TRAVELING IN PLACE DURING CORONAVIRUS

For traveling junkies, staying put during the COVID-19 outbreak can be a real challenge, both physically and mentally. I’ve been on the move like a crazy person the past two years, not always willingly, and writing up a storm. It is, after all, what I do, and what I’ve done for more for well more than 30 years. In fact, I’m supposed to be in Spain right now. On the other hand, I absolutely love being home and often wish there were two of me. One could travel the world while my other half cocooned at home with my dog, cat and chickens, experimenting with recipes, working in my garden, and cleaning out closets to find things I forgot I had, making it seem like Christmas. Now that my stay-at-home persona has been mandated, however, my traveling spirit has been struggling. But even though I can’t physically go out into the world, are there ways that my mind, my imagination, and my home might serve as magic carpets? I decided to come up with ways to travel the world without actually going anywhere. I call it traveling in place.

Photographs and home movies

How often do you look at all those photographs you’ve taken over the years? If you’re like me, you have countless photo albums. I’ve chronicled every trip I took from elementary school onwards, followed by all those digital albums that sit in my computer. Now’s a good time to reminisce, make your kids look at that family trip to Florida when you were 13, and watch old family movies, many of which undoubtedly include travels.

But don’t stop there. Carol Holstead, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas and an Instagram devotee, suggested that the simple act of taking photos can also be a way of traveling. “We see more and differently through a camera lens,” she said. “For example, go out and take close-ups of the inside of flowers or the bark on trees. Or notice and photograph the inside of your home when the light is making shadows on the wall, or of details of furniture or bedding. A camera helps you to really look.”

Traveling in place through Music

Most of the music I listen to is old school, I’m afraid, meaning CDs, cassettes, and yes, even record albums. And almost each and every one transports me back to a specific time in my life, maybe a specific place, and often to specific friendships. Rubber Soul was my first album purchase. I photographed The Clash in concert in London in 1978. I met musician Dougie Maclean in Germany when I was a student at Tübingen Universität and he was playing with The Tannahill Weavers. Riuchi Sakamoto was my heartthrob when I lived in Tokyo. I think of Cuba when I listen to The Buena Vista Social Club. And when I die, I hope I can still say that my theme song is Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien.

Souvenirs of travel

I’ve never had money for expensive purchases during my travels, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t buy things that aren’t precious. Because many of my trips over the past three decades have been to Japan, I can travel around that country just by walking around my home. There’s the haniwa that I bought in Miyazaki of a dancing woman, a replica of the terracotta burial figures from the Kofun Period (3rd to 6th centuries A.D.). I love my replica Red and White Plum Blossoms folding screen I bought at the MOA Museum of Art in Atami, Shizuoka, by Ogata Korin (1658-1716). I have Noh masks, a Toko Shinoda print (one of my prized possessions), plastic food, and countless earrings and scarves (they’re cheap and travel well). I even have a part of the Berlin Wall, acquired in early 1990 just months after the first East Germans crawled through a wall opening. Each object reminds me where I bought it and when, great for traveling in place.

Books

Books are armchair traveling, about the best way I know to explore the world, walk in someone else’s shoes, and escape the walls around us. Heck, depending on how long we’re sequestered, you might even have time for Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. 

I have lots of books by Japanese authors, any number of which I could read again. The Tale of Genji is considered the world’s first novel, completed in the 11th century and written by a woman (yay!) of the emperor’s court, Lady Murasaki. Snow Country, about a geisha in a hot-springs resort, was written by Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1968, while A Personal Matter, about a man and his son who was born with severe brain damage, was penned by Kenzakuro Oe, who won the Nobel Prize in 1994. I have two books, The Sound of Waves and Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima, who committed seppuku (ritual suicide) in 1970, shocking the literary world. Ryu Murakami (Coin Locker Babies) and Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun and Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) are two contemporary writers that weave bizarre stories that fade in and out of fantasy. Banana Yoshimoto wrote Kitchen was she was 28.

Of course, I have novels from other international authors as well, allowing me to travel the world through Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, and a 1924 edition of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. Browsing my bookshelves just now, I discovered The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, which I forgot I had and am embarrassed to admit I’ve never read. That’s going to be my next read. In fact, I have so many books I’ve bought but haven’t yet read, this coronavirus could go on for years and I’d be set.

Movies

Movies are great for quick and easy escapism, with many of the world’s best novels also available on film (though they usually don’t hold a candle to the written word). Maybe you have old DVDs lying around (heck, maybe even videos) that you haven’t seen in a while. Why not dust those off? Although your library may be closed, it might offer free streaming through Kanopy, where I found Seven Samurai (1954) by Akira Kurosawa, about a poor village that recruits seven masterless samurai to protect them from a band of bandits. I consider it one of my favorite movies of all time.

Otherwise, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are probably having heydays right now. Check Academy Award winners for best foreign films, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), by Ang Lee, which takes place in 18^th-century China with lots of intrigue and martial arts, Departures (2008), by Yojiro Takita, about an unemployed cellist who returns to his hometown and finds work as a traditional Japanese mortician (you absolutely have to see this), and Roma (2018), by Alfonso Cuaron, about a live-in housekeeper of a middle-class family in Mexico City. Of course, Parasite (2020), by Bong Joon-ho, won it all, though the movie’s slow slide from comedy to dystopia was more than I’d bargained for on my plane bound for Tokyo last autumn.

Websites, YouTube and podcasts

No surprise here, and no doubt you’ve spent more time than usual with each of these platforms. There’s a wealth of information out there for traveling in place (I especially like NPR podcasts). Just for fun, here’s a video of Japan, by the Japan National Tourism Organization.

Letters and postcards

Remember those? Because of my worship of the written word, I’ve saved almost all the letters and postcards I’ve ever received. Seriously. I have always planned to read them again, or at the very least ship them off to my friends who wrote them (though I admit that could get some of them into pretty serious trouble). If you’ve kept them, how about taking the opportunity to reread them now? You’ll find them also a pretty interesting record of your life, including past addresses and references to what you might have been up to at the time.

Food and drink

They say that some of our most vivid memories can be recalled through taste and smell. Since we are all probably cooking way more than we’re used to, how about trying out recipes from some of your favorite places (assuming you can find the ingredients; otherwise, substitute). I found myself craving Mexican, so last week I made chicken tacos. I haven’t made moussaka in a while, so I’ve just added it to my list. I have a slew of condiments, mostly Asian, that I need to use up. And I’m glad that liquor stores are considered a necessity during shut-ins. What would spaghetti be without Italian wine or bratwurst and sauerkraut without beer?

Call or Zoom family and friends

Emails or texting just won’t do. Because you can’t visit them right now, call the people you love, or better yet, see them via FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp, or whatever else you might have. Zoom is the rage right now, whether it’s the new classroom, corporate meeting, or cocktail hour with friends. This isn’t traveling per se, but it does get you virtually out of your house.

Sit in a different place

This might sound corny, but we are creatures of habit and therefore likely to sit in the same place every day, whether it’s the easy chair in front of the TV or the same seat at the dining table. Mix it up. Maybe you always give guests the best spot at dinner parties, but they’re not coming over now anyway so sit at different spots around the table and take in the view that they see. Have a guest room? Go sit in there for a while. Maybe even spend the night. I also enjoy sitting at different spots in my yard. It’s surprising how just changing what’s in front of you makes you see things in a different way, though it’s hard for me not to also notice upkeep that needs my attention, such as peeling paint or plants in need of TLC. Add it to the list.

The outdoors

It’s no secret that we feel better enveloped by nature (the Japanese call it forest bathing). If you’re able and they’re open to the public, explore your city’s parks (maybe one you’ve never been to) or hike or bike the trails, keeping your social distance, of course. Or maybe you’ll find joy just being in your garden, sitting on a balcony, or looking out your window. Be in the moment. Notice the small details. And if you must, daydream.

Plan your next trip

Which brings me, of course, to what brings joy to travelers—dreaming about the next trip. Just because we can’t travel now doesn’t mean we can’t plan for when we can. Learn about a place you’d like to go. Do some research. Study its history. Heck, maybe even learn the language (though I hope we’re not holed up that long).

I’m sure there are other methods for traveling in place. For me, just writing all this down and scouring my home for objects to take pictures of took me far away, to Japan, to Germany, to Africa, to friends, to different times in my life, and to a flood of memories. Who knows what the world will be like when we finally emerge on the other end. What I did just realize is that this is probably a pretty good preview for when I’m old. I may not be able to explore the world, but I can look at photos, watch movies, surround myself that remind me of the world. Traveling in place.