"The journey was one that would now no doubt be made by motor-car, with a view to making it more agreeable. We shall see that, accomplished in such a way, it would even be in a sense more real, since one would be following more closely, in a more intimate contiguity, the various gradations by which the surface of the earth is diversified. But after all the specific attraction of a journey lies not in our being able to alight at places on the way and to stop altogether as soon as we grow tired, but in its making the difference between departure and arrival not as imperceptible but as intense as possible, so that we are conscious of it in its totality, intact, as it existed in us when our imagination bore us from the place in which we were living right to the very heart of a place we longed to see, in a single sweep which seemed miraculous to us not so much because it covered a certain distance as because it united two distinct individualities of the world, took us from one name to another name, and which is schematised (better than in a form of locomotion in which, since one can disembark where one chooses, there can scarcely be said to be any point of arrival) by the mysterious operation that is performed in those peculiar places, railway stations, which scarcely form part of the surrounding town but contain the essence of its personality just as upon their sign-boards they bear its painted name."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 693
Here Proust, as part of a general discussion his trip to Balbec, is specifically reflecting upon the difference travelling by train and motor-car. So, on the one hand this passage seems dated (how many people travel by train today?), but on the other hand I think he's, per usual, spot on. Proust proposes, "But after all the specific attraction of a journey lies not in our being able to alight at places on the way and to stop altogether as soon as we grow tired, but in its making the difference between departure and arrival not as imperceptible but as intense as possible . . ." Certainly there are trips, such as the one I took years ago with my friend Sanford when we drove from Vermont to Oklahoma, where the point of the journey was not the destination but the journey itself. That said, one of the best parts of many trips is the destination itself, and the more "intense" the difference the better. I was just filming a Core Talk (my project as school where I film professors discussing the challenges of teaching in the interdisciplinary Core at Champlain and place them on YouTube) the other day about envisioning a course-embedded foreign travel experience for students and one of my points was to not talk yourself out of more exotics locations. Essentially, my point was that you have one week to change their world, and you're more likely to pull that off my venturing to India than to the UK (although the UK is always a lovely option and I wish I were there now). One of the students I brought to Tanzania contributed a nice post to the course blog (which will someday be made public) on the airport at Pemba. He uploaded two slides, one showing the view of the terminal as you left the plane, and then, turning around, the view of the field on the other side of the tarmac. His point was that it was only at that moment that he realized he was in Africa. I've often suggested that until you've stepped out of the Mumbai airport at 3:00 a.m. into the humid chaos of an Indian night you haven't traveled, which gets at the same point. Finally, I think this approach works in a more general way metaphorically. The most successful classes are usually the ones where the difference between departure and arrival is the most intense. It might mean that some students don't finish the journey, but it's a mistake to think that everyone should, but the ones who do finish will have a much more profound and transformative experience.
Oh, and note to self: use the word contiguity more . . .
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