(Thanks to Dancenik and Mushnik for two wonderful photos of New York City)
After yesterday's posting of BZWZ attaching her East Africa travel pins to the Great Mapnik, The Great Plotnik spent some time in his chair, staring at the map, but not at the pins, just at the holes.
Then he received a note from Rachel The Famous Children's Book Author, containing two travel letters posted from her friend in Camaroon. The pins on the map, and those letters from Camaroon started Plotnik thinking about the way people from one cultural background look at people from another and most specifically how they write about it.
Just The Holes
I When I stare at my map, I never see the pins, just the holes. When I read travel letters from friends in exotic places, I mistrust their observations, because they are not mine. I want it to be me who fills in all the blank spots, swims the lagoons, sails the fjords, hikes the peaks, lazes in the valleys, chews the qat, picks the chipotle out of the soup and hears the music of the spheres.
II The Camaroonian cab driver can’t figure out why the white traveler wants to see Camaroon. He thinks the white traveler needs to see Camaroon because he wishes to laugh at the poor. He thinks there is no poverty where the white traveler lives. The white traveler thinks: “My life in America must not be rich enough. Otherwise, I’d stay home.” The cab driver would like to try living where the white traveler lives.
III Family matters. Friends matter. Kids matter. Work matters. My family is here. My friends are here. My kids are here. My work is here. But I think about there, not here. What does there have that here doesn't? Why is soup tastier in French?
IV Church bells clang in Oaxaca. The faithful need to awaken the heathens. The muezzin calls In Istanbul: “Al-lahhhhh! (I’m up! I’m working! No one should be allowed to sleep once I’m working!) Al-lahhhh!” In Tikal, the howler monkeys start blaring at 3AM. With them, it’s probably not about God but it all comes out the same. I sit up in bed. I scratch my head. Sleep is dead. That’s what I said.
V When I’m traveling, I hate tourists. I want to be the only one with a blog. I want to be first to taste the pozole. I don’t want other people to hate the sheep eyeballs before I hate the sheep eyeballs. I laugh at fat Europeans who smoke too much, drink too much, throw their money around too much, dance too much, sing too loudly, tickle the women under their chins and never go to sleep because they’re having far too much fun. I would be doing all that, if I weren’t busy blogging.
VI On the Turkish coast, you order your fish and they run out to their boat, row into the bay, catch the fish, bring it back in and throw it on the charcoal. Sometimes the whole process takes a long time, but there is a lot of retsina and cheap white wine. After awhile it doesn’t matter anymore what you ordered and you’ve learned a bunch of new songs about the Yankee Imperialist Pig Dog. When the meal finally comes, you find out you ordered chicken.
VII Sometimes we sit on our deck in San Francisco and stare in awe at the view. We tell ourselves that if we were in the Glorious Republic of Pig we’d be waxing poetic about the gorgeous cityscape and the glorious bridge and the romantic fog and the brilliant sky. If we could find this wine in Bordeaux we’d give it five stars and send two cases home. Stars streak from the constellation of Pegasus. In Greece, we’d swoon. Here, the wine is five bucks and the stars are like this all winter. We’ve gotta get our passports renewed.
VIII Once upon a time there was a handsome prince. It wasn’t me. The handsome prince met my old girlfriend after I left her behind in a hotel room near Tehuantapec because I’d taken off with two new American girls. One was plump and dark and one was skinny and blonde. Guess which one wasn’t Jewish.
The handsome prince took my old girlfriend for the adventure of her life in his private plane. They flew over the jungles of Chiapas, the ruins of Bonampak. They drank single malt whiskey and lay in the sun with his hand under her bathing suit.
My new girl friends and I hitchhiked towards the Caribbean coast. At first, they sat in the shade as I stood alone on the baking, music-less highway with my thumb pointed North. The trucks passed by so fast the asphalt stung my face, loud horns reverberating in the silent shimmering heat long after the trucks had disappeared into the horizon.
After several hours, I sat down and the girls stood up. Marian stuck out her thumb and the first truck screeched to a stop. The driver wore a sombrero. He motioned to the girls that they should climb into the air conditioned cab with him. He pointed me towards the open trailer with the cattle. It was really cold back there after the sun evaporated into stars. Occasionally, I could hear the three of them laughing and singing along to huapango music on the radio. I sucked as a handsome prince.
IX Rachel’s friend Diane has written a travel and photo book called ‘Best Seat in the House,’ about the toilets she has used, or tried to use, or fallen into in the middle of the night, buried up to her bare thighs in human waste, in various less-than-pleasure spots around the world. She has got travel stories to make your kidneys tremble.
I suppose my travel book will have to be about being a Jewish musician in the Far East where the only Jews hide behind large walls, who make enough money to hire my partner and I to come play music for them but live in countries where no one has ever heard the word ‘Jew.’ The story is stranger than it seems because I’m not Jewish anywhere but in Thailand. In America I’m a Jewnitarian. My neighbor across the street thinks I’m Catholic because he is and he likes me. He tells me Jew jokes. I feel like Borat. But I can’t write a travel book about that, and Diane already has the travel toilet market cornered. So I guess it’ll have to be about Jews in Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, where the guys in black beards are usually mullahs.
X When I was a child, I didn’t know anybody who had ever traveled anywhere, except all our dads who had been in World War II and didn’t speak highly of anything they saw overseas. My wife’s father was on the first destroyer into Japan Harbor. My stepdad was on a destroyer in the South Pacific. My uncle was at Pearl Harbor AND the Battle of the Bulge.
My father was 4-F and my brother was 4-F but I was ready meat. I had to work really hard to stay out of Vietnam. Traveling is one thing, getting my ass blown off for Dow Chemical was another.
XI Praise Jesús, my son Dan saw Vietnam before I did. By the time Dan got there, Saigon was called Ho Chi Minh City and you could buy Advil on any corner. Dan has also been to Brazil, Nicaragua, India, Nepal, Cambodia, South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique. His little sister Bronnie is only 24 but she’s been to Kenya, Uganda, Peru twice, Ecuador, Panama, England, Spain, France and Ireland. She’s sailed to the Galapagos on a research boat. She’s talking about taking another research boat to Antarctica. She’s angry that our map with all the travel pins doesn’t have Antarctica on it because Antarctica is under the frame of the map. If she goes to Waddell Bay, we’ll have to put her pins into the wall under the map.
XII I used to hate to fly, but that was before everybody else learned to hate it too. Now, I consider all the businessmen grousing because they have to take off their wing tips wussies. I happily remove my belt before I go through the metal detector, gleefully pack my liquids and gels into three ounce containers and place them in a quart-size plastic bag with a sealable top, smile toothily at all the grim-reaper-faced airline security personnel and am only slightly deterred in my excited anticipation of a flight that will have all the creature comforts of an Inquistion hotel, when I realize these Homeland Security dipwads are not doing shit to protect me, that any terrorist worth half his weight in rupees would slip his bombs, his guns, his Koran, his suicide note, his nuclear weapon, his tractor to pull it onto the tarmac and his political tract condemning the American agressor plus the photo of his 15-year-old widow past these idiots as easily as chili rellenos through a gringo. But I refuse to start being terrified to fly again until everyone else chills. More pins.
