So you dreamed of traveling.

Translated from 于是你幻想去旅行 by 比目鱼

You are a passenger on a subway train. At six o’clock in the afternoon, you are squeezed into a narrow gap in the center of the car by bodies of strangers that exude of sweat and perfume. Neither of your two hands is able to reach any of the handrail rings, so you have to rely on your feet to maintain balance. The AC is blowing cold air over your head, but your back is sweating profusely. Your vision travels past the heads in the car and sees a giant light box advertising display outside the window, with a picture of a tranquil, blue, and seemingly endless ocean. So you dream of traveling. You dream that this train would depart here and ride toward an unknown land far away. It would pass through mountains and ridges, and it would pass by many strange cities. When the car finally stops, you see a vast coastline through the window on the left; the door on the right opens up, the sea breeze brushes against you, and you see a seaside fishing village with nearly no one in sight.

You are a grade school teacher in the fishing village. In a quiet afternoon, you are sitting in an office underneath a dangling ceiling fan grading students’ homework with your dual-colored pencils. You occasionally look up, and find out that you are the only one in office right now. Through the wide-open wooden window, you see that only a straw hat-wearing janitor is out on the playground, bending over to clear out the weeds under the sun. When you bring your sight towards the hazy and flickering sea level in the distance, you suddenly realize that you have been looking at that horizon from behind the same desk for two full years. So you dream of traveling. You dream of riding a bike on the concrete road outside the school gates until you reach the seaside a kilometer away, and you would then brave against the fishy-smelling sea breeze and ride on a sail boat with a rumbling motor. You stand on the stern of the boat while looking at the school’s playground flag pole getting farther and farther away. When you travel across that horizon, you arrive at a city called New York.

You are a barista at a coffee shop chain situated in Manhattan’s financial district, although your true ambition is to become a writer. Every Monday evening you would take the subway to 23rd Street and sit in the corner of a bar to listen in on literary readings; every Saturday afternoon you would visit another literati bar in East Fourth Street, hoping that you could meet a publisher or agent who would read your novel’s manuscript. Right now, you are leaning over with a broom cleaning up the bread crumbs left behind by a customer. There are three Wall Street employees wearing shiny white shirts sitting next to you, laughing and chatting about private yachts, European vacations, and Italian women. You go outside the shop and bring out a cigarette from your pocket; while searching for the lighter in the other pocket, your hand touches that rejection letter from The New Yorker, which has been sitting there since last night. So you dream of traveling. You dream of stopping a yellow taxi that’s passing by in front of your eyes, telling the driver to take you to JFK Airport. You would take out your yet-to-be-overdrafted credit card in the lobby, and tell that girl behind the counter in the airline uniform that you would like to go to Paris.

You are an elderly woman who lives alone in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Everyday afternoon at 3 o’clock you would dress up and apply some light makeup, then walk out of your apartment on the 6th floor. You slowly walk down the staircase while holding onto the handrails, pass through the surprisingly quiet patio, and push open the door to the street warmed by sunshine. You walk by the elegant men and women outside of the café, who are holding wine glasses and sitting cross-legged facing the street. You walk by the old church with mottled walls where foreign travelers gather. You walk by the street vending cart that’s selling crepes and ice creams, you walk by the small boutiques and art galleries. You turn towards a side street and walk into a dimestore. You push the shopping cart, diligently select vegetables and cheese before the shelves, and then carry the shopping bag back to your apartment, following the same route as before. Before you begin to prepare for dinner, you sit on the couch to watch TV as usual. You press the buttons on the remote to change channels, and unknowingly fall asleep. When you wake up, darkness has fallen both outside the window and within the room, only the TV still flickers its dim shimmer. You see three big elephant and one small elephant on the screen, swaying their noses and walking slowly and steadily in the prairie. A slender tree stands between them and the distant horizon like a solitary nail. So you dream of traveling. You dream of your lover from 50 years ago ringing the doorbell outside. The two of you would bring wine and fruit into his Citroën convertible, and hum the songs of Johnny Hallyday while riding to Africa.

You are the boss of a 5-star hotel in Cape Town, South Africa. Every Tuesday afternoon at 2 o’clock, you would leave your hotel on the dot. You would drive south on the M6 coastal road, palm trees and private villas scattered on the rocky hills to your left, and small waves splashed against shore reefs in the South Atlantic to your right. You would arrive at a small chic hotel in Camps Bay within 15 minutes. You would park your car and run straight toward room 117. You would use your cardkey to open the door skillfully, and you would see a naked woman lying on the bed (sometimes sitting in a chair) in the room. You cannot determine the name or age of the women who sleep with you, you cannot determine where in the world your friend Sean (this hotel’s owner) finds this steady stream of babes, and you definitely cannot determine if any of these young lasses with different skin colors and body types recognizes you as the boss of that famous Cape Town hotel (or perhaps they are more familiar with your congresswoman wife who frequently appear on TV?). But you never waste your brain cells on these indeterminable matters. Now, after a vigorous exercise, you habitually close your eyes and lay face-up in the bed, with one hand lazily stroking the tan leg next to you. You suddenly hear the door open, and you smell the familiar fragrance of a perfume. You hear the screams of a familiar woman’s voice, so you open your eyes, and for a few seconds you cannot distinguish whether that angry face is in the TV screen or actually by your bedside. So you dream of traveling. You dream that you have never driven on M6, have never stopped by this hotel, have never opened the door to this room. You imagine yourself in a country far, far away from here, so you think of India.

You are an old tramp in Old Delhi, India. On a night with a full moon hanging high in the sky, you lean against a corner wall by the street with a cigarette butt tucked in your left hand and a beer can in your right hand. Your hair and beard have stuck together, and your overall consists of 11 shirts and 5 pairs of pants that you have picked up somewhere. Every day you bend your back as you travel through the streets to study meticulously the content of every trash can in the city. Every night you sit in your regular street corner as you watch this dilapidated old town turning quieter and quieter. Tonight you feel very content, because you have just taken a cold shower in a public bathroom two blocks away, because when you passed by your friend Kush’s corner he threw you a can of beer that has not been expired for too long, and also because the beggar-catching prison van has left this street, so at least for tonight you no longer worry about getting sent to jail for 2 years. So you feel a kind of relief, so you start humming a ditty, so you let your thoughts drift away, so you dream of traveling. Traveling would be a fun thing to do – you say that to yourself. But right now, you really cannot think of any other place besides this street corner that would make it worth to move your body. At this time, you tilt your head up and see the gigantic white moon hanging over the building across the street, and you dream about taking a trip up there.

You are the thirteenth astronaut to arrive on the moon in human history. 147 hours ago, you and three other astronauts had successfully landed on the surface of the moon in your “Altair” lunar lander, you were the first one to step down the ladder, the dust stirred by your space boots rose slowly, and fell slowly, like a slow-motion film. 123 hours ago, you and your companions were driving a lunar rover over the bumpy surface of the moon, and you realized that for the past 24 hours since you landed here, you’ve seen almost no change in the scenery: always an endless black firmament over the top of your head, always the same dust and gravel that appear to be sleeping in an underwater world beneath your feet. 84 hours ago, you were sleeping in the hammock in the lander, you dreamed of the brightly-colored tomatoes sitting on A&P’s shelves near your home. 47 hours ago, you slipped on a low hillside slope, the dust and stone chips began flying everywhere like a silk scarf, and when you finally stood up like you would in a swimming pool, you once again saw the half-exposed face of the blue planet that hung lowly on the black canopy. 24 hours ago, you received a notice from Houston: the “Orion” command module from the lunar orbit had had a computer malfunction, the command base’s engineers were doing their best to repair it remotely. 5 minutes ago, you received the latest notice: the command module had experienced a total failure, and it would not be possible to complete the docking of the lunar lander within the next 23 hours as planned. 1 minute ago, your assistant Ross informed you over the speakerphone: Houston will launch an emergency small rocket to resupply you, but the oxygen reserve on the lunar module can only last for 31 hours. Now, you stand on the surface of the moon, holding a mineral sample in your hand, your body motionless. You suddenly feel that this place is so barren, so desolate, so hideous. So you dream of traveling. You dream of going back to any corner of that distant blue planet. You do not care for the scenery; you only care to surround yourself in a crowd, one that would allow you to smell the odor of people. Out of nowhere, you think of a crowded subway.

You were a passenger on a subway train. At six o’clock in the afternoon, you were squeezed into a narrow gap in the center of the car by bodies of strangers that exude of sweat and perfume. Neither of your two hands was able to reach any of the handrail rings, so you had to rely on your feet to maintain balance. The AC was blowing cold air over your head, but your back was sweating profusely. Your vision traveled past the heads in the car and saw a giant light box advertising display outside the window, with a picture of a tranquil, blue, and seemingly endless ocean.

So you dreamed of traveling.