The Tourist Gaze

Gazing at the scenery that passed me by as I sat in the Cambridge train to King's Cross, I reflected on the previous days events. The smell of recently dugged out fields mixed with manure stung my senses. I cringed slightly. I thought that people are made of all shapes and sizes. I thought about what Alain de Botton said about "art".

I am going to use that take-away plastic cup in the train and use it at the guest room at Trinity Hall. "The Art of Travel" was the name of the book. De Botton's writing was caught at many levels; the literal and direct level of suggestion and the philosophical discussions when he analysed historically what other people wrote about travel, especially from the writers of the 18th century. Why the 18th century? The love of travel came about from explorers from that century and earlier on, as then it was pure madness to travel 5,000 miles away and get killed in the process! De Botton used a lot of their publication and paintings of these other world.

I read the "Tourist Gaze" earlier, at that time in 1995-96 at the DPU in London. I did a seminar paper on Tourism and Development and the papers that I read were of the highest quality. The tutor gave us a stack of papers to read and to use for our seminars and dissertation.

We try to fight for our individual space. To be free from information overload. We keep on seeing and grasping new things, objects, sceneries, experiences, words, pieces of information and everything seems relevant!

Processes...basic physiological and biological processes for one! Like our sight process, our hearing process, our walking process, building process, development process... (At that point I veered off from the subject of travel, and made a diagram relevant to my thesis...)

Am I an accidental tourist? Caught by chance with vignettes of travel treats. I think I am living here in the UK, but at the same time, I am a tourist. A tourist at TESCO, a tourist of Salford, a tourist at Sedgeley Park Little Laundrette...because I possess the "Tourist Gaze", a slightly bemused feeling that all this I am living is temporary and I will be in Malaysia in December next year... processes.