a. e. smith’s official website

Spring has officially sprung in Utah.  (And by “officially” I mean that it hasn’t snowed in over 10 days and the tulips are popping up everywhere.  Oh, and when I go running, I can smell hyacinth.  It’s very scientific.)   The blue sky and floriferous trees fill me with delight.

Of course, the warm weather also fills me with a desire to travel.  (Ok, so nearly everything fills me with a desire to travel, but especially spring.)  Just this week one friend left for a trip to Turkey.  I found out another, who just finished a ph.D, is heading to Europe for 7 weeks.  One is moving to Oregon.  Another to Washington, D.C.  My brother is spending a month in Spain.  And another brother is probably spending the summer in NYC.  Jerks.

Not to worry, I’ve got lots of fun road trips and adventures planned this summer.  Even so, I can’t help but feel a twinge of “take me with you” every time someone goes somewhere without me.  As if it’s inconceivable anyone would go on a trip that didn’t include me.  (Which is funny because I believe a lot of the world’s problems would disappear if everyone traveled more.)

The thing is, if I stay in one place for very long, I start to feel dull.  There’s no need for that, of course.  I’m good at finding adventures and happiness wherever I am.  In fact, one of my favorite poems helps in situations like these.  It’s by one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins.

You can hear him read it by clicking here, or you can just read the text below.

Consolation

by Billy Collins

How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.

There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.

How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?

Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.

And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car

as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.