It's puzzling that during the five months of the pandemic nobody has written – presumably because nobody has wondered – about the fate of the travel writer.
Last week I ran into an acquaintance at a used bookstore. Jim is an artist – a sculptor – and an avid traveler, spending months every year in Southeast Asia. I asked how he was faring in the pandemic, and he said that he’s been working, reading a lot, watching old movies. Then he said, less encouragingly, “It’s the routine that gets to you.”
At first that sentence sounded strange; didn't he mean "monotony"? Routine, for most people, is a positive thing, what they establish to help them get through the day. But for travelers, it’s the burr that makes us hit the road. I remembered rather quickly that “break from routine” is the third of the seven joys of travel.
One year ago this week I traveled to Lisbon for a story that appears today on Literary Hub: https://lithub.com/wandering-through-literary-lisbon-in-search-of-pessoas-disquiet/
Julia Cosgrove, editor of AFAR, send out a mass message that began: “AFAR is too white – and we plan to change that.”
She could have said “AFAR is too boring” and she would have been just as spot-on. But that’s an admission that would be harder to remedy.
I'm not sure I want to travel if I can't see people's mouths.