Cross Musings

No, the post title doesn't refer to this scathing parody (for the record, I totally out-overwrought David Cross...not even close, Dr. Fünke).

I think that this travel piece (2 of 2 from England) is a little too nasty, and not very representative of my time abroad -- it's more of a series of musings from the sour, if clear-headed, state of mind that consumed me in London. I'm still uncomfortable with this piece, but I thought I'd publish it anyway. If anything, it's an accurate reflection on how I felt at the time.

A more straightforward account of Prague (which, along with Berlin and Paris, was the source of many more positive experiences and began a slow shift toward a happier and healthier general outlook) will follow soon, so as to satisfy my two regular readers, one of whom is me.

TRAVELOGUE

On the plane from Rome to London, I casually overheard a conversation that intrigued me. A young man whose slow Texan drawl I placed somewhere between Goofy and Gomer Pyle was discussing America with an Italian woman, who may or may not have been forced into the conversation against her will. He extolled the virtues of Christian summer camps and teenage monogamy, and of “promise rings,” a venerable symbol of joyless youthful restraint. I wondered what it must be like to live in his America. Extended travel abroad has a disembodying effect, and as I flew back to a temporary home after eleven days in Italy, I found myself floating to the top of the airplane cabin, picking out “Americans” surrounding me from above as though I’d never set foot in the place.

*

In Italy, it gradually became apparent that even as Italian cities are weighed down to the point of cultural collapse by international tourism, which in parts of Venice seemed at times like a veritable infestation, there is a strong sense of national unity. An inscrutable unifying force pervades the myriad alleyways of Venice, the subways and side streets of Rome, even the slanted ascending expanse of the relatively remote Amalfi coast. It’s in the offhand casualness of Metro strikes, in old women in furs walking slowly side by side, in the tiny scooters that constantly skate along the edges of long traffic lines, in cobblestones that make bus rides slightly nauseating, and in massive, unmarked ancient ruins that sleep heavily in the middle of industrial complexes.

I wonder if the same force exists in America. Politically, national unity within the country has rarely been so fractured and disjointed, and culturally, I think Bill Watterson put it best in a “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon: “The problem with the melting pot is that there’s no money in it.” Outside of the country itself, the only thing that seems to unite Americans is an overwhelming aura of contempt directed toward them, and the seemingly universal paranoid suspicion among American tourists of adhering to the stereotypes of disrespectful clumsiness and callousness.

*

Reading two W.G. Sebald novels on the trip, I was mesmerized by long passages devoted to listing places: street names, mountain ranges, winding rivers and expansive oceans, labyrinthine cities and quaint towns. And I think that even the most depressing account of a near two-week holiday in Italy would be made enchanting by the association of a few plain, specific details. But where Sebald finds the intimacy in the ostensibly common, most American university students are more concerned with dollar bin guidebooks and easily Googled tour guides, cheap lodging in the middle of tourist traps, and the Important Sites. Our itineraries breed such banality that any observations we make are deprived of quieter truths.

I find that the angst and fear and cautious wonderment of travel are there in my notes, but somehow even the most mundane details of widely acknowledged attractions and locations trump personal recollection. I wonder how many people have taken the exact pictures I took, had the exact same conversations on the exact same roads. Yet these shared memories, seemingly second-hand and noticeably worn after countless years of repetition, are what we bring home with us. The monuments, piazzas, crumbling statues and columns, and ostentatious government buildings all swallow the tiny human figures—strangers, friends, girlfriend, you—that huddle together and smile absently in front of them.

*

At some point on the trip I chalked it all up to homesickness, which I’d yet to feel strongly in London because homesickness requires boredom, and boredom in a dingy London flat is far too crippling to allow much room for homesickness. Boredom on a train, however, will get you thinking of home as soon as the words run out in the novel you bought at double price for something to do. But, as is the nature of travel boredom, pleasant details don’t enter into it—the Big Picture asserts itself like a bully, ousting reminiscences of the left side of your childhood bed that you always slept on, or the chair where your father sat and snored a little while you practiced the piano, or the wooden kitchen table where you broke your front tooth.

Instead, you think about things like life accomplishments and financial stability and marriage and death and other concepts foreign to the brain of a university student. And you wish you had music that didn’t make you want to strangle someone, and you wish you had a decent book instead of some convoluted private dick potboiler, and you wish you could think of something that didn’t make you feel utterly insignificant in the scheme of things. Which you aren’t, you reassure yourself—only in Italy.

You think about America a lot when you’re roaming in an unfamiliar city. You occasionally forget that you yourself are from America, and that this is how you’ll be defined by everyone you meet. You start to buy into your own neurotic assumption that everyone despises you on principle, and you try to keep your mouth shut, silently judging all of the tourists around you. Look at that one, ordering a “ham sandwich” as though she’s in a New Jersey diner; or that one, speaking in a slow condescending tone to an Italian tobacconist clerk who not only speaks English fluently, but possesses a passable American accent; or that one, pointing to his menu indignantly and nearly shouting out some bizarre approximation of the word “zabaglione.”

Of course you’re not above any of it—you’re as ignorant of the Italian language as they are, and mangle common phrases accordingly, asking for “quattro big-lee-ett-ee” at the train “stay-zee-on-ay.” Later, you fail to see the irony in mocking Asian tourists in surgical masks as you try to shake your fear of being stabbed arbitrarily wandering the city at night. Are these small hypocrisies all that everyone knows of America? And even as you begin to further understand the implacable aura of contempt, you also grow to resent it.

You meet a lovely American couple at a Chinese restaurant (why did you go to so many Chinese restaurants in Italy?) and help them to decipher their bill—the tip is included, you say, and they thank you, and you have a brief discussion about the many ways one can be ripped off in a Roman restaurant. And at that moment, you’d love to get on the plane with them headed for Chicago or New York, or wherever it was they were from. Because in America, you aren’t charged for service twice, and when you tip a waiter it goes to the waiter, and you can get a decent steak at a decent price, and how on Earth are you going to go another two months without free refills or tap water?

*

I visit Emily, whom I haven’t seen in weeks, and we stumble through Rome again from Paolo e Iginia’s Bed and Breakfast. We retread the sites in a blur: Trevi Fountain, which owes me a euro; the Imperial Forum next to the Colosseum, which Emily has been studying for a test; back down Via Cavour and the SEXY SHOP 2 (there is no SEXY SHOP 1) and Cavour 313, the enoteca where we purchased the cheapest dessert wine and felt as sophisticated as a student budget will allow; back up Via Veneto to eat our worst meal, and south to Trastevere to eat our best; across the one-block expanse of the Jewish ghetto where we avoid fried artichoke because Emily is sure she can’t stand the stuff; along the Tiber where a forced kiss is more awkward than romantic, and we imagine others have done it before, perhaps moments prior, with far greater panache; and back to the bed and breakfast, where Paolo winks at Emily (again) and we laugh and drink limoncello and look at our pictures and immediately fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed. And that’s the last I’ll see her for a month.

*

The next day you’re in Venice, and the water smells like sulfur and the scenery’s resemblance to its corresponding postcards is striking. There’s an element of filth to every picturesque view—in the water, on the sidewalks—that undermines the sort of spotless grandeur the postcards suggest. You bumped into a few classmates on the previous train, and wonder if you’ll see them again, sitting in the same car as you in the same seats as you. Is it that small a world, or are we all just the same sort of suckers, all traveling on paths calculated specially for us? Despite your planning, you haven’t really found Venice yet because you’re looking in all the wrong places, wearing down the most tourist-accessible side roads and sites while neglecting those private crevices that exist even in a city as small as Venice. While you “weigh down” the city, others live in it, very much apart from you, and they will know the beauty of this place. You’ll know a postcard, and honestly it’s all you’ll need—Rialto and San Marco have been molded into their current state for you specifically, and try as you might to condemn the artificiality of the shops, the sites, the goddamn McDonalds, it’s all perversely comforting.

You think back to that day in Amalfi, when the local high school let out as you cluelessly stumbled through the tiny city, and you remember how uncomfortable you were in a sea of children, most not much younger than yourself, all strolling confidently down those streets. You might have flicked up your collar and felt the slight heat of embarrassment in your cheeks; you might have averted your eyes and shut your mouth. But regardless of your attempts to conceal your identity and your shame, this was the one time you couldn’t fool yourself, couldn’t rationalize that perhaps the contempt of locals was baseless and ingrained—you, you don’t belong here and don’t need to be told. You are an American, an invader, a tourist. You wanted home then, too.

*

You feel like you’ve neglected to do so much during your stay. In fact, you feel like you’ve missed everything, wherever it was. But there will be time for that later, maybe, when you’ve figured out where your home really is, when you’ve set your priorities, when you’ve matured. Or maybe not: Better to go through it all blindly—mindlessly and breathlessly. Already your experiences are congealing into a dense, bittersweet blur. You’ll keep sporadic, fleeting bursts of nostalgia, perhaps, or the detached comfort of digital pictures on a website, or the few anecdotes you’ve edited and sugar-coated for laughs, though in truth there was once a distinct sadness to those stories…

Have you really been so stupid to have squandered these experiences? Are they even yours? Are you grateful for being allowed the opportunity at all? Or are you resentful of the institutions that dictated how and when you might have explored these places? Will you remember it all tomorrow? How little of it all remains, even now as you scramble to record it cogently.

But soon enough you’ll be in America and you won’t concern yourself with these matters. You’ll wonder why “home” was such a captivating idea from abroad—it’s so plain, so safe. And until you leave it again, you’ll forget how much you really cherish the place.