I had to take my Hyundai to the dealership this morning. It took close to an hour just to check in. I'll get my vehicle back . . . maybe tomorrow? Unclear.
Already impatient after an hour of waiting, and emphatically not first in line for drop off, I opted not to use Hyundai's shuttle service, and instead walked up the hill into Towson towards the red line, a bus route that is actually fairly functional and gets me quite close to home. Walking, as Thoreau knew, is prime time for thinking, so I was thinking, and feeling. I felt free. It was great to leave the car behind, and walk the cool and shady side of the street under the crepe myrtles. I felt like I was on vacation. I could be anywhere. I could be anyone. The world was bigger because I was slower, and fully exposed to it. However, I also thought "I have a doctor's appointment in Timonium on Wednesday. Can I even get there by bus? And I am supposed to get to Mount Washington later today. East-West transit is basically impossible." I felt freer... and inconvenienced.
In War and Peace, very rich people leading affluent lives simply go places. Pierre goes to Petersburg: we don't get many details. However, soldiers and cossacks walk. They walk and walk and walk. They walk until their boots fall apart. They have no food, so they walk to a village to raid it, but there is no food. Nikolay is a rich person in the army and like many has been able to purchase/ argue by birth rite his way into the rank of officer. Nikolay rides his horse to see Denisov in hospital, and even that takes a long time. His horse is starving, its fur falling out. Even for Nikolay travel is a big deal. Nine miles is an enormous distance.
I'm leavening my reading of Tolstoy with LeGuin. Lathe of Heaven feels light and easy when I switch to it because of its first person narrative POV. (War and Peace: omniscience.)
LeGuin's journey is through possibility. You travel through George Orr's dreams. You travel a looooong way through those dreams, though technically George never leaves Portland, Oregon. We fly on his imagination. The nasty catch here is the manipulation of Orr's imagination and his dreams by Dr. William Haber. Haber is idealistic, but also self-serving and the realities created by Orr/Haber dreams get corrupt and bizarre.
I guess where I am going with this is a multi-pronged observation:
*humans like travel stories (they are some kind of metaphor for human life)
*but travel is hard, and delightful as the narrative of an arduous journey may be, humans want their own travel experiences to be easy.
*the shift of actual journey into imaginary realms doesn't make it less of a journey or less about human life.
That may be as profound as this particular meandering gets. I'll try for something better next time.
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