A Cold Bench in a Dream

Fountains gleam. Birds sing melodiously. There’s a crick in my neck. My legs have fallen asleep. I tilt my head, roll my ankles, stand up from the cold, hard bench. Everything around me is a dream — a synthesis of sunlit water and shadowy leaves, a vision to the starry-eyed traveler. But the cold stiffness from sitting on the bench is like a permanent pinch, keeping me perpetually aware that this is, in fact, no dream.

That’s what it’s like to travel. On the bridge over a peaceful pond in Toulouse, it was the discomfort of an elaborately welded metal bench. In Hokkaido, it was the freezing cold that came with the beautiful snow. Coming back from Amsterdam to Belgium, it was getting the bus schedule wrong and having to walk 3km along a steeply sloping street in the dark to get home. (That’s 1.86 miles, for my American friends.) But this is not a series of complaints. Quite the contrary — it's these very bites of reality that give the dream of travel its rich sustenance.

Dreaming is a bizarre sensation. It brings with it a sense of puzzlement, our mind tricking itself into experiencing vivid illusions. It's confusing, dissatisfying. Daydreaming gives a similar feeling of dissatisfaction. It's like smelling delicious food but never getting to have a taste.

Traveling is very much like a dream. The visions it brings often seem too beautiful to be true. Sometimes, I would stare at the stunning views — or art — or nature — and so on — and truly not believe my eyes. The visions alone were overwhelming and — because they puzzled my mind with a sense of trickery — felt a bit empty. The sight of them, alone, appeared as flat as a ten-cent postcard. Surely nothing could be so picture-perfect!

The emptiness did not last, however. The sights would always become exciting as their reality sank in. There's a single word for the reality that makes such sights exciting: story.

Sometimes, fictional stories I knew by heart gave the places I traveled their thrill. But usually it was the real-life story of how I myself got there, or what I myself was doing there, that gave the enchantment its true power. And every great story always has an element of tension — some flaw, some problem.

I'm sure many people know Ibn Battuta’s famous quote, "Traveling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller." The amazing visions are what leave you speechless. The problems along the way are what give you a story to tell.

On a winter night in Paris, along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, I walked below the twinkling lights of illuminated trees towards the brightly-lit Arc de Triomphe. My sister and I planned to see a movie together. That is, we wouldn't be seeing it together in a place. We planned to see it together in time (well, albeit across timezones) connected by our apps. Unfamiliar with the theatre I chose, I ended up arriving far, far too early. After a long day of exploration, my phone battery was running low. And so I walked along the beautiful, famous street (only spotting one graffiti mark left by the gilets jaunes the month before). And I laughed at myself. And I felt a bit annoyed at myself. And I missed my sister.

And all these things made the Arc de Triomphe shine big and bright, to match my smile.

The only place I could find to charge my phone was a nearby McDo. (That's McDonald’s, for my American friends.) Not hungry — at least not for McDo — I went inside, walked up to the atm-like order machine, and bought an espresso. Soon, I found myself utterly confused by a convoluted setup. The coffee drinks were made at a separate counter from the main pick-up line. But the baristas didn't seem to be making any orders put in by machine. They only concerned themselves with the people who made orders in person. I'd already paid for my machine order, already made use of my bathroom token from ordering something, and did not actually want to ingest that much caffeine so late at night. So I took my receipt upstairs and found a table with a phone charger.

Placing the receipt on the table in front of me, I charged my phone and messaged my friends without too much trouble. A store manager told me to put my feet down off of the opposite seat at the table. But nobody seemed concerned with the fact that I wasn’t eating. Maybe they really did accept my receipt as a ticket to ride. Or maybe, surrounded by a lot of empty tables as I was, they didn't much care.

The awkward, funny situation at the McDo put me in a bit of a weird humor. It wasn’t a very picturesque place to wait around to see a movie in Paris, either. But as I stepped outside from the greasy-food- and plastic-smelling interior, feeling like a muddle-headed American, I discovered that the Arc de Triomphe seemed even more beautiful than before — by such lopsided comparison, no doubt.

Making my way to the movie theater, I laughed at myself once more. I went to a movie with my sister, miles and miles and many timezones apart. I tucked my funny story into my treasure chest of memories. And on that odd and funny, sad and nostalgic, beautiful and enjoyable night, Paris was real to me.

The traveling journey that I’ve shared on social media is mostly a collage of pretty or interesting photos. It's a fairly two-dimensional, ten-cent postcard version (with little more than a quick message scrawled on the back). On this blog, I hope to share a much more real traveling journey.

Will you travel on that journey with me? — sitting together on that cold bench in a dream?