*sigh* It looks hot and dusty. And tiring. I feel like I've seen it before, or something "close enough," even though of course I haven't, and just a few days ago I was so excited for the opportunity to compare Iran to the places I *have* seen, in Northern India and Turkey, that have a cultural, historic, and aesthetic overlap with Iran....
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Suleymaniye, Istanbul | Royal Mosque, Isfahan | Taj Mahal, Agra |
I know there's always a point in the process of planning for a trip when it all just seems like too much trouble. There's another point, though, sometime when everything is planned and you're on your way, or the first dinner or the first morning when you step out the door.... there's a point when it's so incredibly exciting, because you know that you'll have all these amazing new experiences that you can't even begin to imagine from your current viewpoint--and that in just a few days, at the end of the trip, your whole perspective on the world, your life, everything will have changed. You can't predict beforehand what that change will be.
But right now, there's the part of my brain that says, "Oh, I think I know exactly what it will be like, and please, can't I just stay home?"
It's partly that I'm getting older and creakier... and a big part of it is that I'm really happy with my life now, overall (although unhappy with my compulsive procrastination). I love my beautiful wife, I love my dogs, I love my house... it's a good life. I love reading about teaching and planning for that future. I can sit at my dining room table and watch the birds and animals in the woods, and feel that sense of being so lucky, that sense of wonder, that I used to have to halfway round the world to find. It's comfortable, and it's wonderful too. Traveling is rarely comfortable, even when it's wonderful.
In searching for the Turkey and India photos above, I realized something else that I can compare with those two trips. Hot & dusty isn't the problem, I'm gonna be lonely. I don't want to go without Loopy. Do you think she'd ever, ever, in a million years, agree to come to Iran with me? If not, I might as well go now, with a nice safe tour, before any more earthquakes or wars destroy what I want to see. But if so, then I want to wait.
It's always better with Loopy.
1 comment:
maybe it's an even better thing to travel when you're comfortable and full of wonder where you -- and not looking for the travel to give you any of that. maybe that makes you more open to whatever is truly there, right in front of you, when you travel...
dunno. (-;
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