Tal vez no sea gratuito el hecho de que las mejores obras literarias hayan coincidido con la angustia e inestabilidad psicológica de quienes las escribieron. Puede que la verdadera fuente de la creatividad no yazca solamente en la sublimación de los impulsos primordiales, de los que padecemos todos los seres humanos, como diría Freud, sino en la afirmación del sufrimiento y la misericordia de la condición humana.
Tomen como ejemplo algunos de los mejores escritores del canon occidental. Cervantes sobrevive la Batalla de Lepanto (aunque quedaría sin el uso de su mano izquierda durante el resto de su vida), cinco años de cautiverio en Argel y la persistente (y patente) amenaza de la Inquisición española para luego escribir la primera (y más citada) novela moderna. Dostoyevski perdura los inviernos rusos y ataques frecuentes de epilepsia, reprimiendo, además, sus deseos de ver muertos a sus padres, para llegar a ser una de las voces literarias más destacadas. Hemingway se mete, por su propia voluntad, en un mundo de lujuria y violencia—ni mencionar las grandes guerras del siglo veinte—para acabar deprimido, gastado y con ganas de suicidarse, pero no antes de haber escrito unas de las novelas y relatos más alabados de su generación. ¿Hace falta citar el destino de la pobre Virginia Wolf?
Tal vez no sea por pura casualidad entonces que, en estos últimos días, no he podido ni escribir una sola palabra ni articular una sola idea coherente. Mi contribución al mundo de las letras (cibernéticas, por supuesto) ha resultado últimamente tan vacía y tan decepcionante como la página de mi documento Word. En otras palabras: mi musa y yo hemos estado de vacaciones.
Si es cierto que una imagen vale más que mil palabras, las 100 imágenes colgadas a la mano derecha de esta página Web servirán como un testimonio visual de lo bella que es Palma de Mallorca. Pasamos tres días soleados—en todos los sentidos de la palabra—en la capital de la isla más grande del archipiélago. Y, como yo actualmente me encuentro sin el don de escribir, o por lo menos sin la melancolía existencial que requiere la escritura, voy a permitir que las imágenes hablen por sí.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Vacilando, or Lazy Tourism
In his 1962 travelogue, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY: IN SEARCH OF AMERICA, John Steinbeck defined travel as something quite different from tourism. “In Spanish,” he wrote, “there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.” A kind of modern-day Quijote, Steinbeck set out in search of the America, not that he read about in other novels, but one which he was famous for portraying. Appropriately enough, he affectionately named his camper after the Spanish hidalgo´s faithful nag, Rocinante.
During my travels around Spain and Portugal, I am reminded of Steinbeck´s fascination with the zen-like act of vacilando, in which how one travels is more important than his or her final destination.
The kind of tourism most of us practice today—the kind popularized by the 17th century “Grand Tour” and Thomas Cook´s first attempt at mass tourism in the 19th century—focuses on the destination of the traveller, and within that destination, a circuit of mini-destinations. The kind of tourism in which travellers visit major cities, their monuments, and other pre-designated points of interest—in hopes of documenting the world´s marvels— only appears to give us the kind of direct contact with history lacking in our fast-paced, hyper-modern lives. This kind of tourism, however, better represents an attempt to check marks next to the long list of buildings and monuments we must see before we die than a genuine attempt to give and extract meaning from the act of travelling.
Every country has its own points of interest, its own architectural oddities and monuments erected to local heroes. Thanks to the Internet, they are only a click, and not a world, away. What is the point, then, of taking pictures of what has already been captured so many times, and what can so easily be seen through the eyes of others?
Why not explore what really makes us all different, and ditch the monument for a cup of coffee and the local rag, a chat in the neighbourhood pub, or even a trip through the metro station during morning rush hour?
In my experience, the point of vacilando is neither to float aimlessly through space nor to leave unbroken the cultural bubble in which we travel inevitably; but rather, to look beyond a city or a country´s selling points in order to really discover its own rhythms, sounds, smells, and cultural idiosyncrasies.
The following is my attempt to briefly document my vacilaciones through Spain and Portugal.
Lisbon: If the Iberian Peninsula represents a family and its capitals are two brothers, Lisbon would be the quiet, well-mannered older brother of an exciting but somewhat unruly Madrid.
Key words: cobble-stone streets, steep hills that descend into the river, fashionable, casual refinement, pastelerias, laid back, unpretentious, hand-painted tiles, pedestrian walkways, diverse, hospitable; An old lady dissed us when she realized we didn´t speak Portuguese. It was SUPER funny.
Porto: 15 hours in Oporto, as this city is officially called, and not a picture to prove it. Our time in Porto epitomizes the vacilando (lazy tourism) philosophy.
Key words: Amazing dinner at O Cocula, posh, metrosexual, stylish, young heart in an old city. People just smiled and laughed whenever we used our broken Portuguese.
Vigo: Proving that the rain in Spain does not stay mainly in the plain, rainy days are a way of life in this port town.
Key words: solitary, quiet, rainy, the arts, verdant. I finally encountered one of the mythic Euro bathrooms where one can attend to all bodily functions in the one open, 3X3 space. Exciting!
San Sebastian: My new favorite of the famous Spanish Ss, among them Sevilla, Salamanca, and Santiago de Compostela. This city is beautiful and proud, without being boastful.
Key words: Euskera, resistance, proud, multilingual and multicultural, generous, civilized, intense but not chaotic; I didn´t notice it immediately, but graffiti in this city is almost non-existent, making it an anomaly among other Spanish cities. This city has so much pride that young people express themselves by tagging large pieces of paper and taping them to city walls. Awesome.
During my travels around Spain and Portugal, I am reminded of Steinbeck´s fascination with the zen-like act of vacilando, in which how one travels is more important than his or her final destination.
The kind of tourism most of us practice today—the kind popularized by the 17th century “Grand Tour” and Thomas Cook´s first attempt at mass tourism in the 19th century—focuses on the destination of the traveller, and within that destination, a circuit of mini-destinations. The kind of tourism in which travellers visit major cities, their monuments, and other pre-designated points of interest—in hopes of documenting the world´s marvels— only appears to give us the kind of direct contact with history lacking in our fast-paced, hyper-modern lives. This kind of tourism, however, better represents an attempt to check marks next to the long list of buildings and monuments we must see before we die than a genuine attempt to give and extract meaning from the act of travelling.
Every country has its own points of interest, its own architectural oddities and monuments erected to local heroes. Thanks to the Internet, they are only a click, and not a world, away. What is the point, then, of taking pictures of what has already been captured so many times, and what can so easily be seen through the eyes of others?
Why not explore what really makes us all different, and ditch the monument for a cup of coffee and the local rag, a chat in the neighbourhood pub, or even a trip through the metro station during morning rush hour?
In my experience, the point of vacilando is neither to float aimlessly through space nor to leave unbroken the cultural bubble in which we travel inevitably; but rather, to look beyond a city or a country´s selling points in order to really discover its own rhythms, sounds, smells, and cultural idiosyncrasies.
The following is my attempt to briefly document my vacilaciones through Spain and Portugal.
Lisbon: If the Iberian Peninsula represents a family and its capitals are two brothers, Lisbon would be the quiet, well-mannered older brother of an exciting but somewhat unruly Madrid.
Key words: cobble-stone streets, steep hills that descend into the river, fashionable, casual refinement, pastelerias, laid back, unpretentious, hand-painted tiles, pedestrian walkways, diverse, hospitable; An old lady dissed us when she realized we didn´t speak Portuguese. It was SUPER funny.
Porto: 15 hours in Oporto, as this city is officially called, and not a picture to prove it. Our time in Porto epitomizes the vacilando (lazy tourism) philosophy.
Key words: Amazing dinner at O Cocula, posh, metrosexual, stylish, young heart in an old city. People just smiled and laughed whenever we used our broken Portuguese.
Vigo: Proving that the rain in Spain does not stay mainly in the plain, rainy days are a way of life in this port town.
Key words: solitary, quiet, rainy, the arts, verdant. I finally encountered one of the mythic Euro bathrooms where one can attend to all bodily functions in the one open, 3X3 space. Exciting!
San Sebastian: My new favorite of the famous Spanish Ss, among them Sevilla, Salamanca, and Santiago de Compostela. This city is beautiful and proud, without being boastful.
Key words: Euskera, resistance, proud, multilingual and multicultural, generous, civilized, intense but not chaotic; I didn´t notice it immediately, but graffiti in this city is almost non-existent, making it an anomaly among other Spanish cities. This city has so much pride that young people express themselves by tagging large pieces of paper and taping them to city walls. Awesome.
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Price of Prevention
Salman and I finally made it to Portugal, and our trip could not have been any smoother. We arrived to the Chamartin Station in Madrid, found the platform from which our train would depart, and embarked on our journey across the Iberian Peninsula. We presented out tickets for review twenty minutes into the trip and then once again, when we crossed the border into Portugal. No one stopped to ask for our passports, even when we arrived to the Santa Apolonia station in downtown Lisbon. I would say that we traveled with the same ease as any EU citizen, but since no one had to show identification, all nationalities seemed suddenly irrelevant.
In fact, for the majority of our 10-hour trip, we seemed to benefit from the more positive effects of transnationalism. In a way, we became a band of nationless travelers, moving democratically, and more importantly, fearlessly from one nation to the next. Now that I think about it, that was the best part of our trip from Madrid to Lisbon: shedding the fear and confusion we have come to associate with travel at home in the US. Madrid also endured a major terrorist attack recently on one of its main channels of transit; and yet, Salman and I navigated the country’s train system without fear of interrogation, or worse yet, taking off our shoes in front of a long line of equally frustrated strangers.
This is not to say that travel regulations should be abandoned entirely, or that passports have lost all meaning in the face of rampant transnationalism. On the contrary, I would have been comforted somewhat if an official had attempted to confirm my identity during our trip. However, I think the US has an important lesson to learn from this experience: first to recognize and eventually to reevaluate the price of prevention.
In fact, for the majority of our 10-hour trip, we seemed to benefit from the more positive effects of transnationalism. In a way, we became a band of nationless travelers, moving democratically, and more importantly, fearlessly from one nation to the next. Now that I think about it, that was the best part of our trip from Madrid to Lisbon: shedding the fear and confusion we have come to associate with travel at home in the US. Madrid also endured a major terrorist attack recently on one of its main channels of transit; and yet, Salman and I navigated the country’s train system without fear of interrogation, or worse yet, taking off our shoes in front of a long line of equally frustrated strangers.
This is not to say that travel regulations should be abandoned entirely, or that passports have lost all meaning in the face of rampant transnationalism. On the contrary, I would have been comforted somewhat if an official had attempted to confirm my identity during our trip. However, I think the US has an important lesson to learn from this experience: first to recognize and eventually to reevaluate the price of prevention.
Friday, January 4, 2008
In search of the present
My journey begins in Madrid, Spain. Wait, I take that back. It actually starts where all international travel begins and ends: the airport. In my case, I've spent most of the day sitting at the busiest airport in the United States, Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, preparing my blog and watching people. When my hands aren't busy and more than once I've been caught staring, I find the airport is the perfect place for me to close my eyes and just think.It seems only appropriate that my thoughts come back to travel. I've made this trip three times now. On the first trip, I had no idea what adventures awaited me on the other side of the Atlantic. I remember having to turn my back on my mother during our final goodbye, just to keep from changing my mind and going back home. The second time, I decided to take her with me, and we spent two weeks exploring Madrid and Andalucia. If my first trip to Spain represented an unknown future, the second united my present with my past; and my mother finally met me in Spanish. On this trip, I'd like to think that I'm in search of the present. I know where I'm going and I know where I've been, but now is the time to figure out why. Why Spanish? Why literature? Why look for oneself a half a world away from home?
Jet lagged but as determined as always, I hope to spend the next month answering these questions and just maybe finding the key to the present.
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