Under
my bed, at the bottom of what once was a shoebox is a well worn hardback of
Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road.” Dog-eared
and notated in a largely unintelligible scrawl, the book is clearly well loved,
regularly read, and thoroughly pondered by its owner. I myself have yet to trudge halfway through
it. The book’s owner, my best friend,
and the reason for my laborious reading of a work I have absolutely no
emotional resonance with, lists “On the Road” among her all time favorites.
A fictionalization of the author’s
own travels across America, and a defining work of the beat generation, the
book addresses many of my own motivations for travel—a desire to expand my experience,
a fanciful curiosity, bordering on idealization, of foreign places, a
preoccupation with people. Yet, reading
the novel, I often find myself annoyed.
This is due to Sal, the main character’s, pathological avoidance of any
kind of responsibility. Additionally,
for a story about his travels and self discovery, Sal is remarkably lacking in
a sense of self awareness.
Travel is many things to many
people, but I think it is at its best when it is more than the diversion or
escape from an unsatisfying life, as is my impression of Sal’s travels, or the
simple amusement that many tourists take from it. Experiencing the unfamiliar has the ability
to challenge us in a unique way, one which can bring out the very best or worst
of human nature. With an open mind and a
keen understanding of your own perspective, it can provide a wonderful opportunity
to learn, to grow, and meet new people who challenge your understanding. A lack of the same can lead to the fearful or
violent reactions which stain the course of history.
For the next semester, I will be studying abroad in Bonn, Germany. I go with the same aforementioned motivations
I share with Kerouac’s Sal, but with (I hope) a good deal more motivation and perspective.
I go to a part of the world at once
familiar and foreign. Familiar in the roots
it has in my own society, the influence it had on my parents when they lived
and traveled there, and the continued cultural exchange occurring through both
traditional and modern media. Foreign
in the languages spoken, the age and length of its history, the variety and
specifics of the cultures, and in so many other ways.
It is difficult to describe my
expectations for the trip, as uncertain and incomplete as they are. Like scattered memories of a profoundly
affecting dream, I have in mind more images and impressions than concrete
expectations or plans. For as long as I have hoped to participate in this
program, the thought of it feels more like fantasy than reality. Despite knowing my plane departs in less than
48 hours, I haven’t really absorbed that it is actually happening. Hopefully I do so before I actually arrive.
While my new clothes, travel guides
and textbooks lie ready to be packed, procrastination is a tried and true
friend that I have yet to successfully rid myself of. Instead I sit here, putting more effort than
is probably warranted into an assignment that isn’t intended to be all that
difficult, but writing is familiar to me.
It has always been, more or less, how I work out my thoughts. Typing is comforting in a way packing is
not. Packing reminds me that for all my
lofty and idealistic thoughts, my experiences of even my own small slice of the
world are exceptionally narrow. That
while I am, perhaps, an academic citizen of the world, I am not a practical
one, and once I stop typing I have to go upstairs and become one.
Here goes nothing.
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