"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in PittsburghA traveller. Perhaps that's it. Though my travels hardly feel worthy of comparison to those of the greats-- Rosalind's full circle to and from Arden, Bilbo Baggins' there and back again. I am no explorer like Vespucci, not romantic enough for a gypsy nor pious enough for a pilgrim. Ahh America. How I had forgotten you, and how I longed to remember. Was blind but now I see, (as they say). And though I know I am no great traveller of Shakespearean or Historical proportion, I share with them and with us all, a cardinal desire: all I have ever wanted is what we all long for-- a place in the world. A home.
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America..."-- Paul Simon
I feel perhaps like Marco Polo in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities... In Calvino's book, the great explorer Marco Polo entertains an aging Kubla Khan by recounting tales of 55 cities he has visited in his travels. As Marco Polo continues to impart his experiences, he, willingly or un, revels connections between the cities that leave the reader left to wonder whether the accounts of his destinations actually represent different aspects of a single city; a unique and unrivaled place, in Polo's case, his beloved Venice.
Second, Dorothy: the one who seeks adventure abroad, only to discover their heart's desire was "in their own backyard" all along.
Have I assumed myself the former only to discover I am, in fact, the latter? What bliss that truth would be! Have I travelled the world long enough? Have I in fact discovered home was always there, patiently waiting for me to earn and deserve it? Observing Calvino observing Venice is a reminder of how often the controlled, measured world of knowledge and assumption fails us. So much of life resists the facts. As Khan discovers: imagining a"Venice" is imagining yourself. And though an unsettling exercise, it is necessary, perhaps. I believe my trip to America and Home, was precisely that.
Marco Polo thus embodies two classic symbolic travellers. First, Odysseus: the one who, either by force or by choice, denounces a home he does not realise he loves. He thus condemns himself to a life of wandering and homeless-ness, slowly losing sight and memory of the only place he longs to return to.
"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."
Second, Dorothy: the one who seeks adventure abroad, only to discover their heart's desire was "in their own backyard" all along.
"Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene."
Have I assumed myself the former only to discover I am, in fact, the latter? What bliss that truth would be! Have I travelled the world long enough? Have I in fact discovered home was always there, patiently waiting for me to earn and deserve it? Observing Calvino observing Venice is a reminder of how often the controlled, measured world of knowledge and assumption fails us. So much of life resists the facts. As Khan discovers: imagining a"Venice" is imagining yourself. And though an unsettling exercise, it is necessary, perhaps. I believe my trip to America and Home, was precisely that.
Welcome Home Al.
I will return shortly. And new.
"...what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in waiting for you in foreign, not-yet-possessed places."
-- Italo Calvino
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