The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [83]
Two days later, at 5:00 A.M., I was back at the train station. Fewer people slept and more washed as commuter hordes stampeded for jammed trains. This time, I’d managed to hire just one suitcase wallah and felt confident that he would get me to the right track, on the right train, and into my assigned seat.
Imitating other women on the platform, I sat on my suitcase to wait. Even though I was covered like a nun, a dozen men stood around staring at me. This, I knew, would not be happening to a genuine powerhouse.
So, using a different approach, I pulled my scarf over my head and looked down at my right shoulder. The pose constricted my view, but I could still see the men’s shoes turn and walk away. All except one. Curious about this persistent fellow, I inched up my head and recognized my loyal suitcase wallah.
Meek women might not inherit the earth, but I found out that if they play their scarves right, they can at least lay claim to a small portion of an Indian railway platform.
Kate Crawford can cross the street all by herself in Sebastopol, California where she lives.
ERIN BYRNE
Winged Victory
Stone animates the living.
I MAGINE BEING PLACED AT THE TOP OF THE MAIN STAIRCASE inside the most visited museum in the world. Daylight streams from above, bathing the arched walls in golden light, illuminating and exposing you. You’re there for thousands to see, but have neither head nor arms.
Winged Victory stands boldly atop the sweeping Daru staircase inside Musée du Louvre in Paris. Her legs, caressed by wind-whipped fabric, are sturdy. Her chest is thrust forward, and her feathered wings fly out behind her. The loss of her head and arms is said to enhance her ethereal beauty, what she has more than makes up for what she lacks. She beams with boldness, for she is authentic.
Sometimes, if we are in the right place at the right time, a work of art can release a current of electric insight that challenges us to our very core. This is the story of how a trip to Paris became a pilgrimage in which Winged Victory’s spirit entered my bloodstream.
As I prepared to travel to Paris in January, I remembered a lecture by writer Phil Cousineau. He’d been speaking about his book, The Art of Pilgrimage, which puts forth a new model of mindful travel. Cousineau directs the traveler to weave his way through disappointments and follow the hunger for something deeper. As the traveler progresses through seven stages of pilgrimage—beginning with the longing to go, continuing all the way through to the arrival home and reflecting on the trip—the journey becomes transformative.
I remembered Cousineau’s voice shaking with the excitement of reimagining the way we travel. “The truth of your life is as close to you as the vein pulsing in your neck,” he’d said.
All of the answers are within us, but such is our tendency toward forgetting that we sometimes need to venture to a far away land to tap our own memory.
—Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage
I was returning to the city I loved. I had been to Paris often—sipped wine and saturated my palate at tiny sidewalk cafés, dashed from the left bank literary haunts to the haute couture of the Avenue Montaigne, listened to violins inside candle-lit Sainte-Chapelle and wailing jazz inside crowded clubs.
On previous trips I had felt the city tug a string inside of me, threatening to unravel something tightly knit, though I knew not what. I had been certain Paris could melt me, thaw me out, and untangle me. The odd thing was that I didn’t think I needed melting or untangling. I had known that this was a place I could be my true self. Each time I’d been there, awareness had crept in that this self was far, far away.
Indeed, my authentic self had disappeared sometime around 1963. The last time anyone saw her was in a black and white photograph of Miss Beckowitcz’s preschool class. In the