The Miracle, Purpose, and Meaning of Modern Travel

Last updated on: July 7, 2018 at 9:31 am by Anne Kennedy

The Miracle, Purpose, and Meaning of Modern Travel 2018-07-07T09:31:36-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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Home again, as they say, but without any jigs. Arrived in Binghamton yesterday around 8:30 in the morning, kept in a state of constant wakefulness by a bus driver who uncannily resembled Chris Farley playing a motivational speaker who lives out of a van parked down by the river. The haircut, the contours of the body, the outfit, the tenor of the voice, everything about him resembled that long mourned comedic genius. Kept wondering if he, the bus driver, had seen the sketch, misunderstood that it was supposed to be funny, and modeled his whole person on that notable character. Except for the total absence of self-reflecting humor, it was agreeably charming.

The miracle of modern travel, though, feels less and less miraculous as the decades flutter by. Occurred to me—as I was trying to figure out how to sleep upright in a seat, and still breathe, and not cough up all my lungs, fending off the brusquely offered free socks and thing that keeps out the light that you put over your eyes, picking over a tray of dubious “beef” and unsalted rice that some quality control person from the bureaucratic bowels of Royal Air Maroc failed to consign to the rubbish heap of bad ideas—that air travel hasn’t changed enough, by which I mean at all, in thirty or however many years. Except to go straight downhill.

This is the meaning of history. Someone comes along with a brilliant idea—let’s build a civilization, he announces breezily to the Senate or whoever. He assembles his army. He flings his money around. He builds a circus and hands out bread. He orders roads. He gazes out from the cool elegance of his palatial balcony and congratulates himself on a job well done. And then eight hundred or a thousand years later a dull-witted barbarian wanders by, stumbling over the unkempt road, wondering what all the fuss was about.

I am the dull-witted barbarian in this scenario, hunched over in a badly lit airport wondering if maybe walking wasn’t always the best way to get around. It’s good for the body and the soul, and it keeps one’s expectations within a proportional frame of reference. “I can go three miles today,” says the person who walks and hasn’t figured out the strange circumference of a wheel, “and cut down that tree and haul it home on my back so that I can build a fire to cook this gruel. Then I’ll go to sleep in this heap of dust and wake up and do it again tomorrow.” It throws everything into confusion when you think you can fly comfortably around the world, seeing the sights and the people you love. You develop too lofty a sense of yourself and reality. The harrowing fear of disappointment when you jerk along the runway to the gate, praying white knuckled for a hope and a future, is only because you managed to ascend so high.

I’m not disappointed, though, only bemused by the shabbiness of it all, by how gently and quietly the ordinary person has fallen into shuffling through the line, obediently removing shoe, belt, scarf, jacket, computer, shampoo, nail-file—those intimate items that make up one’s sense of oneself, that clothe not only the body but the insecurities of the soul. You struggle, head bowed, a thousand uniformed despots puffed with just enough power to blind them to their own humanity and everybody else’s yelling at you to Move Along. Disrobed, disconsolate, you finally face the birth canal of surrender—the full body scan. You raise your arms and admit defeat, baring your naked self to a cluster of officious strangers. You just want to go somewhere, that’s all, and you’re willing to humiliate yourself to do it. And then, having transferred yourself into the hands of the woebegone, ever dilapidated world of flight, you recollect your garments and your dignity, and go to sit in fluorescent hell, congratulating yourself that you didn’t have to throw any of your stuff away and that you’ll be allowed to get on the plane.

The purpose of flying internationally, and really at all, is so that you will long ever more for the comforts and joys of heaven where everyone will be together in one place, where the lighting will be rightly and duly glorious, where there will be no more yelling and humiliation, and where you won’t have to take one more walk around the duty free shop to buy yourself ten minutes relief from lower back pain when you’ve finally fastened your seatbelt and stowed your carryon in the overhead bin.

What I’m trying to say is, I’m delighted and relieved to be home, once more adorned by children and comfort, basking a garden that is blooming in spite of the heat, and the embrace of a husband whose cold I hope not to add to the one I already have. And I’m grateful to have gotten to spend whole days overfed by my parents and all their lovely friends.

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