than sitting alone by himself in a room, doing battle with the demons
that made his writing so beautiful in the first place.
That’s the difference between leisure and escapism. It’s the
intention. Travel is wonderful, but is there not something sad to the
story in Johnny Cash’s life, as his first marriage fell apart and his
music became more formulaic and less fulfilling? Landing in L.A. at
the end of a long tour, instead of heading home to his family, he
walked up to the counter and asked to buy a ticket. To where?
“Wherever the next plane will take me,” he told the attendant.
Despair and restlessness go together.
The problem is that you can’t flee despair. You can’t escape, with
your body, problems that exist in your mind and soul. You can’t run
away from your choices—you can only fix them with better choices.
There’s nothing wrong with a good vacation (particularly if the
aim is solitude and quiet) or a round of golf, just as there is nothing
wrong with cracking a beer to take the edge off. Certainly Churchill
loved to travel and enjoyed champagne, though he stunk at golf.
But too often, the frenzied or the miserable think that an escape—
literal or chemical—is a positive good. Sure, the rush of traveling, the
thrill of surfing, or the altered state of a psychedelic can relieve some
of the tension that’s built up in our lives. Maybe you get some pretty
pictures out of it, and some pseudo-profundity that impresses your
friends.
But when that wears off? What’s left?
Nixon watched nearly five hundred movies during his time in the
White House. We know the darkness he was running from. There’s
no question that for Tiger Woods, his addictions were in part driven
by a desire to escape the pain left over from his childhood. But each
time he hopped on a private plane to Vegas instead of opening up to
his wife (or to his father while he was still alive), he was setting
himself up for more pain down the road. Each time John Fante hit
the golf course instead of the keys of his typewriter, or went out
drinking instead of being at home, he might have felt a temporary
escape, but it came at a very high cost.
When you defer and delay, interest is accumulating. The bill still
comes due... and it will be even harder to afford then than it will be
right now.
barry
(Barry)
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