While I rode my exercycle this morning, which is a reasonably stressful but otherwise quite boring half hour, I amused myself by trying to remember all the places I have visited in my life. I was able to come up with only 30 of the 50 states, although I may have missed a few. I do not count states that I am nominally in when I am changing planes in an airport. (Far and away my most memorable such airport moment occurred on October 5, 1988. I was on my way to Australia to watch my son Patrick play a chess game and I changed planes in Los Angeles. As I walked through the airport, I passed a bar that had a TV set on and stopped to watch a little bit of the Bentsen – Quayle vice presidential debate. I was just in time to see the famous moment when Bentsen said “I knew John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy was my friend. You are no John F. Kennedy, Senator.”) Thirty or thirty-five states strikes me as very low for someone of my age. I do not really know the United States first hand very well.
When it comes to foreign countries, the numbers are even
more strikingly tilted. I have never been to any part of South America and the
closest I have come to Central America was a birdwatching trip to Trinidad with
Susie. I have been to Paris more than 40 times – maybe as many as 50 – but I
have never been anywhere in Asia or to Russia or to India. My only visit to the
near East or Middle East was three days spent in Israel and Susie and I made a
detour on our way to Paris. I have been to Dubrovnik twice, to Vienna once, to
Italy a number of times, and of course to England, Wales, and Scotland, but
never to Ireland.
The place I most regret never having seen is China. There
was a time when I might have managed to arrange a speaking tour of some sort
but at my age such exertions are out of the question.
I imagine many readers of this blog have traveled much more
widely. I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s famous remark, “I have traveled
widely in Concord.” (Thoreau was of course a native of Concord!)
Which leaves sub-Saharan Africa, which I have travelled to more
than 40 times, mostly but not exclusively to South Africa during the 23 years
that I ran my scholarship organization there. It is odd how parochial I am in
some respects.
13 comments:
I don't find you especially parochial just as Thoreau was not parochial for having traveled widely in Concord and not having ever gone on a gran tour of Europe or whatever they did in his days.
I've known people who have traveled around the world and have seen nothing except a list of sites to see, have learned nothing and are as provincial or parochial as someone who has never been farther than the neighborhood supermarket.
I recall back in the late 60's I lived in an apartment in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan which was then basically a white working class neighborhood and there was a woman in my building who told me that she had never been outside of New York City. She was no more parochial than some people who fly to one or another island equiped to rip off tourists every free weekend.
Kant never journeyed far from his hometown of Koenigsberg, yet he was hardly a parochial character. (Thoreau did venture as far as Minnesota and went to Canada once, but mostly he stayed in New England. And nearly 200 years later some of us are still reading him.) By the way, the latest famous Koenigsbergerin (now Kaliningraderess, or something like that) is Putin’s ex-wife. Kaliningrad is a piece of Russia not yet connected to the motherland by an up-for-grabs stalk of Lithuania. Her ex-husband no doubt has his eye on the latter.
Kant is a fine example. He read travel descriptions with great pleasure.
Otherwise, I can only agree with s.wallerstein. On my travels I have met many so-called "expats" who live in a bubble of their own culture in distant countries. They have impregnated themselves against any influence of their environment.
Don't worry yourself with questions of travel, Professor Wolff! In a sense, I envy the settled account of the places you've been. I'm a 25 year old Irishman, and after 3 years abroad I am preparing to return home from Japan, with uneasiness. I've met many people who were inclined to travel and made me jealous with accounts of their foreign adventures, but I feel, despite my time away from home, somewhat singular. I only want to live in one more country. Staying in one space and knowing it deeply is, I think, a more invaluable experience than easy, shallow international travel. I think of the great Australian writer, Gerald Murnane.
"I have watched few films during my lifetime and hardly any in recent years. ... I cannot recall having gone voluntarily into any art gallery or museum or building said to be of historic interest. I have never worn sunglasses. I have never learned to swim. I have never voluntarily immersed myself in any sea or stream. ... I have never touched any button or switch or working part of any computer or fax machine or mobile telephone. I have never learned to operate any sort of camera. ... In 1979 I taught myself to type using the index finger of my right hand alone. Since then, I have composed all my fiction and other writing using the finger just mentioned and one or another of my three manual typewriters."
His pride in his 'shortcomings' lead me to believe the absence of such shortcomings. A life well lived doesn't involve movement. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends when I get home, and I'm going to try and keep my bragging anecdotes abroad to a minimum. My grandmother passed away while I was in Japan. Individuals are insignificant without their families, I think. I miss mine.
Loving this comments thread so far. I haven't really been bitten by the travel bug (I tend not to find it worth the hassle), and I admire people who live simple, low-key lives, and nourish their passions and become wise and interesting without racking up so many thousands of miles on the odometer.
Pascal gets a lot of crap for the wager, but he had a few gems as well: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
Remember when we had hope and sang and danced to song like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHGu-LIAhw
My dad worked in the country music business. When I was a kid he liked to brag that he'd been to every state in the US, every province in Canada, many of the states in Mexico, lots of countries in Europe, and I think once he was in Australia. He also drove countless millions of miles in his lifetime across every section of the US, big cities, little towns, and everything in between. He still talks fondly of it, but ya know what I'd have preferred, a dad that was around more often and actually doing "dad" type of things.
I'd like to say a word on behalf of travel. I've found enjoyment and learned much from travel--not the "it's Tuesday it must be Belgium" variety, but spending some time in a particular foreign city and getting to know it. Fortunately, my work involved some of that. I would have liked to have had a Paris apartment as the Prof had. There are worse things in this world than getting to know Paris.
Marc--The dance to your song is all the traveling a person needs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtfNwz-l6gw&ab_channel=MultiMaestro77
Jack--That's a terrifically interesting quote from Murnane. As I recall, his novel Border Districts is a kind preparation for visual travel without moving, across the border figured by shards of colored glass, in a variation on John Donne's mutual gazing and finding oneself in the other's eyes, or alternatively as Bob Dylan transformed it: "In your teardrops I can see my own reflection./ Luck was with me when I crossed the border line."--And Ireland offers one of the greatest instances of "staying in one space and knowing it deeply" in Tim Robinson's writings on Connemara and on the Aran Islands.
John,
Thank you for that great video clip. Those kids could really boogie!
As a side note, we never know what private demons haunt the lives of public persona – until we read about it in the news. On February 1, 2012, Don Cornelius, the host of Soul Train and an extremely successful Black entrepreneur, died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound.
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