Karl's blog

The Daoist philosopher Lao Tzu said that a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. As we’ve seen in class, sometimes this first step can be the most difficult. The allure of an unfamiliar culture is often undeniable. We want to experience, to come into contact with this other, but as Westerners, how do we see beyond our cultural constructions of the other’s identity? After all, doesn’t the notion of a distinct concept of “The West” itself depend upon its differentiation from the rest of the world? We could sit up in our ivory towers and try to deconstruct identity endlessly. We could come to the conclusion that it’s better to remain pent up in our own cultures rather than risk disrespecting another’s ways by our presence. But I doubt that any of us want to live in such a cage. We can gain insight into approaching the other through the travel accounts that we have read.
 
In the account of Herodotus in Egypt, we observe one of the West’s first historians doing his best to represent a culture that is foreign to him. Herodotus is admirable in that he attempts to record things exactly as they appear to him rather than in relation to Greek culture. Of course sometimes he makes a value judgment, but he remains admirable for oftentimes admitting the Egyptian’s superiority in a certain field, such as the construction of their labyrinth. It is difficult not to assume that your culture is somehow the best and should be used as a benchmark for all other cultures. Herodotus does surprisingly well at breaking away from this mindset and attempting to see the environment for what it is.
 
In the travels of Ibn Battuta, we see a man whose journeys are motivated by a yearning for knowledge. As an attorney, he wished to trek across Northern Africa and the Middle East, learning from the nobles in each locale. It is clear that Ibn measures different cultures based on his reverence for Islamic law. He is scandalized by naked bathers in one city, in another he swears at a Jewish physician who is standing above Koran readers.
 
Columbus shows us the dangers of assuming that one’s own culture is superior to another’s. One of the main goals of his quest is to convert the Native Americans (or as he thought them to be, the Indians) to Christianity. Even though he knows nothing of their language, Columbus is convinced that the Native Americans are perfectly ripe for conversion. He assumes that they are without religion because he doesn’t observe anything in the Americas associated with Western religion. It isn’t sensible to blame Columbus for all of this nation’s wrongdoings against its native inhabitants, but at the same time the mindset of cultural superiority that we see in Columbus seems to be represent the colonialist outlook.
 
So our first step. It seems that before embarking on our journeys we must do some thorough dusting. We should try to sweep the cobwebs of our native culture that have been developing in our minds since birth. Of course, it seems that total clearness is impossible with anything short of a lobotomy, but we still must acknowledge the relativity of our own culture before we can get anywhere. If we fail to at least try, then we can travel the world but never manage to leave our cages.

For a modern reader, knowing how to approach The Tempest can be its greatest challenge. Do we read it as Shakespeare’s swansong to the magic of theater, imagining him as personified by Prospero? Do we read it as a colonialist, Social-Darwinian text, exposing the imperialist English mindset of the time period? Or do we imagine Caliban to be the hero, struggling against Prospero the oppressor? In his essay “Redeeming The Tempest: Romance and Politics,” Jonathan Hart attempts to take a “middle ground” to the text. He writes that The Tempest is a work where aesthetic and political questions are intertwined. He believes that these questions should be investigated through Shakespeare’s text itself, not outside sources.
 
As schoolchildren everywhere know, Shakespeare knew his romance; The Tempest is no exception. Hart identifies “survival,” “regeneration,” and “wonder” as principle romantic themes. The struggle to survive is already present in the first scene, as the unsuspecting sailors and travelers artfully bicker while a tempest threatens to drown them all. They survive and struggle to make anew on the island. We see great wonder between Miranda and Ferdinand – he at her beauty and she at his presence. Miranda’s reaction isn’t so different from the travelers we have discussed who were the first, or at least the first of their countrymen, to come across some great sight, take for example Marco Polo in the court of Kublai Khan.
 
Hart also points out that Shakespeare plays with ideas of power and the political in The Tempest. In the first scene we see Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo trying to exert their authority over the Boatswain and Master, but we their efforts are meaningless. They may be nobles and kings, but in this situation they defer to the lowly sailors. In another scene, the islander Caliban is convinced that Stephano and Trinculo are kings because of the “celestial liquor” that they possess. Again, the deviant sailors become the ones with power.
 
In the final scene is an obvious synthesis of romance and politics. Hart writes that Ferdinand and Miranda are highly romantic figures because “they are the young who will regenerate the world through marriage.” Their marriage is also a political one, uniting the prince of Naples with the rightful heir to Milan. In Miranda’s famous words, they adventure into a “brave new world.”
 
I was drawn to Hart’s analysis because it acknowledged the seemingly obvious idea that The Tempest itselfshould be the starting point for all discussions focused on The Tempest. After that, I think that analyzing the political climate of Shakespeare’s time becomes useful. Only after reflecting on these elements should we proceed to apply the work to modernity. A “middle ground” reading, acknowledging both politics and aesthetics, is best because Shakespeare was both artist and commentator.

While reading The Narratives, I was reminded of an article from last year written in response to Avatar. While I firmly believe that this film functions much better as a ridiculous visual experience than a social critique, the writer of the article brings up an interesting point. By making the na’vi’s savior white, the filmmakers are drawing on the narrative of the “White Messiah,” where the natives must rely on a foreigner with a good heart who is the only one capable of holding back the cruel invaders. This type of narrative usually paints the natives as pure and spiritual while the invaders are greed-driven.
 
The storyline is supposed to be appealing because it eases the guilt of those of us in an imperialist country, but at the same time it ultimately portrays the natives as helpless. While I don’t think any of us look to Cabeza de Vaca as any kind of messiah, it seems like he satisfies some of the requirements. He comes from the invading culture, but through a long process he effectively crosses over and eventually becomes a proponent of Native American’s rights.
 
But in the text, we see that the real situation could never be tied up into such a tidy dichotomy. Cabeza de Vaca’s records show that the Native Americans were neither pre-Fall Edenites nor bloodthirsty savages. They were spiritual in their own way, but Cabeza’s dedication to his own spirituality prevented him from embracing their faith. Cabeza may fight for the Native American’s rights but he is still an imposing cultural presence. Again, this brings up the question we discussed last week: how can we help the impoverished of different cultures without forcing our culture onto them? Doesn’t it often seem like a little bit of “culture-forcing” would be preferable to having a widespread lack of basic resources in certain parts of the world?

For the modern reader, Cabeza de Vaca’s story is as uplifting as something like The Shawshank Redemption relative to the ignorance and aggression that we usually associate with the conquistadores. As Mary Doctor points out in her essay “Enriched by Otherness,” Cabeza undergoes a great transformation during his travels, beginning as a profit driven conqueror and ending as an empathetic proponent of native’s rights. But how much does his attitude really change?
 
Cabeza’s initial stance towards the Native Americans was largely apathetic. He and his men had no qualms about raiding camps for any food or supplies they could find. During one of these raids, Cabeza’s men are attacked and holed up in a village. Cabeza notes nonchalantly that two Native Americans were killed over their two days of battle.
 
Later on there are some clear instances of role reversal. After many of the Spanish have been drowned and the survivors are washed ashore, the Native Americans sit down with them and begin crying. This is an equalizing moment – everyone is at the same level (on the ground), and the Natives are showing their empathy for Cabeza’s troubles.
 
At an even more humbling moment, Cabeza and his men resort to cannibalism. The designations of “civilized” and “savage” are subverted and it’s much easier to think of all parties involved as “human” rather than as “Christian/Savage.” After years in their civilization, Cabeza is recruited as a medicine man and he eventually gains a large following on the strength of his powers. In a pivotal scene the conquistadores of Mexico criticize the natives for following Cabeza since he is the same race that they (the conquistadores) are but has much worse fortune. The Native Americans deny this, claiming that Cabeza is different and therefore respectable for a variety of reasons, maybe most importantly that he comes in peace.
 
In her essay, Doctor refers to Cabeza’s eventual actions towards the Native Americans as “Christ-like.” It’s this sentence that interests me though: “He [Cabeza de Vaca] no longer sees the Indians as ‘savages’ to be dominated, but rather as human beings worthy of God's love and the message of salvation.” We are reminded that after all of his experiences, Cabeza remained a missionary at heart and he thought that the highest good for the Native Americans was to hear God’s “message of salvation.” As we said in class, the cosmopolitan urge is to think, “Let the Pagans be Pagans,” and I find myself personally gravitating towards this type of relativist viewpoint. I suppose that we just have to accept that evangelizing was a part of Cabeza’s culture, and even though there were religious barriers on his embrace of the other, the empathy that he gained still gives us hope as something to strive for in all of our experiences with the unfamiliar.
 
 

I’ve encountered plenty of offensive and off-color jokes in my time, but the most highbrow of them I’ve yet to come across have to be in the vulgarity that is John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor. Barth tells the tale of Ebenezer Cooke, a ne’er-do-well English lad who is forced to sail off to colonial America to take over his family’s tobacco plantation. He is an aspiring poet and he even convinces the former governor of Maryland to commission him to write an epic poem about the journey. Ebenezer Cooke was actually a historical character who penned a poem about Maryland; John Barth just took the liberty to create an extremely ridiculous life story for him.
 
While reading The Four Voyages, there are plenty of occurrences and customs that seem bizarre to us. I found that there were many parallels between these happenings and the parody that Barth crafts in The Sot-Weed Factor. For instance, there is the well-known journal entry where one of Columbus’s crewmembers spots land is supposed to collect his winnings, but “The Admiral” decides to pocket the winnings instead. In The Sot-Weed Factor, the North America-bound passengers occupy all of their time with this same first-to-spot-land variety of betting. It becomes complex and crooked to the point of a Ponzi scheme – the captain is even steering the ship so as to reward certain favored travelers.
 
In another one of Columbus’s encounters, we see him negotiating with Portuguese settlers, trying to use his certificate of commission from the king and queen as a leveler. This same reverence for documents was seen in Marco Polo, when he was treated graciously on the road because of his permit from Kublai Khan. Barth shows the dangers of this adherence in a goofy episode where Cooke’s manservant steals his commission from the former governor of Maryland and convinces everyone that he is the master and Cooke the slave.
 
The introduction to The Four Voyages told us that the first Spaniards to attempt settling in La Navidad were killed; most likely do their sexual mistreatment of the Native American women. Barth exploits this type of account mercilessly. He re-imagines the historical John Smith as a sex guru, travelling solely for the purpose of some erotic encounters. Also – keep an eye out for the syphilis-infected prostitute who serves as Ebenezer’s main love interest.
 
The Sot-Weed Factor is parody, mock-historical criticism, and homage to the genre of travel literature (specifically the picaresque novel). Besides that, it is also hilarious and obscene. It might just put a whole new spin on the Pocahontas movies for you.

History teaches that if someone is going to abuse or even enslave you in your own home, they better have a damn well argued reason for it. Perhaps the most commonly accepted philosophy in defense of Europeans seizing land from Native Americans is found in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government. This piece introduces the formulation that something becomes a person’s private property when they “mix their labor” with it. Loosely interpreting this doctrine, settlers were justified in snatching the land of Native Americans since (in the colonists’ eyes) the land hadn’t truly been “labored” upon until it was subjected to European farming techniques. While reading The Four Voyages, I couldn’t help but see similarities to the works of another philosopher: Thomas Aquinas. While I’m sure that Aquinas would’ve condemned many of the actions of Columbus and his cohorts, I have to admit that I might’ve called up the works of the good saint for moral justification had I been an enterprising missionary in that fateful year of 1492.
 
To understand Aquinas’s writing we first look to Aristotle. In his Physics and Metaphysics, Aristotle lays out the basis of his thought (paraphrasing considerably): “All things go towards their good.” For instance, a puppy’s “good” would be growing up into a healthy and prolific dog. Since humans are the only beings with an intellect, their “good” is to contemplate the order of the cosmos. Being a Pagan, Aristotle would often refer to this inherent order that he saw in the universe as “God,” yet it is important to note that he did not believe in a God who was outside of or separate from the world.
 
Aquinas loved Aristotle; he probably spent most of his spare time writing newsletters for the Aristotle fan club. Aquinas’s brilliance is seen in his ability to wrap a Pagan doctrine in a Judeo-Christian package. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas agrees with Aristotle (addressing him as “The Philosopher”) that the highest human good is to know the order of the cosmos, or in other words, to know God. Now Aquinas has gotten himself in a pickle, because the “God” he is writing about is the God of the Judeo-Christian scriptures; a God who consciously chose to create the world as opposed to the Pagan conception of “God” as an eternal principle of order. Here is Aquinas’s reconciliation: God, in order to pursue his highest good, had no choice but to create this world so that he could broadcast his eternal love upon more lowly beings. Therefore it is man’s greatest purpose to know God and this love, and the man who is already familiar with it has a responsibility to, like God, broadcast it down to more lowly beings. Evangelizing takes on a tone of not just necessity, but godliness.
 
This explanation of creation and humanity’s ultimate good seems to mesh well with the sympathies found in The Four Voyages. Early on, the narrator writes that King Ferdinand valued converted souls more than treasure. Throughout the account Columbus believes that the Native Americans will be easily converted to Christianity. Could this stem from a belief that the natural “good” of humankind is to know the Christian God? The Christian Gospels have widely been acknowledged of texts expounding pacifism and the virtue of the poor but the adverse effects of their manipulation can be seen in Columbus’s imperialist outlook.
 
 

Ibn Battutah’s hajj was a hugely significant event. It was this pilgrimage that originally brought him out on the road. His trip would largely be an educational one, an opportunity to learn from both scholars and the experiences along the way.
 
In a scene from Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, we see the titular character fulfilling his duty as an able Muslim by making his own hajj to Mecca. The scene is pivotal, both in the movie and in history, because it was at this point that Malcolm X went back on many of his racial generalizations against whites and began advocating social justice with a more inclusive approach. In the film, he writes home to his wife saying that, “[W]e were all brothers, truly, people of all colors and all races believing in one God, one humanity.”
 
In Malcolm X’s case, it seems as if his positive experience with white Muslims carried over and positively influenced his perception of all whites. At the same time, however, I wonder just how unifying an experience can be when it only applies to a specific religious group. I’m reminded of the men seen in the National Geographic video in class talking about how they realize all these people on the hajj are their brothers. Does this brotherhood include non-Muslims? I’m also reminded of a section in the travels were Battutah heavily reprimands a Jewish physician for sitting on a higher level than Quran readers in the mosque. Scenes like this (or any modern day confrontation between Palestine and Israel for that matter) raise an important question: How much can organized religion unite people when its existence depends on differentiation?  How can you feel unified to all of humanity in a city that doesn’t admit those outside of a specific faith?

For this post I read Marina A. Tolmacheva’s essay “Ibn Battuta on Women's Travel in the Dar al-Islam.” The status of women in Islamic society is a contentious issue and the debate continues today over whether or not Islam is compatible with gender equality. Tolmacheva examines the situations of Islamic women through their status as travelers. It is pointed out that in his travels, Battuta generally comes into contact with women of three very different socioeconomic backgrounds: queens and princesses, daughters and wives of his noble friends, and slaves or “slave girls.” The different situations reflected by these groups suggests that social standing had at least as much influence as religion when it came to the treatment and the rights given to these women.
 
Talamacheva points out how people’s mobility, regardless of gender, was dependent on their ability to protect themselves or to have others present to protect them. As is seen in multiple occasions in the The Travels, voyagers were oftentimes in danger of being robbed by the desert-dwelling Bedouins or succumbing to the elements, such as fast-moving streams that had to be crossed on horseback. For this reason, Talamacheva writes, women were often “bitterly resent[ful]” towards travel. This bitter resentment could have also had to do with sometimes having no input in the decision to travel. On the sixth page of The Travels, Ibn Battuta describes his experiences with a marriage, a divorce, and another marriage, all related in a very businesslike tone. It is important to note how in both cases the brides were "conducted" to him, or forced to travel, from one location to another in order to marry their new husband. Maybe even more important to note is how these marriages were arranged. In this context we see how arranged marriages don’t just raise an ethical question in principle, but also by the fact that they sometimes endangered women by forcing them to travel in hazardous locations.
 
On page 84 Battutah enters into the city of Zabid, where he writes that the women are very open to marrying travelers and they don’t expect their husband to provide for or assist in the raising of their children. It is also noted that these women “would not consent to do so even if one of them were offered any sum that might be offered to her on condition that she should leave her town.” So this is the reverse of the previously mentioned, the women don’t travel under any circumstances. In the other case, however, it is important to note that these women were only allowed to travel when a man demanded it of them.
 
Last we have the case of the “slave girls.” On page 122 is an interesting account of Battutah’s wagon. He writes that it is covered in felt so that those on the inside can see out but those on the outside aren’t able to see in. He also mentions that for his journey, he chose to ride with a “slave girl” in his wagon. As would be guessed, these women had the least amount of say in their travel; they were force to go wherever beckoned.
 
While examining the gender roles in The Travels is a very interesting and even telling study, a better examination would also include the corresponding experiences in different contemporary religions. While the West may associate rigid and even authoritarian gender roles with Islam, it is important to also examine social norms in the Middle East pre-Islam to differentiate between religious and social customs, to the extant that we can make this distinction.

Growing up in a warm climate, “Marco Polo” wasn’t just a famous traveler or a children’s game; it was a way of life. My friends and I would play until the pool made our fingers prune and our eyes bloodshot. I remember the giant matches where the commotion of our paddling bodies created a wave pool effect. I remember other times going one-on-one against older, more agile cousins, panting and feeling a lot like I was caught in a shark tank.
 
After scouring the internet a bit, I was disappointed to find that the only known origins of the game are strictly speculative and to be found on websites like yahooanswers and wiki.answers. The most authoritative source I could find was a page on wisegeek.com, the second sentence of which told readers, “before you ask, no one seems to know what the origins of the name are.” Of course this is a children’s game, so it probably isn’t bound by the strictest logic, but after our reading in The Travels of Marco Polo I believe that there are some connections to be made between the game and the man’s legacy.
 
First off, the children’s game really has a lot to do with exploration. The person who is “it” pretty much feels like they’re swimming in the pool for the first time; the stairs become mountainous and the deep end akin to the ocean. Marco Polo is synonymous with travel and voyages, as the narrator states in the prologue, “No other man has explored so much of the world as Messer Marco.” This association with exploring seems like a good enough reason for children to use his name. Furthermore, we heard in the reading that the Polos final voyage to Persia was a perilous one where many crewmembers were lost. Perhaps the inventors of the Marco Polo game knew about this and saw their creation as a simulation of this “lost at sea” scenario.
 
The final connection (admittedly one that reaches a bit) has to do with Polo’s reputation as an exaggerator and even a liar. Anybody with experience of the Marco Polo game knows that cheating and accusations of cheating are inseparable from it. “You guys aren’t saying ‘Polo!’” “You didn’t tag me, that was the pool cleaner!” Some variation of these phrases is practically heard every game. Could the game’s association with Polo have to do with his reputation for stretching the truth, such as in the case of his suspected status as a governor for Kublai Khan? Never mind that the creators of the game probably never intended for cheating to be so essential to their invention – and don’t think that I was ever squinting when I was “it” (did it pretty much every time).

If the narrator of The Travels of Marco Polo were alive today, I have a feeling he might have been in attendance at the Park51 protests. Islam is addressed neutrally at some points in his writing; he often states that the inhabitants of a town were followers of Mohammed without including any judgment. At other instances, however, he takes on a critical tone. He makes the common accusation that followers of Islam are permitted to harm non-believers (57). He goes one step further and states that “no sin is forbidden” in Islamic tradition because the only requirement for being saved is to accept Mohammed as “the true messenger of God” at the end of one’s life (58). Another telling element of the text is its choice of religious folk-stories that are included. The narrator tells the story of a Christian whose faith was so great that he was able to move a mountain under the threat of a forced conversion (53-56). An allegory he chooses to share about Islam tells of a king who drugs people and brings them into his castle, telling them that this is the “Paradise” promised to them by Mohammed, thereby causing them to lose a fear of death in battle. This story not so subtly implies that Islam is a manipulative and even fraudulent religion.
 
Many a modern person reading about Marco Polo will probably both pick up on and be put off by this attitude of religious superiority. We recognize the importance of an intelligent and tolerant dialogue between cultures that respects the culture and customs of a group. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether this criticism of Islam is rooted in intolerance or genuine problems that exist within the practice of the religion. After hearing from a panel of speakers arguing both viewpoints, 55% of NYU students in attendance at the “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” forum answered no to the titular question. Just yesterday David Cameron gave a speech criticizing the multiculturalist practices of British government, claiming that a double standard has been established between what people are permitted to do in their sanctioned cultural groups versus what is allowed by law for an individual in a social democracy.
 
To me, this seems to be one of modernity’s big ethical dilemmas: where do we draw the line between tolerance and human rights? It seems clear to us that the writer of The Travels possessed a cultural bias that would impede him from a great deal of understanding and empathy. At the same time, however, how can we not be troubled by the abuses committed on the basis of gender and sexual orientation under interpretations of Islamic law? The important thing to remember of course is that religious practice is subject to interpretation; the Judeo-Christian God supports war at certain points in scripture, yet there are far fewer in our society shouting down Judaism and Christianity than Islam. But before we can address the practice of Islam as it relates to human rights we first need to probe into the roots of our own bias; maybe The Travels of Marco Polo can serve as a basic study.

If the old wisdom is true, that you can tell a lot about a civilization by the way they treat their animals, then it seems as if the ancient Egyptians were some pretty forward-thinking folks. In fact, they almost seem like the PETA activists of their era when compared to those sacrifice-happy Greeks. I found one of the most interesting elements of An Account of Egypt to be Herodotus’s descriptions of animals, even though I was a bit disappointed to find that the formidable sounding “river horse” was just a hippo (which I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to write off like that if I ever came near one).
 
The Egyptian’s reverence for animals is especially interesting in light of last year’s attempts at combating swine flu in the country. The government decided the best way to nip outbreaks in the bud would be to wipe out the pig population. Speaking as someone raised on the Babe film franchise, this course of action seems heartless. Furthermore, what Egyptian officials didn’t realize was the pigs’ longstanding, unofficial position as waste collectors. In their absence, trash gathered in streets and in rivers, causing a string of headaches, not to mention further distaste with the government.


Adopting the objective, rigorous approach of Herodotus, I think we can reasonably conclude that the moral of the story is “Don’t mess with the animal gods.”

History is an enigma. At the bedrock of fields such as social, cultural, and political history is the fundamental question of the discipline itself: “What is history?” Examinations of this question are referred to broadly as the “philosophy of history.” According to the editors at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, one of the main questions in this field is, “What is involved in our knowing, representing, and explaining history?” Herodotus is revered as one of the first historians in the West to take his recordings with a systematic approach. We see this in his work An Account of Egypt, where he is sure to differentiate between things that he has personally witnessed, such as the pillars placed in lands conquered by King Sesotris, and those that he has only heard about, such as the story of the Phoenix.
 
But do Herodotus’s historical accounts really possess anything that could be referred to as “objectively” true? Herodotus really can’t resist comparing Egyptian culture to its analog in the Hellenic world. For instance, he points out that the Egyptian gods Oros and Osiris are referred to as Apollo and Dionysos “in the tongue of Hellas.” But wouldn’t it seem that due to a number of circumstances, geography not the least of which, that there is no way that the Greeks and the Egyptians could have had the same conceptions of these gods? Herodotus is obviously leaving something out by implying that these gods are more or less equal. Here we come to the dilemma, as stated by the SEP, that “There is no such thing as ‘perspective-free history.’”
 
Another idea in the philosophy of history that Herodotus’s “objectivity” falls victim to is that “Historical space is dense.” For example, many would say that at this moment the most “historically significant” event going on is the political and social unrest in the Middle East. But by making a statement like this we are disregarding the countless other happenings throughout the world, as well as their inseparability. “History” becomes what we see fit to record. In the text we see that Herodotus pays particular attention to the Egyptian’s account of Helen’s arrival at Taricheiai. It seems very possible that this is focused on because of how it differs from Homer’s account, something that would be very familiar to Herodotus.
 
It appears that history will never separate itself from our perspectives and interpretations. To step down from the philosophical soapbox though, the study of history and of various cultures seems far from useless. Even though circumstance may force certain filters on our perceptions, it seems like if we don’t at least make some effort to empathize then we will be as stuck as the Egyptians who (according to Herodotus) “call all men Barbarians who do not agree with them in speech.”
 
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/history/

From the ancient Greek perspective, Odysseus seems to be our cultural equivalent of James Bond: a cunning and powerful, not to mention philandering, hero always on the side of justice. As I read The Odyssey, however, I couldn’t help feeling that oftentimes Odysseus suffered from clumsiness. Of course, we know that a certain hubris is inseparable from his character, but I know I’m not the only one who, after reading of Odysseus’ umpteenth failure, was overcome by a general feeling of “Really Odysseus? This again?” Examining my reaction a bit more closely though, I realize that I suffer from a bit of the modern traveler’s bias: I expect my boarding passes to be printable from home, my voyages to be accompanied by peanuts and ginger ale, and my hotels to provide miniature bottles of shampoo to aid the rinsing of my road-weary mane. After this realization, I was left pondering the signature question of crotchety old men everywhere: “Has technology turned us into a species of wimps with no sense of adventure?” It wasn’t long though until I remembered my own Newark Odyssey.
 
As a junior in high school, I visited my “cool” (read: hippie) Aunt Christie in Brooklyn over winter break. A first time jaunt through NYC at 16 was formative enough, but the true adventure came upon departure. By way of a snowstorm, a night flight out of JFK morphed itself into an early morning Newark flight. Christie didn’t have a car so I knew that trains were my only hope. After receiving some cryptic directions in New Yorkese, I embarked upon a journey full of awe and horror, no doubt heightened by lack of sleep and the psychedelic qualities of airport cuisine.
 
Remembering this little odyssey of my own, it becomes clear to me that travel, mishaps, adventure, and the stories that result are inseparable. Human error and the forces of nature seem to be unavoidable. For the sake of art at least, let’s hope travel never loses its penchant for the unexpected, even as we’re being “beamed up” across the galaxy.