Travel Brain is the condition that makes everything more exciting and interesting when you are away from home. I love Travel Brain.
Travel Impotence is the condition where you feel a weight or heaviness in the chest as a result of knowing you're supposed to feel more excited or happier, looking at something, than you do.
I get Travel Impotence every time I watch fireworks or look at Christmas lights. Prompted to feel a certain way (patriotic, dazzled / glowy, Christmas Evey)... I don't. Or I kind of do, but not enough. Or I don't, at all.
The first time I got Traveler's Impotence while actually traveling when I was in Pompeii, Italy, looking at
plaster-cast figures of the people who died in the
volcano eruption of 79 A.D. I had that feeling pretty often in Italy. I wandered around for two and a half months looking at strange and lovely things, wanting and failing to feel something more about what I was seeing.
I think this happens to other people but I don't hear it talked about. Maybe because it usually happens when you are looking at something unbelievably cool, so to mention it makes you sound whiny and ungrateful.
But part of the weight in the chest, I think, comes from feeling guilty that you aren't more exhilarated. Maybe if I didn't pressure myself to feel a maximum amount of exhilaration/giddiness/glee... and if I didn't worry that a lack of those feelings indicates I'm unappreciative of the opportunity to travel and look at interesting and beautiful things... then Travel Impotence wouldn't be so hard. (So to speak.)
Today I went on a flightseeing tour of Mt. McKinley, aka Denali, aka the highest mountain peak in North America. I am only going to write one sentence about the Travel Impotence aspect of today: I felt a heaviness in my chest because I wasn't as jazzhandsey as the other people on the plane and I wanted to be; because I felt more or less neutral, and neutrality feels like numbness in the face of being lucky enough to do something so neato.
And that's okay. That feeling was part of today. It wasn't all of today. Just part of it.
Now, onto the rest:
It was pretty! And kind of scary! And I took good pictures! And I stood on a glacier! And rode in the smallest plane I've ever ridden in! And it was red! And I stood ON A GLACIER.
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| View from the aeroplane |
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| These squiggles remind me of hair on a shower wall |
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| Scary! |
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| Star Tours |
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| Airplane on glacier |
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| Me on glacier |
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| Texture |
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| This turquoise |
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| Austerity |
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| Approaching the runway |
You look really pretty on a glacier!
ReplyDeleteI had travel impotence at the Grand Canyon at first. It was dark, and mysterious, and the moon was just bright enough to trace the edge the abyss, but I was in a fight, and I just didn't care. It made it really cool to wake up (after the fight was long over) next to this amazing earth scar.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with your sister - you look good on a glacier.
I suspect you'll get many people to comment on their personal stories of travel impotence.
ReplyDeleteLike the curls and how you seem to have chosen fashion over staying warm.
I love the turquoise picture and the austerity picture but my favorite is the me on glacier picture. Glaciers suit you!
ReplyDelete(I had travel impotence but I'm not going to say on a public forum where I was because people would think horrible things about me)
Lovely description, Jenn.
ReplyDeleteThanks, everyone who thinks that is a good picture of me.
ReplyDeleteAunt Nancy, now I am really curious. I'm thinking it must have been a war memorial or the site of an atrocity?
ive had travel impotency many times. i think its largely affected by my mood and outside factors. either way, its still a good memory to take with you
ReplyDelete