We often hear or speak these days about filtres, about those who have no filtres, and about the necessity, the sheer inevitability of having to live with filtres. In fact, it would seem that no one could properly cope or survive living without some kind of filtres. Especially with such a hyper-connected world where everything seems to threaten to overwhelm, engulf us or swallow us alive.
I think that travel, when it's done right, among other things, is going to force us to reckon with our filtres as we have to give up the comfort, routine and predictability of home. This has to be done because by consenting to visit distant or unfamiliar lands we are voluntarily accepting the strange, the unfamiliar, the new. And if you are going to learn anything at all that is of value while travelling, then you are also going to have to be open to the possibility of your life being transformed by the experience. But for that to happen, we first have to make ourselves a little more vulnerable, which means we are going to have to give up at least some of our filtres. Unless you happen to be a consumer traveller or tourist. Like you never left home. Because there is an entire industry out there to cater to your needs while enabling you to visit popular tourist destinations where you will hardly ever feel as if you ever left home. Especially if you have money.
Consumers seem to want it both ways. They want the thrill or the pleasure of novelty, of sampling this country, or that city, or that park, or this monument or shrine or cathedral or art gallery. Like the Discovery Channel, live. A tasting menu, as opposed to a banquet. With all the comforts of home in a posh resort or hotel or cabanas, you will never once have to disgust yourself with local food that hasn't been prepared up to our ridiculously high standards, and neither will you have to ever once mix with or talk with any of the locals, all the better since you do not and never will speak their language, on any level. You can see and enjoy all the greatest pleasures of some poor foreign country from inside your own protected tourist's bubble.
There are those among you, Gentle Reader who are going to object, and I do understand that there are those who because of age, infirmity or safety concerns should never be expected to visit another country vulnerable and unprotected. We are not all made of the same kind of stuff, and that is perfectly okay. It would also be foolish and tantamount to suicide abandoning all kinds of protective filtres just to have that ultimate traveller's high, which also just might be another word for death wish.
I, for example, never travel without earplugs, especially in Colombia, because people in this country are simply noisy. They are lovely people. Salt of the earth. Noisy salt. Except some, like my host, who is very quiet and easy going. A Colombian who is easy on the nerves. But otherwise, the children, the adults and the dogs. Music is played loud without consideration for neighbours, and we are simply expected to just put up or shut up. Or get used to it. While writing this, I did take a twenty minute nap, and because of the children outside yelling and squealing like little pigs getting slaughtered, and thanks to the loud music being played in one unit, as well as the poor neglected dog howling like the hound of hell in another unit, I had to put in my ear plugs, just to get a little much needed shuteye and rest. But I have decided to otherwise use them, the earplugs, but sparingly, which is to say if I want to sleep, or take a nap, or if I am alone in the apartment and I simply want to give my nerves a little respite. But something else is also at play here, Gentle Reader. Otherwise, while I am here, little by little this ambient noise is becoming more tolerable and less annoying. I am not yet completely okay with it, but I think it is getting better, and who only knows, maybe when I get back to Vancouver in April I will find it easier to put up with some of the racket where I live, or at least cope with it with a little more grace. Especially given that my little apartment downtown is still a quieter place than this otherwise fine apartment where I am staying in Colombia.
It has been a fine day. We did a walkabout throughout Madrid and stopped in a couple of cute little coffee shops, with enjoyable chance encounters and little chats with people along the way. And now I have my computer back, and I am glad, oh so glad, Gentle Reader. My PRECIOUSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
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