(killing) the romance of traveling
Music: Eluvium: Talk Amongst the Trees (2005)
I are returned (I swear Timbaland has ruined my grammar) from the beautiful state of Indiana. I had a marvelous time visiting with Jenny Bay and Thomas Rickert and their peeps. The talk seemed to go well, the crowd was pro-Walter Ong (who knew?), and I got to see some snow . . . right after the snow fell here. Purdue was a fun and energetic place, and I was amused by the mascot, Purdue Pete. The grad students were super sweet and wicked smart. What a program!
Since I’ve got a grading backlog I regret I have to keep this short. There were many moments of enjoyment, but two are prominent. The first was my last night there, having drinks with Thomas, Sam McCormick, and Bob Marzec: each time I got ready to leave, another bourbon appeared magically in front of me. Delightful time, I’m sure I was very chatty, and getting up the next morning was something of a problem.
Second, on the plane ride there I was caused to remember a passage from Thomas’ book about jouissance. He says in the “retrospective” at the end:
In a restaurant the other day, I saw someone eating quesadillas, and there was something in the ritualized manner in which the food was eaten, the relish with which it was chewed, that raised my hackles. Yes, you might say I am being irrational. But that is precisely the point. Jouissance emerges anywhere, everywhere, and it is something that eludes our conscious control. It inspires reactions in us about what we do and how we see ourselves and it provokes reactions in us concerning others.
Perhaps nothing more quickly kills the romance of traveling alone, flying on a plane solo, than someone who cannot contain her enjoyment. About two rows behind me was a woman who was talking VERY LOUDLY. Her voice sliced through the recycled air like a razor sharp knife. She was talking to a man across the aisle from her, an obvious stranger, about how she wants to buy her own home so that “I DON’T HAVE TO HEAR WHAT MY NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHIN’ ON TELEVISION.” She spoke of the snowfall in College Station, where she lived, how her best friend works out “AT LEAST AN HOUR EVERY DAY; GOD, I JUST CAN’T DO THAT!” She related the stories of her ill grandparents, how her husband proposed, how she hated politics. I learned so much about her. For two and a half hours I tried to drown her out with ambient music on the head-phones. I tried to review an article for a journal, to read, but nothing was muting this stranger’s sheer delight in broadcasting her life.
The difference between plane cabin captivity and blogging is that even if the air is stale here, you don’t have to read the words. The joy of an open ear is stranger empathy and understanding; the loving recognition of listening. The terror of the open ear is that you cannot close it; the invocatory drive always cycles, even in your sleep.
The memory of this woman’s violent voice sticks, somewhat irrationally, in my memory. So too does my wonderful trip, but more with a warm tone---a relaxed murmur. It is interesting how easily we forget things like the hours of irritation on the plane in the afterglow of our own enjoyment---how we depress the internal erase button on witnessing the enjoyment of strangers.