Travelling these days is the ultimate luxury of the modern cave man. We no longer have to travel to chase eternal and periodical migrations of our prey, we no longer travel only to conquest or escape persecution. We travel for leisure, we travel because we constantly search something new, something virgin to the eye and the mind, something that might move us from our continuous and monotone modern state of utter boredom. It's an inner search of the frustratingly elusive je ne sais quoi, the outward reflection of our inner journey of discovery. Are we in the search of our soul as maybe poets would put it or maybe constantly redefining ourselves, conscious that we haven't reached the perfect definition, the one that maybe comprises more silences than words? We don't know ... but travelling is so much easier. You buy a cheap ticket on a website, take your backpack or hand luggage, occupy a crammed economy seat in an airplane and off you go. You escaped, you're a different something, you're a rolling stone now.
But do we escape really? Wherever we go we carry our baggage with us, it's always there, a burden, the more we know or think we know, the heavier the burden. It's a mental burden, something a priori that ruins the novelty of every new venue, every new adventure, as we try to fit everything in the big master plan, as we look at the world through the same eyes, different scenery, different people, different geography, but it's all through the same eyes, the same architecture of thought. We cannot escape our inner geography, no matter how far off we're trying to run away from it, no matter how different the experience. And yet, we do hope to break free and meet the unmetable, hoping to be saved from our own state of disarray or the ever so present modern confusion. We keep the faith because sometimes it works, it's in those moments when you catch that small detail with the corner of your eye, that detail that stared you in the face all along, yet you've given it no special meaning. And now, from the corner of the eye, it's a momentary revelation, momentary yet life long lasting. Your life can change in a blink of the eye, in one of those zen moments when you can almost hear the sound of one hand clapping.
And it's for moments like that we still keep the faith and plod along from one destination to another, without hoping yet so desperately hoping...