Notes to Self

I’m not fond of press releases in general. I find them to be full of PR hype and marketing babble, although they are good for getting numbers and addresses and contact information. Press releases about travel are not that usable for anything other than contact information.

What I do love are art exhibition press releases. Somehow this is one thing that most galleries get right. I learn a lot from art exhibition press releases. About artists I’ve never heard of. About their work. Where they went to school. I learn about the creative processes of other people. I learn about the kind of work a gallery likes to present in an exhibition. And, they always come with a usable attached image.

I can use art exhibition press releases. I rely on them. Travel ones, not so much. Although I don’t like to miss out on anything.

Did you know that the earth travels about 584,020,178 miles around the sun each year? I’m sure you knew that the earth travels around the sun, unless you’ve been under a rock since the Renaissance. But I’m more curious about whether or not you know how many miles the earth traveled in a year.

What does that make us? Space travelers? The only difference between us living on the planet and an astronaut living on a spaceship is the force of earthly gravity. That, and that we are constantly traveling in circles, with no appearance of stopping.

As we travel through space, how many of us are really aware of our surroundings? The big surroundings. Or that we are actually moving? Do we look at Orion or The Big Dipper with the same awe that we feel when we look at the Eiffel Tower? Or when we see a landscape, like the Grand Canyon for the first time? Some do, some never thought of it that way, and some never thought about it at all. But we should.

We are all traveling through space. Even as you are sitting in your chair reading this, you are traveling. By the end of the year you will have traveled another 584,020,178 miles. That doesn’t take into consideration the expansion of the universe or the movement of the Milky Way.

Isn’t that just kind of exciting?

By my next birthday I will have traveled 30,953,069,434 miles in my lifetime. Too bad it wasn’t in a straight line …

When does a trip begin?

When does a trip end?

If I think about these two questions for too long a period of time, the answers, and the questions, become like a chicken and egg kind of paradox.

There are many moments in time when a trip can be considered to begin. The moment I arrive at the destination. The moment the plane takes off. The moment I leave for the airport. The moment I (or someone who is actually employed) leave my desk and office behind for the last time before the trip. The moment I pack the bags. The moment I buy the plane ticket. The moment I think about going some where.

In the same sense, when does the trip end? The moment I leave for the airport? The moment the plane takes off? The moment I arrive home? The moment I am done unpacking my bags? The morning I arrive back at the office? When my tan fades, I become cranky, or I begin yet again to feel overworked? Or when I can no longer remember having traveled at all?

When I was younger, and left the backwoods of West PA for California on a Greyhound bus with ten dollars in my pocket and a rucksack with a change of clothes, and my camera, it was the first time in my life that I had really gone out into the unknown. Really. I had no idea what to expect, and every mile that bus drove took me past a landscape I had never seen before. For many years I felt like I was still traveling. No matter how long I lived in California, it always seemed like an unfamiliar adventure to me. It still does to some extent.

Because … I am not in the place where my roots are firmly planted.

So while I hear about other travelers coming and going on their journeys, I sometimes think that even though I’m sitting here, stuck, sort of, for all kinds of reasons, I am still traveling too. My individual trips have come and gone, but have I ever really stopped traveling?

Pam over at Nerd’s Eye View is going off to TBEX, a conference for travel bloggers in its second year. She wrote a post about going to this year’s event in New York City, why she wants to go, and she’s also been wondering what makes her fellow travel bloggers tick. She asked the following questions of herself and her readers:

Who’s your favorite travel writer?
Henry Miller. He is hands down my favorite American writer who was also an expatriate both inside and outside his homeland.

What’s your favorite blog for reading about travel?
I rarely read other people’s stuff. For the same reason that I don’t look at other people’s artwork very much. I get too inspired in the moment, and I tend to absorb other people’s ideas and concepts and then it changes my work – but usually not for the better!

What percentage of your travel is sponsored trips?
None, or maybe 1%. If I could find sponsored trips around the subjects that I like to write about – art, language, culture, food – I would make more of an effort to go on them.

Do you have a day job, supporter, other source of income?
I am so lucky in that I have a room in a house in Berkeley that was given to me in trade for pet sitting. I also petsit for other people. In my day jobs I have both a huge tech and print publishing (separate experiences) background and am looking for my next job. It’s been tough. I think it’s tough because I’m older now (wink), and also because I have my own site on my resume and people really don’t understand why I would want another job.

What’s the last travel book you read?
I don’t read travel books. I do read novels and non-fiction that give a strong sense of place. I’ve started Ross King’s Judgment of Paris.

Where do you come down on Eat Pray Love?
Absolute garbage. It might make an ok movie, but I’m not holding my breath.

Do you think blogging and writing are the same thing?
I like to think so, but it isn’t. Everyone can string words together but not everyone can do it well.

But I will say that a blog is defined by it’s owner, so if you want to write narrative in it, then why not? That was the intention of artist-at-large.com when I started it – it was going to be all narrative, creative non-fiction, with a sense of place mixed in with needed travel information. Now though, with the feeling of trying to keep up, I write narrative when I can and write blog posts when I have to. I’m doing that all over the site, but specifically in the Tuscany blog right now. I’ve been writing down my memories there.

Why are you blogging?
My friend K. in Paris asked me that once when I was visiting. Actually she asked me why I write – which I actually equate with my online stuff because that’s where I put everything.

I told her I write because no one ever listens to me.

I also come from a family of storytellers, so it just seemed like the next logical step to put my stories online.

Who have you met at TBEX that surprised you and why? [TBD]
Since I haven’t been to TBEX yet, I haven’t met anyone. But I have met a few travel bloggers here in the Bay Area. I can’t say that anyone really has surprised me in any way. Maybe it’s a bit surprising that none of them are as jaded as I am …

What have you learned while at TBEX? [TBD]

I’m not getting to go to TBEX this year. Someday I will be in the same town at the same time as the conference, but it didn’t happen this year.

This morning while in REM sleep I revisited a tiny village in Mexico. As far as I know it doesn’t exist in the waking world. I think this is true because it is yet another place in my dreams that I can not always find.

In the past I have gone to this place by bus and by car, crossing over the border through southern Arizona, although the first time I went to this place I walked. Down a broad and wide southern California beach, over the border and down the road.

The village is not easy to find, and can’t be found unless it wants to be. A number of times I have made my way down there, only to get to a neighboring village but no further. This place is only three or so blocks long and is tucked into a steep, rocky canyon. The middle block of this town is its widest point and has what would be called a town square, but it’s really just a very wide part of the street.

Every time that I have been to this town there has been a band of musicians playing music on what might be the church steps, under a very large and ancient tree. It’s always the same tune, and they always play only one song. Sometimes it’s a flute band, other times a mariachi band. After they are finished, the crowd disperses and goes on about their business.

I love this little village. This morning I wasn’t out looking for it. I was with a friend and we were walking up a canyon road. Before we turned a bend, I had a sudden realization of where we were headed and what lay beyond. I could faintly hear the music being played in the square.

On this trip the village had changed a bit since my last visit. It had grown. There were now cafes on the square. There were a lot of tourists in the village, hanging out at the candle lit tables of the cafes, wandering through the shops, and there was a new block of buildings on a new street with a hotel or two.

I was a little sad that the village had grown by a block and that it seemed to have been “discovered”, but my friend and I had a wonderful time wandering around and exploring.