Walt Whitman's "Great New Doctrine" (Part 5)

Or, my auto-bio-philo-sophy of travel...

I have many travel stories to relate, the funniest ones having to do with missed connections and my fearless (rash?) leaps into the unknown, thinking I could correct the problem; or the confusions that come from language differences (including differences of meaning that can arise when a native speaker of English is speaking English with a non-native speaker). There are also bizarre moments (like when I found myself at a Sufi gathering in Fez with, of all people, Bjork); and moments of deep human connection (as when I had to be hospitalized in Holland and discovered the real concern and care with which one may be treated by total strangers). But rather than relate these stories--they come off better as oral histories anyway--I want to wax auto-bio-philo-sophical for a moment in the hope that I might shed some light on myself through my philosophy of travel.

I grew up and spent most of my adult life before coming to North Carolina in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My family was not from Pittsburgh and, as I discovered throughout my years there, there is a sense in which I was not from there either.

Let me explain--if I can.

I never developed the sense that I was a "Pittsburgher"; I never identified with the place as my "home." It was always to me just the place where I happened to find myself, but I never expected that I would stay there permanently--despite staying there for college, law school, and another 10 years beyond.

I often had the disconcerting experience of being asked by what I would call "true" Pittsburghers where I was from. I would say, "Here. I'm from Pittsburgh." And they would look at me with disbelief.

When I was about 9 or 10 I first heard the Byrd's version of an old Appalachian traditional "A Pilgrim and a Stranger"--and I felt immediately that this was a kind of anthem for me:

"I am a pilgrim/And a stranger/Travelin' through/this wearisome land/I have a home in/That yonder city/And it's not, not made by hand..."

The interesting "flip-side" of this sense that I did not belong in one place in particular (except, perhaps, that "yonder city") is that I have always felt a sense of belonging everywhere I have gone. Of course, some places have appealed to me more than others, but there has never been a time, no matter how weird the going got (and the going has gotten pretty weird), that I felt entirely out of my element.

This is perhaps one reason why Lawrence's critique of Whitman makes sense to me: there is a palpable difference between belonging to a place or people or time and belonging with a place or people or time. The accident of my birth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, never left me with the impression that I was somehow fated to that place. I stayed there for as long as I chose to stay there; and when I felt it was time to move on and do another thing, I left. I did not put down roots there. I have not put down roots in North Carolina.

And yet I am always hungry to make connections with people. Perhaps, this is how I make up for my lack of rootedness in a particular place: by seeking out those with whom I feel that I belong.

Travel, taking on the mantle of the ibn as-sabili, the wayfarer, the son of the road, keeps me in transit and creates for me new opportunities for connection with other people. And it is people that I go to meet. Sightseeing bores me. Let us rather repair to a cozy coffee house or tea shop and talk about our lives, our experiences, the books we have read, the music we listen to, and the other people we have met or known...