Travel broadens the mind, maybe

"In future times, even these things shall seem pleasant." I forget the source of that quotation. A Greek, I think. I carry the phrase around like a warn coin that has worn off the milled edges and the raised type of details, spending it regularly on journeys where I am tired through lack of sleep and excess of motion, thin from rucksacks and missed meals or thick from the extravagence of lunchtime menus and credit card dinners - as time goes by, what I recall are the occasions where my jaw dropped at the wonder of the world, created by nature or man. I forget the bites and the wet clothes and remember the unique and unusual, things stared at intently to fix and cement into memory.

And then I return, usually to nothing special, but more aware of the world.

Except the world I return to does not care for wonder elsewhere, does not value experience beyond its own horizon, so my home world seems even more tawdry and childish, more limited and plain than when I left.

So then I find myself stretched, with my feet on familiar roads, entering familiar shops to buy the routine and the essential; but my head still sees the snow on the mountains and the golden temples, still smells the fragrance of the forest and the salt of the sea, still hears the bird calls and the choir to which I now belong, singing in the wilderness.