Delight in Getting Lost: The way to Travel by Walter Benjamin
Contrary to the norms of our own time, perhaps the best way to travel is to be willing to get lost.
In Berlin Childhood around 1900, the philosopher Walter Benjamin posited that to really know a city, it’s necessary to get lost in it. To the letter, he wrote in one fragment:
Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling.
Benjamin belonged to a time when there was no GPS and perhaps not even tourist maps. Still less were the contemporary obsessions with knowing everything and always being prepared: the best times to visit this or that museum, whether or not it will rain in the summer, or if there’s Uber in a given city, and so on.
Instead, Benjamin believed in vagrancy and spontaneity. He trusted in surprise (though that sounds paradoxical) and he knew that frequently, knowledge and experience arise with the unexpected.
We remember Benjamin, but we could speak of a tradition of travel offset by the arrival of tourism. The traveler was someone heroic and adventurous, a risk taker, and that’s why the contrast is so sharp with the tourists who plan carefully, who know where to go, what to see, and where to eat.
Cuban poet, Jose Lezama Lima, said in an interview that “the journey is to recognize, and to recognize oneself.” And it’s possible that in these two thoughts there is a kind of spiritual brotherhood. The trip is a spatial movement, it’s real, but it’s also symbolic. We move from one place to another but also from one emotional state to another, and from one way of thinking to another. We discover things, our horizons widen, we realize that something that we had believed was true is, perhaps, not so.
Why not travel then with a bit of that spirit? Why not exchange a bit of immediacy for the tourist’s desire to control, to get the traveler’s amazement and the unexpected?
The question is perhaps even more elemental. Are you willing to travel this way, based on the premise that you need to lose yourself in order to find yourself?
Related Articles
Pictorial spiritism (a woman's drawings guided by a spirit)
There are numerous examples in the history of self-taught artists which suggest an interrogation of that which we take for granted within the universe of art. Such was the case with figures like
Astounding fairytale illustrations from Japan
Fairy tales tribal stories— are more than childish tales. Such fictions, the characters of which inhabit our earliest memories, aren’t just literary works with an aesthetic and pleasant purpose. They
A cinematic poem and an ode to water: its rhythms, shapes and textures
Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. - John Keats Without water the equation of life, at least life as we know it, would be impossible. A growing hypothesis holds that water, including the
Watch beauty unfold through science in this "ode to a flower" (video)
The study of the microscopic is one of the richest, most aesthetic methods of understanding the world. Lucky is the scientist who, upon seeing something beautiful, is able to see all of the tiny
To invent those we love or to see them as they are? Love in two of the movies' favorite scenes
So much has been said already, of “love” that it’s difficult to add anything, much less something new. It’s possible, though, perhaps because even if you try to pass through the sieve of all our
This app allows you to find and preserve ancient typographies
Most people, even those who are far removed from the world of design, are familiar with some type of typography and its ability to transform any text, help out dyslexics or stretch an eight page paper
The secrets of the mind-body connection
For decades medical research has recognized the existence of the placebo effect — in which the assumption that a medication will help produces actual physical improvements. In addition to this, a
The sea as infinite laboratory
Much of our thinking on the shape of the world and the universe derives from the way scientists and artists have approached these topics over time. Our fascination with the mysteries of the
Sharing and collaborating - natural movements of the creative being
We might sometimes think that artistic or creative activity is, in essence, individualistic. The Genesis of Judeo-Christian tradition portrays a God whose decision to create the world is as vehement
John Malkovich becomes David Lynch (and other characters)
John Malkovich and David Lynch are, respectively, the actor and film director who’ve implicitly or explicitly addressed the issues of identity and its porous barriers through numerous projects. Now