Travel, by Michael Miller

The Tracks at Chemnitz. Photo Michael Miller.

The only real way to travel is to travel aimlessly, without a destination, purpose, or agenda. One should have only the vaguest, dreamiest intuition that the country travelled may be of interest. Once, when I was still working as a curator, my then wife and I went on holiday to a Central American country, largely because it lacked a museum, or at least a museum that would prove irresistible to either of us. We were mostly likely wrong in that assumption, but I can't say, because we never visited the museum. Neither did we visit the capital city's renowned German restaurant, nor did we indulge a weakness for souvenirs, although we did seriously discuss the adoption of a small mutt who decided to follow us on a late night stroll through a port city. Awakening one morning, we beheld the threatening underside of an iguana perched on a ceiling support over our bed. If we cannot travel without purpose or plan, we should at last cultivate the illusion of it, if only as a literary device, like Norman Douglas in Old Calabria. 

Travel is fertile soil for  illusions, and we should make the most of it.
Read the full article on the Berkshire Review for the Arts!

Michael Miller