Travels With Herodotus

my own copy of Travels With Herodotus has a crease in the middle from ample time folded in my left back-pocket of my navy-blue skinny jeans. it is a book just large enough to fit in one such pocket. having been with me when I experienced one of Washington D.C.'s more dramatic storms this summer, it also bares the mark of water damage -- so much so that the blue of the jean material has rubbed off along the book's spine and page edges.

and yet, I feel that is how Ryszard Kapuscinksi, its author, would have preferred it to be. the polish journalist, who passed away in january of 2007, spent his working life writing reportage of the third world for the Polish Press Agency. his pieces tended to fall more towards the literary side of reportage rather than on the technical and objective edge. commentators often note how his pieces read more like novels than journalistic material. but Kapuscinski was always a writer of experience rather than the nitty gritty, finding ways to grab hold of something everyday and extrapolate it into its wider meanings.

which is what Travels most notably does. its 275 pages are an odd mix of reportage, autobiography, and ancient greek history -- something that would seem to not make sense. Travels is Kapuscinski's attempt, and his last piece at that, to draw out an overview of his years abroad, the people he met, the places he saw, but ultimately, how he felt and what drew him to each. above all, the book is a glimpse into why we travel, why we move. he sums it up best in the following lines, which alone were enough to keep me reading:

"I wondered what ones experiences when one crosses the border. What does one feel? What does one think? It must be a moment of great emotion, agitation, tension. What is it like, on the other side? It must certainly be -- different. But what does 'different' mean? What does it look like? What does it resemble? Maybe it resembles nothing that I know, and thus is inconcievable, unimaginable? And so my greatest desire, which gave me no peace, which tormented and tantalized me, was actually quite modest: I wanted one thing only -- the moment, the act, the simple fact of crossing the border."