lists.  I can make a list about anything really.  “Best meals I’ve cooked in the last year” “Jobs I might be surprisingly good at” or on the more pessimistic side “People who I once felt completely bonded to and now no longer-and why”.  I try to keep it upbeat because nobody likes to sit next to a sobbing cowgirl on the plane.  They still serve wine on international flights, after all. 

Reading, I suppose, is a given.  Everyone reads when they are traveling.  I find that when I am going through a phase of non-reading a trip is the best way to get me into a book.  After Peace Corps, for example, I was so tired of reading.  Too much time had been spent alone in my hut devouring books one after another.  It started to feel like just another lonesome activity, and I was tired of being alone all of the time.  But when I met up with Ross in Kigali for my papa’s wedding, he brought my mom’s Christmas gift of a Kindle loaded up with his new favorite author.  I didn't read at all while I had time to spend with him, but the minute I was back in an airport flying away from them there was nothing so soothing as Hiroko Murakami’s Dance, Dance, Dance.  Books are another way I can track my life transitions it seems. 

I am not in a reading mood right now.  Not much in a writing mood, though I am trying to keep this up to date.  And amazingly, my head feels too full to even engage with much NPR.  For the first time in a long time, I just want to ease into one place.  My new apartment, cooking at night next to my homeboy, and waking up in the morning to a job that expands my language and ag extention skills.  Is that too much to ask?  Absurdly, it might be exactly how I get to spend the next couple of years in my life.  Could I be so lucky? 

Two weeks in Kigali than back on the old travel-routine.  Then we shall see.