Traveling Tips from Poetry

Sometime back in my final year of high-school, the traveling bug hit me hard. I mean, HARD. It clubbed me over the face and left a string of scars and a sense of permanent nausea that I knew would only subside when I jumped on a plane and landed somewhere completely opposite to my privileged security of suburban Ontario.

Mentally, I was equally ill. I would lock myself up in my attic room and try to satiate that unrelenting desire to explore until I could save enough money to actually go backpacking. I drew maps. I planned routes. And I read...

Joseph Brodsky's poem "Advice to a Traveler" has been one of the most significant influences on my life, writing and sense of traveling. It captures perfectly the essence of exploration and the demands traveling makes of its participants:

I


Trekking in Asia, spending nights in odd dwellings, in

granaries, cabins, shacks – timber abodes whose thin

squinted windowpanes harness the world – sleep dressed,

wrapped in your sheepskin and do your best


always to tuck your head into the corner, as

in the corner it's harder – and in darkness at that – to swing an axe

over your heavy, booze-laden gourd

and to chop it off nicely. Square the circle, in short.

II

Fear broad cheekbones (including the moon's), pockmarked

skin, and prefer blue eyes to brown eyes. Search hard

for the blue ones, especially when the road takes you into the wood,

into its heart. On the whole, as for eyes, one should

watch for their cut. For at last instant it's

better to stare at that which, though cold, permits

seeing through: ice may crack, yet wallowing in an ice-

hole is far better than in honey-like, viscous lies.

III

Always pick a house with baby clothes hanging out

in the yard. Deal only with the over-fifty crowd:


a hick at that age knows too much about fate to gain

anything by attempting to bust your brain;

same thing, a squaw. Hide the money in your fur coat's

collar or, if you are travelling light, in your brown culottes

under the knee-but not in your boots since they'll find the dough

easily there. In Asia, boots are the first to go.

IV


In the mountains, move slowly. If you must creep, then creep.

Magnificent in the distance, meaningless closer up,

mountains are but a surface standing on end. The snail-

like and, it seems, horizontal meandering trail

is, in fact, vertical. Lying flat in the mountains, you

stand. Standing up, you lie flat. Which suggests your true

freedom's in falling down. That's the way, it appears,

to conquer, once in mountains, vertigo, raptures, fears.

V

If somebody yells "Hey, stranger!" don't answer. Play deaf and dumb.

Even though you may know it, don't speak the tongue.

Try not to stand out-either in profile or

full face; simply don't wash your face at times. What's more,

when they rip a cur's throat with a saw, don't cringe.

Smoking, douse your butts with spittle. And besides, arrange

to wear gray-the hue of the earth-especially underclothes,

to reduce the temptation to blend with your flesh the earth.

VI

When you halt in the desert, make an arrow from pebbles, so,

if suddenly woken up, you'll fathom which way to go

in the darkness. At nights, demons in deserts try

travellers' hearts. He who heeds their cry

gets easily disoriented: one step sideways and-well, c'est tout.


Ghosts, specters, demons, are at home in the desert. You

too will discover that's true when, sand creaking under your sole,

all that remains of you is your soul.

VII


Nobody ever knows anything for a fact.

Gazing ahead at your stooping guide's sturdy back,

think that you gaze at the future and keep your distance (if

that is possible) from him. Since, in principle, life

is itself but a distance between here and there, and

quickening the pace only pays when you discern the sound

behind of those running after you down the path

with lowered heads-be they murderers, thieves, the past.

VIII

In the sour whiff of rugs, in the burnt dung's fume,

prize the indifference of things to being regarded from

afar, and in turn lose your own silhouette, turning, thus,

unattainable to binoculars, gendarmes, mass.

Coughing in a cloud of dust, wading through mud, muck, map,

what difference does it make how you would look close up?


It's even better if some character with a blade

figures out you are a stranger a bit too late.

IX

Rivers in Asia are longer than elsewhere, more rich

in alluvium-that is, murkier. As you reach

for a mouthful, your cupped fingers ladle silt,

and one who has drunk this water would prefer it spilt.


Never trust its reflection. Crossing it, cross it on

a raft built with no other hands but the pair you own.

Know that the gleam of a campfire, your nightly bliss,


will, by sliding downstream, betray you to enemies.

X


In your letter from these parts, don't divulge whom and

what you've seen on your way. If anything should be penned,

use your varying feelings, musings, regrets, et al.:

a letter can be intercepted. And after all,

the movement of a pen across paper is,

in itself, the worsening of the break between you and those

with whom you won't any longer sit or lie down ­– with whom,

unlike the letter, you won't share – who cares why – a home.

XI

When you stand on an empty stony plateau alone

under the fathomless dome of Asia in whose blueness an airplane

or an angel sometimes whips up its starch or star –

when you shudder at how infinitesimally small you are,

remember: space that appears to need nothing does

crave, as a matter of fact, an outside gaze,

a criterion of emptiness – of its depth and scope.


And it's only you who can do the job.

- Joseph Brodsky