Month: November 2018

I flipped through an issue of Condé Nast Traveler for the first time recently and wound up in an imaginary argument with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Pilar Guzmán. I did most of the arguing.                   Pilar had brought up and delicately shit on one of my favorite aspects of traveling – why we go and why we go where we go. “Over the years of helping to plan trips (including our own), we’ve learned there is often a gulf between the places that stick in people’s minds and the kind of vacation they’re actually looking for in that moment,” Guzmán wrote  letter that opened the September / October 2018 issue. Interesting, I thought replied.  You don’t just want to talk about travel but how it plays out in people’s minds and hearts.  Cool.  That’s what this blog is all about.  I’m in. Shit or no shit, not everybody thinks or cares or about that kind of thing.  I just like it.  And so does Pilar. So at first we bonded.  Her fox to my hound; her couture to my Goodwill; two imaginary martini glasses clinking in the night. Ms. Guzmán was writing about a friend – a newly separated friend – who was planning a summer trip to Tuscany with her two teenage sons. “What started out as a ‘Can I pick your brain?’ call quickly developed into what we at Condé Nast Traveler call a travel-therapy session,” the editor wrote. This therapy session concluded, as therapy often does, with some tough love. “…as it emerged about half an hour into our conversation,” Pilar wrote, “the impetus for her trip was actually an Eat, Pray, Love-style second-act fantasy that really had nothing to do with her boys.  She quickly realized she would be setting herself up for disappointment, trying to get her kids excited about shopping for pottery and linens for the fictional Tuscan vacation home she was renovating in her mind.  To say nothing of the palpable absence of the fourth family member at dinner each night, at least in those raw, early days of separation.” Pilar straightened out Friend, told her to spend a couple fast-paced days in the city and then retreat to an island where the boys could do things like jump off rocks into the ocean and walk to places to get pizza. That sounds perfectly lovely.  It makes perfect sense. But I still call bullshit. For starters, it’s a condescending, shitty way to characterize your friend in a national publication. But mostly, what’s wrong with an Eat, Pray, Love-style second-act fantasy? Nothing.  There’s always a fantasy.   The fantasy is the best part.  Who cares what it is. You seem a little defensive, imaginary Pilar said. I am, I thought replied.  I love this stuff. I’ve never actually read Eat, Pray, Love or seen the movie.  But my sense of it is that one reason it has resonated so strongly with so many people is at least in part because it celebrates travel and the possibilities we dream travel holds.  And I love that. I think it’s cool that a book – or a movie or a song  or whatever – can inspire someone to get up and go.   I love how places stick in our minds because they’re in books and songs and movies. And I love how it works in the other direction – how places and adventures get put in songs and movies and books because they’ve stuck in someone’s mind. The fact that someone had a journey and then wrote about it and that inspired someone to go off on their own journey is something to celebrate.   It’s not something that should be squashed out like dancing in Footloose.               Condé Nast Traveler gets it; the editor’s letter just rubbed me the wrong way.  They do things like publish cool locations found in movies.  Think that music venue was cool in A Star is Born?  Want to go see it?  Condé Nast Traveler has your back.  Pilar does too. “Here at the magazine,” she wrote, “we are believers that sometimes the juiciest trip inspiration comes not from long-held fantasies whose polished cinematic standards may be unattainable for our unedited lives but from those small but powerful images and anecdotes we see or hear, which somewhere along the line have seared themselves into our imagination.” I agree – small but powerful images and anecdotes should not be ignored. But let’s not toss out long-held fantasies with polished cinematic standards – especially when you are a magazine pedaling polished cinematic standards. In steering her away from an Eat, Pray, Love fantasy Pilar merely steered Friend toward a different fantasy. The “unattainable for our unedited lives” part is key. There’s always a fantasy, it’s always unattainable, lives are always unedited.  And that’s awesome! Unedited is where you find the good stories.  That’s where a road trip to Wally World becomes Vacation,   That’s where a vacation to Italy becomes Eat, Pray, Love. The best travel-therapy I received was from friends who told me not to be disappointed if we didn’t make it all the way to Los Angeles on a cross country trip, to make sure we enjoyed the journey.  They didn’t tell me not to try.  We did make it to L.A., but I took that advice to heart, and I used it.  Everyday. By all means, get advice, get tips from Pilar Guzmán.  Absolutely.  Don’t limit yourself to Tuscany because it’s the only place you know about.  But let the travel itself be your therapist.  And go wherever, however and whyever the fork you want.