Travel, Memory

When, in a few days, I leave for Europe, I am sure I'll be very excited. But for the meantime I am still rather apprehensive about it. This stems mostly from the number of things I still must do before I can depart (in peace, anyway). Experience suggests that most things are better anticipated than experienced, but I suspect that this is not the case with travel. I look forward to travel with a sort of dread. Perhaps this is because I have developed such an ingrained distaste for being late: the idea of missing a connecting flight or a train distresses me as few (ultimately) trivial things can. And on this particular journey, there are an awful lot of trains one can miss.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic that travel may yet improve me (despite the many ways in which it probably will not). Playing historic instruments will be instructive. We've spent several months trying to line up time on various organs, and it appears we'll be playing instruments in Tröchtelborn, Magdeburg, Niederndodeleben, Hildesheim, Gifhorn, Clauen, Schellerten, Norden, Roskilde, Frederiksborg Castle, Leufsta Bruk, and Östhammar. Besides organs, we have set aside several days to explore Vienna, Prague, Magdeburg, Hannover, Roskilde, and Copenhagen. I hope to write about things on this web-log as much as is practical; while I hate the idea of spending an entire vacation trying to remember said vacation (taking pictures — which still strikes me as asinine, especially in churches — and writing web-log posts), I suppose I should produce some evidence of travels.

This makes me wonder about the nature of memory. Why would anyone devote so much time and effort encasing experiences in amber? Well, pictures and words, in one way, have a sort of sacramental aspect. No, then again, they don't at all: a sacrament is by its nature a tangible object, whereas images and words are the opposite of tangible objects, unless I engrave them like Job. (19:23-24: "Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!") Pictures and words on the internet, are, I guess, a sort of memorialist understanding of the past: we recall times gone by, but we lack the Real Presence, as it were.