'Little Miss Sunshine'
There was a day when we suddenly stopped traveling . The usual comings and goings in the drafting of Conde Nast Traveler stopped short. The efficient management of our editorial group anticipated events, so we picked up gear heading home , that would be our new destination, and we postponed trips like someone who postpones chimeras: with the certainty that soon we could resume such a happy journey. The certainty of taking it all back.
Today, with the #I stay at home already attached as a new sticker on our suitcases, a hashtag that could almost lead to a magnetic souvenir for refrigerators, you may be wondering why from this window we continue traveling with you . Why don't we stop reminding you that the world is waiting for us out there.
Susan Sontag , who always had quick phrases like wham!, she would have answered you better: I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list (I haven't been everywhere, but they are on my list). Us neither. You neither. No one has been everywhere, I wish, but now, as we share fate, with our houses converted into geolocated mini-worlds even on Instagram so that we feel a little more together, It's time to copy the list to Sontag . To fill the notebook with books to read, series to hook you, movies to remember, art to admire. And yes, also with places to know.
That's why we want you to travel. And that's why we want to travel with you . to one Venice that now, see if we are dreamers, some have pretended to see crystal clear waters and dolphins everywhere, but we will surely take more care when we return so as not to muddy it again. A Finland , who for the third consecutive year has just been elected The happiest country in the world and what do I know, maybe we were never as happy as that frigid January blowing soup that was fire in a market in Helsinki. A Sri Lanka , that we always say that we are going and in the end nanay, neither art deco nor teas nor elephants. To New York, that to New York always . A Madrid , that even those of us who barely see its sky these days already want to kick it with new eyes, like in those silly days of shops along the Rastro; like on those nights of taking the penultimate in the first Titty Twister of the road. A Zambia , which triggers, even more, the desire to go to Africa. A Buenos Aires , that it will be cold there and in one jump we will be able to ski if perhaps the early mornings of fernet and choripán let us leave Palermo.
summer 1993
And not that far. We also dream of traveling nearby because, more than ever, we want to muddy slippers again on well-trodden paths. Return It's already an Almodovarian verb, what a guy, and in the end it's his imaginary that comes to mind so many times when we do road through rural Spain . That which we now call empty and that, more than ever, needs to be filled with life . So we will return to the towns , to yours, to theirs, to whatever, and there we will light fireplaces, we will step on creaking floors, we will throw eggs from happy chickens, we will dance in verbenas and we will put on the jacket because you know, here at night it cools down.
You will see as yes.
When the wheel begins to turn again, traveling will serve more than ever to move us . And here is the important thing: to help us . Because in this time we have learned, we are doing it, that lending a hand, both and why not three was the plan. read Revolution , by Gonzalo Arango. That was. My admired Colombian poet created Nadaism and suddenly his words are used for everything, what a paradox. Also to give someone else a turn, how about, Henry Miller , hero of Arango and his troupe of new existentialists, and let him be the one who dismisses these lines. The sentence is from big sur and El Bosco's oranges, the mystical and brutal eulogy of his years in this corner of California (and travel book afterward):
One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things (Our destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things). So shall.
. Right now this song is very loud. smile and let's go.