December Days 05 - A Giant Among the Rest
Dec. 6th, 2016 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[It's December Days time! There's no overarching theme this year, so if you have ideas of things to write about, I'm more than happy to hear them.]
bethany_lauren asked what I'd like to do but haven't been able to. I'll try to qualify that with a "yet", but the truth of the matter is that I may never actually be able to do it.
I'd like to engage in international travel. Some part of it is just getting out of the country and broadening perspective. And that needs more than the ability to take a day trip into the city closest to the border.
Another part of it is to experience new food, culture, and art, among other things. I'd like to go about doing it not looking and sounding like the horrible ignorant American. I don't think I'll be able to avoid it, but I'd like to cut down on it as much as possible. Which hopefully means being able to go with others, or to have a local friend at my destination points who can show me both the tourist destinations and the places the locals go.
In addition to seeing people and sights in Europe, where I would have more than a few circle connections to make, one of the places I've really wanted to go is Japan. There's more than a little technofetishism involved there, to want to see the lights and the sounds, but also to make a pilgrimage of sorts to various shrines and sacred spaces away from the metropolitan areas. There's a want to see the fashion and the cultural neighborhoods and people expressing themselves in dress that doesn't happen here outside of very specific environments and places. There's a thing, possibly, about being the strange rather than the expected. About getting so far outside of my own environment so that I can actually see it properly.
And there's a desire to indulge in some unfettered childhood by going to places like the Ghibli museum, to admire the work and the willingness to let the work be touched by everyone. Maybe to take a look inside libraries open to the public and see what's going on somewhere else.
They're all pretty shallow reasons to want to go somewhere else - mostly to gawk and stare and indulge a little bit in somewhere else, and then come back home. To observe something else at work as an outsider and to take in someone else's expression of self as entertainment or without fully appreciating them for themselves and all the work and significance that went into it. It's probably a good reason not to go anywhere, at least not until I can manage to not go somewhere as a tourist. I can be strange, a person a head taller than anyone else, but the idea would be not to stick out or be a bad guest.
There's also the money thing. Which would take a lot of savings, debt reduction, and otherwise good fortune to be able to have enough surplus to make the trip. That's not happening any time soon.
So, until then, I'll keep it as a small flame somewhere.
bethany_lauren asked what I'd like to do but haven't been able to. I'll try to qualify that with a "yet", but the truth of the matter is that I may never actually be able to do it.I'd like to engage in international travel. Some part of it is just getting out of the country and broadening perspective. And that needs more than the ability to take a day trip into the city closest to the border.
Another part of it is to experience new food, culture, and art, among other things. I'd like to go about doing it not looking and sounding like the horrible ignorant American. I don't think I'll be able to avoid it, but I'd like to cut down on it as much as possible. Which hopefully means being able to go with others, or to have a local friend at my destination points who can show me both the tourist destinations and the places the locals go.
In addition to seeing people and sights in Europe, where I would have more than a few circle connections to make, one of the places I've really wanted to go is Japan. There's more than a little technofetishism involved there, to want to see the lights and the sounds, but also to make a pilgrimage of sorts to various shrines and sacred spaces away from the metropolitan areas. There's a want to see the fashion and the cultural neighborhoods and people expressing themselves in dress that doesn't happen here outside of very specific environments and places. There's a thing, possibly, about being the strange rather than the expected. About getting so far outside of my own environment so that I can actually see it properly.
And there's a desire to indulge in some unfettered childhood by going to places like the Ghibli museum, to admire the work and the willingness to let the work be touched by everyone. Maybe to take a look inside libraries open to the public and see what's going on somewhere else.
They're all pretty shallow reasons to want to go somewhere else - mostly to gawk and stare and indulge a little bit in somewhere else, and then come back home. To observe something else at work as an outsider and to take in someone else's expression of self as entertainment or without fully appreciating them for themselves and all the work and significance that went into it. It's probably a good reason not to go anywhere, at least not until I can manage to not go somewhere as a tourist. I can be strange, a person a head taller than anyone else, but the idea would be not to stick out or be a bad guest.
There's also the money thing. Which would take a lot of savings, debt reduction, and otherwise good fortune to be able to have enough surplus to make the trip. That's not happening any time soon.
So, until then, I'll keep it as a small flame somewhere.
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Date: 2016-12-07 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-07 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-08 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-08 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-10 04:17 am (UTC)And there's something to be said for the perspective it gives you when you go back to your home. Even if it's just a short trip, you still come away from it different.
Also if you ever want to travel down to Brasil - let me know and I can either connect you with awesome locals to show you around or if the stars be right, hop along too. Brasil is kind of magical in that strange fun magical realism sort of way.
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Date: 2016-12-10 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-10 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-06 05:45 pm (UTC)My spousal unit wants to do Italy next. I would prefer a self-guided drive around Germany, but I have no problem with going to Italy. Of course, we'd have to decide North vs South. I'd love to swing by Greece while we're vaguely in the area. For that matter, I'd really love to see Turkey, but not while all this crap with Syria is going on.