“A monument only says, ‘At lease I got this far,’
while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’”
Adventure stories were my meat and
potatoes growing up—mice with swords, hobbits, dragons, good and evil, victory
and defeat. The tropes are so deeply ingrained in me that I often don’t realize
that not everyone takes the metaphor of life as a journey as deeply as I do.
Not everyone imagines difficult conversations as battlefields, periods of
boredom as the literal Doldrums. To others, pain is pain—a broken leg hurts and
a broken heart heals. But to those of us inundated with the spell of fantasy,
scars are stories with a beginning and end, replete with significance, mystery,
romance.
All
that to say I wonder sometimes what brought me to Korea. What madness possessed
me to cross the ocean and throw myself upon Thailand, Cambodia, Australia,
China, and wherever else I might land? I’m a homebody so homebodyish that
parties still—at twenty-three! Perhaps forever?—make me nervous and time away
from home weighs on me down like a wet fur coat. Whatever am I doing on the
opposite side of the globe?
Leaving,
or its milder, more symbolic form, going out for an evening, is necessary—even for
the extreme introvert. After a day of watching Sherlock episodes and cleaning
my apartment, I badly needed to get away from my Fortress of Solitude and enter
the world of the living. But how—maybe you know the feeling—how could I ever
leave my bed, my sweatpants and hoodie behind for the cold, wetness of the
outside?
I
needed a disguise—the disguise of a person who didn’t mind the rainy streets
and solitary bus ride out to the nearest worthwhile coffee shop. Pirate? Too
scurvy. Knight? Rain would rust my armor. Ninja? Perhaps, but I don’t have the
right shoes for the outfit. So instead I dressed up like a writer and took to
the streets in my scarf, sweater, and skirt combo, armed with my netbook, Precise
V5 Pilot pen, and a couple notebooks. I’m happy here in my cozy coffee shop—jazz
pouting quietly in the background, bookshelves lining the walls, wooden tables,
wooden floors and chairs and records bordering the cornice[1]. Michael
Bolton looking angelic with flowing blonde locks on the cover of The One Thing. The Best of John Lennon.
Beethoven and Schubert and Roy Fox.
Maybe
that’s all my travels abroad are sometimes—a disguise, a jaunt. Brian Jacques
has taught me all too well the value of a quest, so that when college ended
what else could I do but light out for Salamandastron? I think I’m okay with
that. There are worse wastes of time, less idealistic reasons for travel. I do
hope that the metaphor works the same in real life, though. I hope that I come
back changed for the better, confident—or at the very least not as confused—that
I have achieved something.
Life
is so big, I think. Stuck in the middle, I haven’t the eyes to make sense of it
all. The stories—fantasies, adventures, journeys—help my faith in the
meaningfulness of reality. There’s a piece of poetry I find similarly
comforting. Says Robert Browning, “This world’s no blot for us, nor blank. It
means intensely and it means good.”
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