Tourism ends

There comes a time when you are no longer a tourist. Hauled and herded from ruin to church to mosque. Pointing your camera at the same scene as hundreds of others. Listening to the same lecture delivered a hundred times in a hundred languages. Watching the same demonstrations. Smelling the same sweet scents. Always amazed and amused by the friendly and accepting faces of the local people who live carefree in such a beautiful place. There comes a time when the traveler arrives. A traveler is different. They wander alone or in very tight company. The hypocrisy of religious iconography dismays, annoys and angers them. So much time, energy and money used and still people starve and need and want. “What divine being elicited this?” the traveler asks. The postcard view has no value. His, hers, theirs are all alike. It is looking without seeing. It is fixed and photoshopped and devoid of life. A vision narrowed and closed, a self-imposed glaucoma. The traveler needs to broaden their view to see behind the curtain, under the table and behind the walls. Pushing to the edge and taking in the scene. The viewers and themselves an all encompassing whole that does not distort, until there is no edge. Mars, blemishes, age, grime, rust, dirt and scratches are the guts which make the beauty shine brighter. A traveler knows this and will not accept a polished view. Stories for children. Fairytales for adults. The 90 minute lecture. This because a tourist is on the clock and cannot stand to be without the sound of their own voice. The culture of listening is lost on a tourist. Caring to hear not just the words but the subtext and inferences. The unasked question. The way things are done without thought or question because, “That’s just how it is done. It’s our way”. Travelers take the knowledge of a lecture but only as assistance. A way to fit in and stand out less. A way to disguise their difference and put the locals more at ease in their presence. Travelers are uncomfortable with demonstrations. They do not want an artificial display. They want the pulse increasing, perspiration inducing, laughter inflicting moments that come when a child first attempts to walk. They want to be that child making mistakes and learning from the errors. To have their hands held and guided by a proverbial mother or father. To watch and be shown and make an effort and fall down, and laugh with, and at the clumsiness until achievement is made. Or not made, but the effort was good and in an honest and legitimate attempt a new found respect gained for those who can do a thing well. Travelers know that life stinks. Rot, decay and putrefaction are part of the lifecycle. Those smells are also a form of creation. Roses need fertilizer, mushrooms grow in darkness, wine is the sharp tang of sugar destroyed and transformed. Bowels and bladder empty at death and blood smells coppery. A tourist does not want these things. They want only the warm, soft comfortable scents that carry memories of home and hearth and so create a false sense of sameness between this world and the one from which they come. And they can return and nod knowingly, “They are just like us.” And their world is made smaller and more comfortable by that belief. Travelers know the world is huge and we are tiny specks and the sameness and difference is not in shit or roses but in our exposure and understanding and acceptance of each. At the heart of a traveler is the knowledge that a tourist is an intruder. An alien guest that must be watched and guarded and saved and protected and cannot cope with the reality of life in a world outside their own. This need creates a burden on its host. A burden that offends and annoys the tourist when it is acknowledged. How dare the host live in a world so different! So the host smiles and agrees and offers alternatives and compromises in an effort to be polite. And a mask is worn and civil decorum is taken as the norm in the face of insults and obscenity and rudeness. But a traveler knows the host is not on vacation. The people here are living real life. A life with pain and illness. A life with anger, annoyance, death and birth, marriage and separation. A life with rent, dishes, laundry, dusting, children to raise, spouses to accommodate, parents with expectations to meet. Friends and family that will not be gone in a day or a week or a month. A traveler recognizes these burdens and responsibilities and asks how can they share and lighten the load. A traveler stays lean in their demands. A traveler inquires and commiserates and sympathizes and celebrates. Not ever deluded they can assimilate in full but because being neighborly is the point of travel. And so a traveler is neither one nor the other but also part of both. And they revel in the sameness and the difference and only ask, “What more is there?”