Supposedly necessary

A 28 year old Gustave Flaubert wrote home during his trip to Egypt (1850):

The Egyptian temples bore me profoundly. Oh necessity! To do what you are supposed to do; to be always, according to the circumstances (and despite the aversion of the moment), what a young man, or a tourist, or an artist is supposed to be!

Smart dude.

Gustave encapsulates my aversion and fear of the known tourist hotspots: the pyramids, Eiffel Tower, Times Square, Great Wall, et. al.  I of course go see all these places if I'm in Egypt or France or New York or China – I have to. You'd be a knucklehead if you didn't – but still, my fears are usually founded .. the grand monuments that are supposed to inspire awe are reduced to cute photo shoots for tourists in Hawaiian shirts.

Not that Hawaiian shirts are bad... but it's sort of like seeing a ibanker roll up with his trophy wife.  Any feminine mystique is lost when the pretty young thing is offered up to be displayed and mentally consumed by people who could care less about what she has to say or what she does – all they care about is the great pair of tits and long legs.

The monuments become divorced from the soul of the country once it has been sanitized, scrubbed, and dumbed down for public consumption. And honestly, any traveler will tell you that for all the great things you're supposed to do on a trip – see the museums, walk through the cathedrals, explore the ruins – most of this stuff excite only in the first fifteen minutes.. after that, you're supposed to be stupefied, but blame it on TV, they are kind of boring.

Gustave at the age of 28 goes through exactly what I'm going through... it's comforting in a sort of masochistic way, but then again .. anyone else sick of doing what you're supposed to be doing?

Ah, but I can't help but think these feelings and situations are inevitable.

Posted by: c.h.ha | February 23, 2007 at 08:25 AM