Away from home, atop the world
I AM a reluctant traveler. I head for the airport fighting the gravitational pull of home. On the eve of any trip - a day in New York, a week in Costa Rica, it makes no difference - I am already longing for the consolation of return. When the suitcase comes out, I get so melancholy that even moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer gives me anticipatory homesickness. If I'm traveling alone, my husband's unthinking daily kindness breaks my heart.
There is probably a substrate of fear in this. The plane will crash. The hotel will burn. I will lose my wallet and face a nightmare of dislocation. No one will miss me.
I could claim some high-minded discomfort at the carbon footprint I create by boarding a jet, but I could just as well blame my astrological sign. The truth is I like my own mattress, my yellow coffee cup, my routines.
It seems like a weakness if not a moral failing to reject the romance of visiting other corners of our global village. What's wrong with me? Do I lack curiosity or am I just a wimp? My 22-year-old daughter has already resided on three more continents than I have. "This apple fell pretty far from that tree," she says.
My aversion probably owes a lot to frequent business trips, a blur of airports, hotels, bookstores, and luncheon halls. I'm sure that these outings - pockmarked by the usual airport-and-airplane tales of woe - explain why I inevitably fail to remember the accidental delights of a voyage. I also tend to get overwhelmed by guidebooks and Internet recommendations about paintings that must be seen, ruins that cannot be missed, jungle temples, mountain peaks, and remote beaches that will Change My Life. As though there were a cosmic inventory of the sort that would justify the stupidest sentence ever (and often) spoken: "We did Spain (or India) last summer."
The best travel experiences are completely unintended: a wine tasting shared with a couple of medical students (total strangers) in Tel Aviv; a conversation - in French - with a man from Naples who sat beside me at a family-style restaurant in Florence; a thrilling dance performance in a converted whiskey factory in Toronto.
In Jerusalem last month, a new acquaintance suggested I forgo a trip to one of the city's must-see memorials in favor of a contemporary art museum. After a long, hot, circuitous trek, we finally found the Museum on the Seam, which sits on the border - the seam - between Arab East Jerusalem and Jewish West Jerusalem. The exhibit included several multimedia installations: a wall of riot helmets from South Africa, racks of systematically tattered uniforms from China, and a video called "Observance" by American artist Bill Viola.
"Observance," presented on a large wall-mounted plasma screen, featured 18 actors lined up and walking in slow-motion. Life-size and dressed in rich, painterly colors, they were young and old, black, white, brown, Asian, male, female; a Norman Rockwell-style montage coming forward to pay their respects to someone or something that is never seen.
They seemed to be looking at an open casket, except that the expressions on their faces - horror, disbelief, acceptance, despair, outrage - were too raw for the polite orchestrations of a funeral parlor. They reached out for one another, this collection of unrelated mourners, holding hands, wrapping arms around shoulders, silently lending one another support and solace in the face of some unspeakable cruelty, some unbearable loss.
As they took their leave, each person turned back because, despite the agony on their faces, they were unable to look away. Nor could I, for a good 15 minutes.
There is a roof deck on top of the museum. Four stories high, it boasts a fine view of Jerusalem and one small kinetic sculpture: a baby-doll-size swing set perched on an outside railing. The orange plastic seat sways in the wind out over the edge of the building, whimsical and terrifying, beautiful and perilous.
I cannot explain why I found that quirky little swing so moving. The pictures I took are useless. You had to be there. I had to be there, 5,000 miles from home, all my reluctance replaced by wonder and gratitude.
Anita Diamant is a guest columnist. Her most recent novel is "The Last Days of Dogtown."
