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Trouble with paradise

There’s trouble in paradise. Well, not exactly trouble. Come to think of it, not exactly paradise either. But there is definitely friction in two of the nicest places I’ve ever lived.
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There’s trouble in paradise. Well, not exactly trouble. Come to think of it, not exactly paradise either. But there is definitely friction in two of the nicest places I’ve ever lived.

The source of the friction, which has yet to heat up enough to spontaneously combust, is travel, or rather my growing distaste for travel. In itself, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But coupled, as it is, with my Perfect Partner’s intense, single-minded, almost compulsive desire to travel – I have actually discovered her Googling destinations for future trips while sitting in internet cafes in faraway lands – and my desire to be a supportive, upbeat, go-with kind of guy… well, I think the trouble in paradise is pretty clear.

It rose to the surface most recently when she gushed over the description of a trip to Africa.

PP: "Wow! Listen to this. Travel… savannah… wild animals… thatched treehouses… king of beasts…."

I don’t know for certain what words filled in the gaps but given the glossy nature of the magazine she was reading I’m certain it verily flowed with superlatives designed to make you want to pack your bags, oil your safari rifle and throw yourself into a Land Rover.

Me: "Sounds appalling."

PP: "What!"

Me: "Appealing. Sounds appealing."

PP: "That’s not what you said."

No, that’s what I should have said. That’s what I would have said had I been paying more attention, given the matter half a thought or remembered to flip my Spousal Survival switch to Automatic.

Me: "GREAT IDEA!!!!"

The funny thing about enthusiasm is this: Timed just a moment too late, it sounds remarkably like sarcasm. Had I a goose, it would have been cooked.

So the problem, clearly and singularly mine, is how to get enthusiastic about doing something I have remarkably little interest in – going places, seeing things. This problem is made all the more intractable because I don’t actually mind going places and seeing things. It’s all the other crap that accompanies going places and seeing things I hate.

Stepping into an airport, in fact getting anywhere near an airport, tops the list. This is unfortunate since it seems inevitably to be the first step to exotic travel, exotic being more or less defined as some place you can’t possibly get to by car, itself a form of travel becoming less and less attractive.

Air travel used to be just degrading. I marvel that there actually was a time when air travel was considered exotic, luxurious and, yes, special. I don’t know how bad it’s gotten with the latest round of restrictions on what you can and can’t take on board airplanes but I do know it hasn’t gotten better. In fact, the only saving grace left – until three weeks ago – was the very comforting knowledge one could commence pounding scotch as soon as one found a seat in the waiting area and be more or less insensate by the time one boarded the cattle car to Hell. With that little civilizing escape snatched away in the name of homeland security, one is left with pleading with one’s doctor for high-test sedatives to keep from throttling the screaming child kicking the back of one’s seat. What a great way to begin, and end, one’s travels to paradise.

But I can get past the airplane travel thing with the comforting rationalization that there’s simply no choice. Other than staying home. Which is the root of the trouble and no real choice at all. After all, as distasteful as air travel has become, it’s a picnic compared to divorce proceedings which is, itself, a picnic compared to the excruciating mental picture of hustling a new love interest at this stage of my life. No, I have to learn to love travel.

It is, at this point, the deep wisdom of the Canadian philosopher Red-Green shines a guiding light on life’s greatest challenge.

I’m a man.

I can change.

If I have to…

I guess.

It is, quite naturally, not all travel to which I’m indifferent. I have been enthusiastically ready for quite some time to paddle the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson, kayak the inside passage from Alaska to B.C., sail almost anywhere I can cadge a spot on, preferably, someone else’s sailboat or… I’m certain there’s something else on the list; I’ll get back to you with details later.

But I think my aversion to going places and seeing things – as opposed to what appears to be a list consisting of camping or near-camping experiences – is twofold: the places have either been spoiled by tourism or they’re headed toward being spoiled by tourism and either way, I’m not certain I want to be part of the problem.

Palma was a good, recent example. Palma’s the largest city in Mallorca, the largest island in the Balearics, a chain of semi-tropical paradises erupting from the eastern Mediterranean. It used to be beautiful. I know this because I visited it through the eyes of long dead painters. The painters themselves, scattered throughout the cosmos, were all, at one time or another, smitten by the landscape that rises and melts into the warm waters of the Med.

Perhaps the greatest sense of melancholy though comes from glimpsing their Palma and realizing what’s been lost to industrial, global tourism.

A large canvas hangs in the main corridor of the Es Baluard Museum of Modern Art. The painting, a century old, is by Antoni Massot. It’s a moody landscape set in early evening’s gloaming along old Palma’s seawalk. The 14 th century cathedral, the largest building in the city, still dominating the landscape as you approach by sea, lies against a palm-speckled beach.

But now, a century later, it sits hard against six lanes of traffic and an endless panorama of diesel-spewing yachts ranging in size from modest to excessive. The din, the choking exhaust, the hustle and bustle is far from paradisiacal. Palma has evolved, through tourism, from a languid paradise to a machine designed to rapidly separate the sheeplike flocks of tourists – landing plane after plane – from whatever currency or credit they bring with them. It is horrid.

And that’s the paradox.

There was a great travel piece in the New York Times this week. It sang the praises of Vanuatu. It made me want to go there. It lovingly described the sand and surf paradise that inspired James Michener to write Tales of the South Pacific as an unspoiled paradise just now being discovered.

Too late. By the time I get there, it’ll be well on its way to becoming Palma.

And that’s my trouble in paradise. No matter how much I hate to admit it, the simple act of wanting to experience the world’s rapidly disappearing special places reduces me to being part of the problem. Better pack before it’s too late.