Why I Need to Travel: A Prelude

Monday 29 July 2024

After all, if I hadn’t been detained and interrogated by Russian security forces, the FSB (the “new” name of the former KGB), and if I hadn’t co-taught and co-led with King Arthur that Summer 2008 West Point study abroad course for Army cadets, I then wouldn’t have been able to write my Katyn book manuscript—at the very least the one I eventually ended up writing.  Those two FSB officers—in a way—are the true muses who inspired me to write what turned out to be a memoir/travel narrative but also something more.  And because of my experiences abroad, I find great value in travelling and creativity.  Traveling has become a creative outlet.    

I don’t know what kind of book manuscript I would have written if the FSB’s “Vladimir” and “Dmitry” hadn’t questioned me.  Moreover, I might have only included an Afterward… or some kind of brief chapter… about my witnessing during the study abroad course a racially motivated attack on one of the cadets by Moscow Metro commuters.  Without my two Russian travel experiences, I likely would have written a traditional, “academic,” scholarly book on the Katyn Massacres, not the intensely personal and emotional memoir I ended up writing.  Thanks to the numerous trips abroad and domestic expeditions I took to better understand the Katyn Massacres, I not only matured into a different kind of thinker and writer but also became a worldly-wise and enlightened human being.

For those reasons, I need to travel.  Remaining in place—static—whether physically or metaphysically stagnates the body, mind, and soul.  Therefore, I believe in the value of travelling.  Travelling is life.  Travelling changes you for the better: expanding consciousness, empathy, and worldliness.  When I taught an advanced composition/cultural studies course at West Point, the course director assigned for the cadets to read Pico Iyer’s 1991travel memoir The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto and his 18 March 2000 essay, “Why we travel,” found on https://www.salon.com/2000/03/18/why/.  I studied Iyer’s book intently to learn how to write a travel narrative but also a memoir—a memoir which may have started out as a travel diary but became more so a life diary.  The course director also created the first essay assignment, which prompted cadets to write their own version of: “Why We Travel.” 

This cadet assignment wasn’t easy; it demanded experiences perhaps beyond a stereotypic Spring Break party scene to write about.  Several writing students were confused as to why some people would mock or criticize their beach party trips.  A peaceful respite at a beach resort is necessary and enjoyable; however, answering a writing student’s question of: “Why do I need to go see the sultan’s throne in person when I can see a picture of it in my history textbook” needed to be explained carefully, thoughtfully—not dismissively or haughtily.  In their own way, those beach party enthusiast essay writers unknowingly were as sneering and judgmental as their travel critics who went to see the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  Indeed, what is the point of seeing the sultan’s throne in person?  Why is viewing that historical object as important to the soul as a beach party is?  One isn’t better than the other; yes, they are different, resulting in equally powerful experiences, but we shouldn’t avoid one at the expense of the other.  The writerly conflict was set.  Now Travelers, write your essays!     

Iyer’s argument is that travel is a transformative, spiritual contact not only with the destination you visit but—equally importantly—an existential encounter with the less familiar, hidden parts of your inner self.  One need not be a wayfarer or vagabond hopping on train cars or wandering the streets of an Old Town to travel.  And what is the difference between a “tourist” and “traveler”?  One is disparaged by the arrogant and the other is celebrated by the snooty.  Is there a middle ground? 

This conflict of privileging one experience over the other is both foolish and unenlightening.  We all start out as “tourists,” slowing evolving into “travelers.”  Our first time seeing the Sistine Chapel or Chichén Itzá … or even, yes, the throne room of the Topkapi Palace can become something more than a sightseer’s minute-long staring at.  Getting lost in the elusive Mona Lisa smile can be as thrilling or calming or frustrating the first time or seventeenth time.  The tourist staring into her eyes for the first time can teach lessons the traveler might have missed, and the traveler sharing an insight about her smile can inspire in the tourist a life-long need to return to The Louvre to fall in love again with Mona Lisa. 

On the other hand, the hedonism of an island vacation quickly becomes boring and repetitive for the same reason the museum crawl of a cultural outing soon becomes monotonous and overwhelming: an imbalance of stimuli and appreciation.  Too much is too much.  The all or nothing attitude some vacationers cling to is self-defeating.  Tourists, too, need time to reflect and mature.  Traveling is the education of the eye: how to see.  And then it turns into how to feel.

There isn’t an ultimate traveling destination.  Every place is a “bucket-list item.”  You can go on an adventure within yourself.  There—in the unconscious part of your identity—is the true, ultimate destination, a lifetime journey of discovery.  The hardest lesson to teach myself was: like life, I couldn’t foresee what awaited me down the path when I wrote my Katyn memoir.  I needed to acquire patience: like life, my book manuscript’s narrative arc, its artistic and intellectual intention, needed to unfurl itself when I was ready to embrace it.  Requiring nearly fifteen years for that revelation to show itself is but a fragment of my life’s timeline.  And by returning again and again to those destinations on a physical map and spiritual chart—like Odysseus—I needed time to travel to find myself and my life.          

When I wrote my 22 April 2024 blog— “My Manuscript Editor Is a Travel Agent, too”—I discussed the importance of going on a “writer’s retreat,” or, at the very least, going to a hideaway spot to calm my mind before conducting the revision of my Katyn manuscript.  I went somewhere, but I didn’t go to experience a “retreat”—a calming of the mind.  The opposite occurred; it heightened creative energy. 

I considered King Arthur’s suggestion of going to Montauk, Long Island in New York.  Instead, I decided to go to Boston with my two sons.  King Arthur understood that Montauk would have provided me with a respite that I needed; however, with my tunnel-vision narrow-mindedness, I went to Boston to “work.”  I enjoyed my day-visit to Boston; however, the excursion wasn’t a typical holiday because: 1) its brevity; 2) its purpose to conduct manuscript “research” at The New England Holocaust Memorial.  The Boston trip was the very opposite of a “retreat”—a withdrawal from the din of the creative process.  It distilled that creative intensity; it amplified my emotions to convey to my future Katyn book readers to share in those fiery and soul-stirring emotions.  I attained an important boost to create, but I didn’t need to augment it; my soul needed to relax, to heal, to breathe. 

Now that the drama (of creating and revising my Katyn manuscript) is done, I will now travel.  Travel for spiritual and bodily therapy.  I am naturally a moody and intense individual; therefore, I look forward to this future trip to a location of natural beauty—a place of constant natural creativity.  I won’t tell, yet, where or when I am going; however, I am sure that a new blog series will ensue.