When he saw the tree, he was – to tell the truth – disappointed. He had not a thought in his head, nor any prayers. He paid the place its due homage, kneeling many times, making substantial offerings, and about two hours later, he returned to the helicopter. By afternoon he was back in his hotel.
Under a stream of water in the shower that washed from his body the sweat, dust and strange sweetish smell of the crowd, the stalls, the bodies, the ubiquitous incense and the curry people ate with their hands off paper trays, it occurred to him that every day he was witness to what had shaken Prince Gautama so: illness, old age, death. And it was no big deal. It produced no change in him; by now, to tell the truth, he’d grown inured to it. And then, drying himself off with a fluffy white towel, he thought that he wasn’t even sure he truly wished to be enlightened. If he really wanted to see, in one split second, the whole truth. To peer inside the world as though by X-ray, to glimpse in it the skeletal structure of a void.
But of course – as he assured his generous friend that same evening – he was extremely grateful for this present. Then from the pocket of his suit coat he carefully extracted a crumbled leaf, which both men inclined over in rapt, pious attention.
HOME IS MY HOTEL
I look around and take each thing in again. I look at it from scratch, like I’ve never been here before. I discover details. I am particularly struck by the hotel owners’ attention to the flowers – they’re so big and pretty, with their luminous leaves, and their appropriately moist dirt, and that tetrastigma: impressive.
What a big bedroom, although the sheets could be better quality, white and well starched linen. Instead they’re the colour of faded bark, such that they require neither pressing nor ironing. The library downstairs, though, is actually terrific – it’s exactly the kind of stuff I like, and it has everything I would need if I ever had to live here. In fact, I may end up staying longer just because of those books.
And by some strange coincidence I find some clothes in the closet that fit me perfectly, mostly dark colours, which is what I like to wear. They fit me perfectly – that black hoodie, so soft and so comfortable. And – and this is now beginning to be truly incredible – there on the nightstand are my vitamins and the earplugs I always buy. This is really too much. I also like that you never see any of your hosts, that there is no housekeeping staff here in the mornings pounding down your door. That there isn’t anybody wandering around. There’s no reception. I even make my own coffee in the mornings myself, just the way I like it. On the espresso machine, with steamed milk.
Indeed, it is a good hotel with good rates, this one, perhaps a little bit in the middle of nowhere, and some distance from the main road, which in the winter gets buried in snow, but if one is travelling by car, it doesn’t really matter. You have to get off the motorway at the town of S. and go a few kilometres more along a regular road and then turn at G. onto a chestnut-lined avenue that leads to a gravel road. In the winter you have to leave your car by the last hydrant and walk the rest of the way.
TRAVEL PSYCHOLOGY: LECTIO BREVIS II
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began the woman, this time quite young, wearing army boots, her hair pinned up in a way I found amusing; she must have been fresh out of her master’s programme. ‘As we have said in previous lectures – which perhaps you have had a chance to listen to at one of the airports or train stations participating in this project – we experience time and space in a manner that is primarily unconscious. These are not categories we could call objective, or external. Our sense of space results from our ability to move. Our sense of time, meanwhile, is due to being biological individuals undergoing distinct and changing states. Time is thus nothing other than the flow of changes.
‘Place as an aspect of space pauses time. It is the momentary detainment of our perception on a configuration of objects. It is, in contradistinction to time, a static notion.
‘Understood thus, human time is divided into stages, as movement through space is broken up by place-pauses. Such pauses anchor us within the flow of time. A person who is sleeping and loses any sense of the place in which he or she currently is also loses all sense of time. The more pauses in space, and the more places we experience therefore, the more time elapses subjectively. We often refer to separate stages of time as episodes. They have no consequences, interrupting time without becoming part of it. They are self-contained occurrences, each starting from scratch; each beginning and each end is absolute. Not a single episode is to be continued, you might say.’
By now there was some movement in the first row, as in the murmuring of the announcements about passengers urgently requested someone here had recognized their name and was hurrying to gather carry-ons and duty-free sacks, jostling past their neighbours in that scramble. In a panic I checked my own boarding pass again, losing the thread of the lecture; it was a struggle to get back into this woman’s disquisition as she now embarked upon travel psychology’s practical side. She must have sensed we’d had enough of the strange and complicated theory.
‘Practical travel psychology investigates the metaphorical meaning of places. Just take a look at those screens with destinations on them. Have you ever stopped to think about what “Iceland” means? And what are the “United States”? What sort of response do you find within yourself when you pronounce those names? Asking yourself this type of question is particularly helpful in topographical psychoanalysis, where getting to the deeper meaning of places leads to deciphering the so-called itinerarium – the particular route of the traveller, that is, the deeper reason for his journey.
‘Topographical or travel psychoanalysis does not, despite surface similarities, pose the same question as immigration officials: what did you come here for? Our question raises issues of sense and meaning. In essence, one becomes what one participates in. In other words, I am what I look at.
‘And this was of course the reason behind the ancient pilgrimages. Striving towards – and reaching – a holy place would bestow holiness upon us, cleanse us of our sins. Does the same thing happen when we travel to unholy, sinful places? To sad and vacant places? Joyful, fruitful places?
‘And is it not so…’ continued the woman, but behind me two middle-aged couples were chatting in hushed voices, which for a moment seemed more interesting to me than the reflections of our lecturer.
I worked out quickly that it was two married couples exchanging impressions from their travels, one couple urging the other:
‘You have to go to Cuba – but the Cuba they’ve got now, under Fidel. When he dies, Cuba’s going to be the same as everywhere. But if you go right now you’ll see some incredible poverty – the kinds of cars they drive! You really have to get on it, though – apparently Fidel is pretty ill.’
COMPATRIOTS
The woman had finished the practical component of her lecture, meanwhile, and travellers were starting to pose timid questions, though they weren’t asking what they should have been. At least that’s how it felt to me. I didn’t have the courage to say anything myself, though, so I went over to a nearby restaurant to have some coffee. Congregated at its entrance was a group of people who turned out to be talking to one another in my language. I looked them up and down suspiciously – they looked so like me. Yes, those women could have been my sisters. So I found myself a seat that was as far away from them as possible, then ordered coffee.