« It’s great geing a tourist. Guidebook and camera in my bag, a bottle of water in the car, the map spread out on my knees – what could be finer?
[…]
By the time we’re back at the hotel, I’ve begun to descend into what I’ve come to call traveller’s melancholy, a profound displacement that occasionally seizes me for a few hours when I am in a foreign country. The pleasure of being the observer suddenly flips over into a disembodied anxiety. During its grip, I go silent. I dwell on the fact that most of those I love have no idea where I am and my absence among them is unremarkable; they continue their days indifferent to the lack of my presence. Then an immense longing for home comes over me. I imagine my bed with a stack of books on the table, the combed afternoon sunlight coming through the curved windows, my cat leaping up with her claws catching the yellow blanket. Why am I here where I don’t belong? What is this alien place? I feel I’m in a strange afterlife, a haint blowing with the winds. I suspect the subtext of this displacement is the dread of death. Who and where are you when you are no one? »
From Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes.
Our tickets are booked: I will be spending my (big) birthday in Italy. Twenty days of touring Italy in May during which I’ll have plenty of time to experience traveller’s melancholy.
But for now, it’s back to winter melancholy.
Let me know if you need a sherpa. Or a lady-in-waiting. Or just someone to brush lint off your camera bag.
Cool. Have a great trip! Forget about us and enjoy the moments over there.
N V US
Hey, I’m going also to Italy in May.
well. here i’ve been, reading your blog on and off for a couple of months now, and thinking « i should email her when i move to Montreal… » from Rome. in May.
funny how things work out, or don’t.
if you’d still like tips, help, or leftover city-maps (plus some very good winebar recommendations), i’d be happy to swap them for the same in kind, for Montreal… :o)
sorry (she says with much sheepishness)… you can’t very well get to me if i post anonymously can you?
just in case the blogger-comment-function eats my « other » selection and reverts me to « anonymous » again, i’m at http://www.nightingaleshiraz.com.
enjoy Italy. i think you’ll find it hard not to.