Ramblin' on my mind (the phenomenology of baggage)

Whether wholeheartedly or not, when acquaintances react with the "lucky you! In sunny Spain again" attitude following my accounts of the working weekend as part of a perfunctory school-run exchange, I don't like to dust it off with an equally overused "well, just business, mainly airports and hotels, you know" spiel. Though technically true of course, I find it in sour grape taste and not a real portrayal of the way I feel. It is surely an exact description, because I do not in fact see or do anything I could not see or do at home. But travelling is not about checking out with your own eyes what you knew existed all along. There is something about being, as ever the essence of these pages of mine. I do not possess the ability to dissect my idea of genius loci for you, but I have found it well summed up in Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel: you move from place to place despite yourself, you being the most cumbersome piece of luggage weighing your own self down. Travelling used to be a luxury, especially in business terms. The name still adorns a Class of its own. In my father's generation's case for example, life back at the office would continue as usual protecting absent staff from deluge on return, the scant communication resources would ensure lots of respectful quiet, and of course the mission was rewarded with a salary over and beyond standard, since the idea of performing away from home was extra-ordinary.
I won't bore you with a description of how things have changed, but do note this: it is at least amusing that in our current predicament it is stability, not mobility, which is rewarded. Let us pick some random examples. Whether it's dealing with quarrelsome neighbours, hoping for some respect at your local restaurant, getting a convenient broadband deal or simply asserting your right to park somewhere, the stable dwellers always win, and the passer-by soon gives up any claim as the time needed to follow anything up is lacking. The commercial reasons behind this are of course obvious, but what is less remembered and understood is that it was not always like this. The outcome is a demographically significant wave of movers who at all costs wish their companions to know how stable (respected) they are (at home, i. e. somewhere else). This takes on strange forms. On occasion it is the type who clearly does not live or eat in five-star surroundings complaining like a rockstar in a six-star environment; it might be the tourist just emerging from the foggy north grumbling at one single cloud one single day of her holiday; or even the call-of-the-wild explorer appalled at the level of English spoken in the jungle he has chosen to lose himself in. The list goes on, outwardly varied, but featuring one unmistakable quality: we are still lugging ourselves around. This is where I find the previously evoked airports and hotels come in handy. As non-places, they are cleansing to our system. They resist modification, in fact defy us in terms of leaving a mark, and suddenly we are relieved of all responsibility. I have tried Christmas, New Year and birthdays in such twilight zones - never through my own choice - and have made the most of what I had, finding it rather soothing, since being in transit is, I find, the most correct of life's metaphors.
No affectation intended, but the device where dreams reside is more than a tourist adaptor. A herioc perspective is the realistic way to house any everyday action, strange as it may seem. As a new Blues People, discovering the road as a home - once destinations are mapped out by those who inevitably control us - may represent the most subversive form of liberation since the first generation set out, troubled but free, from the Delta to the Big City.