Warning: this is a little sappy
Travel is exactly love.
The first romance is the idyll you imagine. The magic of the place you have never been is far greater in your mind than it could possibly be in reality, and you know this. But it doesn’t really matter.
If you are lucky, you attain it. You visit that foreign place, and everything is fresh and exciting. You explore the city, but just as thrilling is to feel that city explore you. But, it must be said, you don’t get too deep yet. Still, every day is discoveries and everything is joyful.
Your relationship with that city moves faster than a relationship with a human. Somewhere between two weeks and a month that initial lustre fades, and you do not see the city through the same eyes. What you see is more real, more complex, with depth and, probably, a streak of darkness like a fudge swirl.
At this point comes the first disillusionment. You will lose the idyll. You have to make a choice: you can return home now and preserve that idyll in your memories and imagination, which is the only way to hold onto it. Or you can stay and lose this idyll forever, living instead with all the imperfections and dark and dangerous intersections. If you choose to stay, you can never go home again. You can return to the same place, but neither that place nor you will be the same. You could make a new home there, if you do return, but you will never find your old one.
The first romance is the idyll you imagine. The magic of the place you have never been is far greater in your mind than it could possibly be in reality, and you know this. But it doesn’t really matter.
If you are lucky, you attain it. You visit that foreign place, and everything is fresh and exciting. You explore the city, but just as thrilling is to feel that city explore you. But, it must be said, you don’t get too deep yet. Still, every day is discoveries and everything is joyful.
Your relationship with that city moves faster than a relationship with a human. Somewhere between two weeks and a month that initial lustre fades, and you do not see the city through the same eyes. What you see is more real, more complex, with depth and, probably, a streak of darkness like a fudge swirl.
At this point comes the first disillusionment. You will lose the idyll. You have to make a choice: you can return home now and preserve that idyll in your memories and imagination, which is the only way to hold onto it. Or you can stay and lose this idyll forever, living instead with all the imperfections and dark and dangerous intersections. If you choose to stay, you can never go home again. You can return to the same place, but neither that place nor you will be the same. You could make a new home there, if you do return, but you will never find your old one.
posted by Nate at 1:36 AM
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