4.31 - Paris

There's something to be said for tourism. Whether or not it conveys any real valuable understanding of another culture, it means something to us, we continue being tourists. T

here's certain places we flock to, historic or beautiful places, places we take pictures of. We tell our families we went there. We tell our friends we went there (we went there and took pictures). We tell ourselves we went there.

Do people who've seen the world and taken pictures of it still kill people? Still do horrible things in the name of justice, or righteousness, or no name at all? Do they live fulfilling lives as valuable members of families, and communities?

I don't know if a place can become the accumulation of all the pictures taken, all the stories told, our collective image of it? I think I've read these ideas somewhere, or heard them.



What is tourism? People visit places for different reasons. Some need a break from, a step outside, their lives. They work hard, and find in such communal gathering – around the same monuments, the same churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, the same ruins – something reassuring, some collective memory reconstructed (perhaps a bit commercialized), some shared past that makes them feel less isolated in their particular troubles, in their particular jobs, or cultures.

I suppose, in traveling, we all find something different: some people say you can even find yourself. As though you might be out there somewhere. The real you. And all you have to do (the current you, not really you) is look in the right place, experience the right experience. I don't know who they are, these people who say this. And I imagine I don't really know who I am either. But there sure are a damn lot of cameras in Paris.