Incomplete work no. 8: A travelogue of places I’ve never been

Once in a while, over the years, I’ve written essays about places I’ve been. Maybe I’ll publish one or two of those essays here on Medium, and eventually I might even complete a book collecting them all, where I’ll reflect on adventure of unknown and the sadness of feeling nowhere entirely at home. But there’s another work that I’ll probably never write, though I’m confident it would be better than anything I could write about places I’ve really visited: a book in which I travel to all the places I’ve never been and may never go.

Gulliver discovers Laputa, by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. I will never go to Laputa.

I have an aunt who inspires me. She doesn’t like traveling anywhere. She’s rarely left northern Ohio. Which, let’s face it, isn’t the kind of place that overwhelms you with wonders. The flat landscape is only broken by the occasional river, one big lake, and the creeping arms of postindustrial towns. But she doesn’t mind, because some of these towns have libraries and bookstores. She’s a retired librarian, and she prefers to travel in her books.

As for me, I love traveling. There’s nothing that can replace the excitement of walking the streets of an unfamiliar city, the smells of foods I’ve never tried, the cries of street vendors and snippets of passing conversation in languages I barely know, the feel of strangely cut pavement under my feet. But sometimes I get tired. Not my feet; they could walk forever; but my eyes and ears and the hair on the nape of my neck that stands on end when a car darts in front of me. And my heart, whose beat quickens anger when I see yet another street ruined by the inaction of urban planners pandering to the heartless demands of cars. And anyway, I love reading and writing. Sometimes I just want to sit, finally away from the sensory din, so that I can explore the world through words.

But other people’s words aren’t enough for me. I can ride for a while with other authors at the helm, but eventually I want to set my own course. By writing, I can actively travel while still sitting at home.

Don’t get me wrong. People who know me consider me well traveled. But I’ve never been to Balkh in Afghanistan, and I doubt I’ll ever go. Or to funicular transit of Valparaíso on the steep coast of Chile. Or to Novaya Zemlya in Arctic Russia. I’ve never even been to Tuscany or New South Wales or the mouth of the Río de la Plata. But when I travel I like to spend time in a place, to get to know it and move through it slowly. I like to have a purpose in going there, a mission or at least a pretext, beyond checking off a list of attractions. And finding a purpose, traveling slowly, staying for a while, it all takes time, and life is only so long.

Besides, real places, as amazing as they are, also disappoint me. Of course, sometimes they’re more amazing than I could have imagined (no photograph can do justice to the gargantuan rocks that pierce the hard streets and soft beaches of Rio de Janeiro; no painting can capture the mirage of floating palaces called Venice). But every lived-in place is mundane for someone, and I’m pulled down by a sinking feeling when, even just for a moment, I glimpse and then internalize the nonchalance with which a native Carioca hurries past the Rio beaches on the way to work, or the impatience with which a Venetian scowls at the glistening water that won’t let her cross and keeps her from escaping the tourist crowds. If I travel through writing, I can go somewhere without it ever becoming mundane.

First, I would research. Assemble photographs, maps, travelogues, literature that plays out there. I would piece it all together in my mind, but also take things further. I wouldn’t just record the highlights and stereotypes, of course. What would be the point of writing another book about tasting wine in the hills above Siena or marveling at the masterpieces of Florence? In my book, I could visit a Tuscany where the vineyards have overgrown themselves in the global-warming sun, crawling down the hills to drop their ripening grapes right into the mouths of beggars in the cities below. I could visit an Australia where the kangaroos have carried the Sidney Opera off to the outback, because they demand their culture too. I could go to a Buenos Aires where the lost streetcars of what was once the world’s densest tram network have all returned, and articulated cars are connected by accordions playing Astor Piazzola to the rhythm of the stops and starts along the line.

It would be a bit like Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, but I would be his Marco Polo, discovering the imaginary dimensions of places that are real.

It would be a bit like Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands (subtitled Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will). But Schalansky only tells us about the islands. She doesn’t tell us about traveling there. My book would be about really traveling to where you’ll never go. To the version of these places that I imagine in their places.

In fact, the places in the book won’t even have to be places I’ve never been at all. I will never have been to the versions of the places that appear in my pages. So. I’ve been to Vis, the last Croatian island to escape the great hotels and tourist throngs. But I’ve never to the Vis that hovers nervously over the sea, always flying just beyond the reach of the next tour group. I’ve been to New Orleans, but never the New Orleans that’s completely under water, rebuilt after the next flood. I’ve been to Cusco, but never to the version the version of Cusco that survived the Conquest and, instead of baroque churches, boasts 21st-century Incan architecture, towers of stone and steel climbing the mountainsides.

But I probably won’t get around to it any time soon. I put off traveling in words like I put off traveling over seas and rails. Don’t wait for me. Go yourself. Then come back, and tell me what you find.