The Want to Travel

For many years I have wanted to travel, to be somewhere else, to see the world and see its wonders and see all that it and each of the countries have to offer, to witness for myself the incredibly photoshopped images on the travel brochures.

But now that I have seen more of my own country before actually being able to afford a way out and back in without having to sell my best organs and some limbs and maybe some of my fine thick wavy hair, I have changed my mind. I have figured that the Eiffel Tower is just another building, and as is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Empire State Building, and the Taj Mahal. What are these so-called "extraordinary" places if all you have to come home to at night is a mere hotel room?

People. People are what make these places extraordinary. People who you have a yearning to be with, people who you have known online for so long that it should be illegal to know them any longer without having yet met them. Take me to the finest structures, take me to Dubai, to France, to England, take me anywhere but nothing will amuse me and everything will look like a pile of stones and wires lest I am with somebody who would make my stay one to remember, one to cherish always, unless of course the person turned out to be a total twat, in which case I would attempt to burn down a memorable building so that nobody would ever mention it after the media takes hold and throws it in people's faces for a few months.

It is the crux of travel to know somebody and to see somebody. It is the motive, the condition, the essence. For the heart attaches to another, not a place, unless the place is attached the the heart of the other. Times Square in Christmas time is just another billboard-filled, lit up insides of a gamer's  motherboard. Buckingham Palace is a squared-out-of-bounds area with men with no facial reactions and funny hats adequate enough to unclog clogged toilets. The Statue of Liberty is a lady with a baton waiting to pass it on to a couch potato who has not ran for three consecutive decades. And Uluru is a big pile of collected kangaroo faeces. 

But the other changes all of this, and inserts magic in place of satire. Central Park lifts itself from being a mere park and turns into the playground for lovers. Port Jackson becomes a spectacular stationary yacht, gleaming with its pearly white sails and contours. The Great Barrier Reef becomes an underwater realm similar to 'Atlantis'.