wanderlust

Last night, I was struck with this desire to travel.  Reminded of conversations with my friend Adam about the relative charm and appeal of becoming struck with dissociative fugue (sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one’s customary place of work, with inability to recall one’s past).  Although I wouldn’t want to lose my identity anymore, the thought of just traveling from place to place and visiting people I haven’t seen in 10 or 20 years was deeply (if briefly) appealing.

For many, this is a normal, common feeling, this wanderlust.  I generally dislike travel, finding it neither relaxing (sitting at home with a book and some music or going to a movie being more relaxing than traveling and enduring the stress of spending money, not to mention the stress of being in a strange town, interacting with new people) nor exciting (due to the generally dull, frustrating and tiring modes required to undertake meaningful travel), and I generally find myself preoccupied with the same sort of boviscopophobia described in David Foster Wallace’s essay, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

So as all of these longings for travel and connection with old friends started pulling at my soul, my brain offered a quick rejoinder reminding me of my usual response to talking to any of these people.  They inevitably ask, with sincere interest, what I’ve been up to, and I generally have some sort of interior cringe and offer some vague and conversation-stalling reply along the lines of “not much” or “you know, life, working, boring stuff.”  Not wanting to share my own struggles and pain on what is supposed to be a joyous reunion and likewise not wanting to overwhelm them with all that I have done and possibly leave them feeling that they themselves have accomplished little and in fact lead dull, boring lives.  And so we reminisce, and have a pleasant (yet often somewhat dull, or at best hilariously entertaining but overall uninspiring) conversation.  And so this feeling of wanderlust is thus partially destroyed by my brain, reminding me of my tendency toward antisocial solipsism, until it offers me the attractive phrase “modern nomad”.

Nomadic life always seemed unattractive and prohibitively difficult, not to mention atavistic, given the forces of industrialization globalization (even as I was growing up in the 70s and 80s).  Being a hermit always seemed much cooler than being a nomad. Modern nomads seemed to generally be somewhat sketchy – grifters, gypsies, hobos.  A somewhat romantic life that held a Mamet-esque sort of appeal, but really something that I wanted to read about and imagine, but couldn’t really see myself being able to do.  Now, however, seeing stories about people who sell all their stuff on ebay and follow some romantic and often nomadic dream there seemed to be some sort of appeal to this idea.  I considered it for a couple of minutes, thinking about combining such a journey with visits to old friends and acquaintances, perhaps taking some of them along with me for unspecified amounts of time to mutually interesting places.  Then I went up to bed, forgetting this whole line of thought (which really only occupied about 6 minutes last night, having that last cigarette before bed).

Until this morning, when I logged in planning to blog about music, and through a series of clicks of the mouse through interesting articles, ended up reading this. Contemporary Nomad has a much more elegant sound to it than “modern nomad,” and I applaud their efforts.  A bit more adventure and physical exertion than I could probably handle, but the view seems incredible.  I’m glad they’re sharing it.