Alexander Weinstein
Destinations of Self-Delusion
from The Lost Traveler’s Tour Guide
The City of Illumnis
Have you seen the dew collecting every morning on the hibiscus and jasmine flowers in the markets of Illumnis? Or the way its avenues awake and stretch their arms in the sunlight, unclenching their fists to reveal bakeries and patisseries? Here the melodies of fruit vendors selling fresh dates sound like operettas, while above them nests of birds, nestled beneath rooftops, grow heavy with song. And, yes, your guidebook writers know that by describing Illumnis we are complicit in continuing the myth of its existence, but how can we help ourselves?
The truth is that the city was birthed by an illusionist to seduce a young woman. You must see its cathedrals, he told her. Its stained glass windows are as finely constructed as a monarch’s wing, and from concert halls, glass harmoniums send crystal melodies onto the streets, where puppeteers shepherd a menagerie of wooden beasts across the cobblestones. It’s a city of music and light, he whispered, filled with the amber glow of cafés and the lacquered wood of bars whose liquors taste of elderflower and anis.
And so, the creator of Illumnis left the young woman with a curse, which she passed along every time she conveyed the story of the city. For as soon as one hears of the place, details of the destination become entangled with our own memories. At night, we dream of watching the puppeteers. We were only children, we recall, but we remember how our parents purchased a wooden giraffe for us. Whatever happened to that toy, we wonder, as we tell our partners of the magnificent streets we once visited. Infected by the dream, our partners go on to remember further details. At dinner parties, they speak of a man they met by the fountain, how they’d watched the moon rise through the open widow of his loft. And, hearing this, someone else remembers the years when they studied at the university or their drunken nights in Illumnis’s wine cellars. During holidays, we talk of Christmases spent amid its snow-dusted boulevards and tall-spired cathedrals. The King and Queen’s palace was lit in celebration, and the quiet of windswept cobblestones engraved our footprints in white. Remember the coffee, uncle says, and we examine our own weak cups. We should return, we suggest to family and friends, and those who have yet to hear about the fabled city say they would love to see it again.
We are, without doubt, all fools. Illumnis is a collective dream sprung from a fable planted long ago. There are no stained glass windows or puppeteers, no gas lanterns or snow-dusted spires, no harmoniums or forgotten heartthrobs, just the phantoms of our longings. As your guidebook writers, we know we should expose the sham, denounce the city completely, but we can’t. The city has already become too dear to us. Remember how spectacular the castle is at dusk, we ask? Yes, of course, you say; it’s the most beautiful in the world.
The Village of Slazé
What monster lies beneath the village of Slazé? It’s a common question when arriving from either the North or South. For, outside the village gates, basalt hands reach through the ground like the fingers of a buried troll, and, at the opposite end of town, one finds moss-covered rocks, round and bulbous like toes. The topography inspires folktales as readily as zealots who claim the place was created by the Devil himself. And while your guidebook writers aren’t prone to superstition, we must concede that, in this specific case, the zealots appear to be correct. Whether the Devil was the village’s architect, we cannot say—but we can attest to the destination’s finely sharpened teeth, which arrange themselves in an endless array of worldly pleasures.
In Slazé, boutiques spring from the streets like chicken pox, spreading down boulevards with stores selling purses, shoes, belts, linen suit jackets, and lace dresses. There are charcuteries and bakeries, coffee shops and chocolatiers, ateliers and antiques, every storefront more inviting than the last. Children stretch their hands toward the sweet shops selling lollipops and candy cigarettes; boyfriends descend into record shops seeking rare 45s; wives cross streets to peruse vintage dresses. The markets in the main square are filled with flower sellers and olive merchants; there are wine caverns, and, for the libidinous, there are houseboats docked along the river where the most tempting women stand awaiting customers. Just a moment, I want to look at these hats, our husbands say. And we nod our approval, for there’s a patisserie across the way or a cobbler with the perfect pair of shoes.
Soon we’re too busy trying on dresses to wonder where our loved ones have gone, and the shop girl’s arms are loaded with more colors and styles. The record store owner opens the cellar door to reveal his rarest collection; the bookseller invites us to see the signed editions in the attic; the sommelier pours us a sample of a vintage red, followed by another, and another. Come, they tell us, you must see what we have for you in the other room. And our children wander from our grasp as they head toward an arcade filled with carnival games.
The village is voracious, its appetite, like our own, insatiable. It devours tourists by the thousands every year. Every season, Slazé’s belly expands with more stores, more distilleries, more clothing boutiques. Indeed, it’s true—the place has everything we could ever want, but it’s best to scratch the destination from your itinerary. It’s nothing more than a vicious monster. One might say it’s precisely like everyplace else.
The Hotel Yaella
How we wish the Hotel Yaella didn’t exist, and that those who come seeking the reception desk would be pointed elsewhere—to The Fahsmina by the sea, for instance, where breezes blow through open windows and make one think of simple pleasures, like diving into warm waves or resting one’s head against a lover’s chest. But alas, our room is always available, and no matter how thoroughly we’ve swept the corners of our hearts, our desires await us in the lobbies and ballrooms of that cursed hotel.
Whether we’re single, happily married, or forlorn makes little difference; checking in, we find ourselves falling in love with the concierge. We hold out our hand to them and they place the room key in the warmth of our palm, and from that moment on, we can think of nothing else but the sound of their voices and the scent upon their neck. In the elevator, our children ask us questions that we respond to distantly, thinking all the while of how we might have brushed our hair to the side or leaned against the counter more alluringly.
The city itself leaves little impression on us. There’s a museum with art on the walls, a cathedral with tall balustrades, a park where our children pick flowers, some plaza where our husbands or wives put their hands around our waists and kiss our necks. The sun is high, the temperature perfect, but all we can think of is the elevator boy at the hotel or the scent of the concierge’s cologne. For others it’s the bartender, whose eyes meet ours as we dine with our spouses, or the server whose fingers brush ours as they reach for our menus.
To assuage these obsessions, we make love ravenously with our partners, fantasizing them to be the hotel staff. Afterward, we attempt to relieve our longings with self-delusion: the hotel workers must be flawed in some way; they must have husbands and wives whom they already love. And yet, none of this rings true. The staff don’t wear wedding bands, and, upon seeing them in the morning, we’re only reminded of the flawlessness of their smiles. In desperation we look to our husbands and wives, searching for support, but find only their familiar faces and their questions about what museum we should visit next.
Knowing this, it mystifies your guidebook writers that the hotel sustains such success. Year after year, against better judgment, we find ourselves perusing its website, our eyes lingering on the photos of the staff, dreaming of our own darkness. We can’t help but click the Book Now button. Only once more, we promise ourselves, our bags already packed by the door.
The Lost City of Meshong
The city of Meshong has been missing for thirty-nine years. If you ask locals of a neighboring town, they’ll tell you it was over the mountains to the North—about a two-hour drive from their tiny city—though, on hearing this, an old grandmother raises her head to say it was never to the North, but rather to the South, across the river. And though one might think to blame locals for faulty memories, there are maps that can be consulted, and they all show the place where the lost city should be (it is, in fact, to the South, as the grandmother said). Yet, following the map, one finds no city. Instead, there are only other towns and villages where inhabitants also recall the wonderful city of Meshong.
The most common lament from locals: I should’ve visited more often. They always meant to go, they say, but you know how life is. Time passes, you forget, and now they miss the city dearly. If only they could write the city letters, but they have no clue where to send them.
Even the children, who’ve never seen Meshong, concoct melancholy songs for the lost city:
Meshong, Meshong, where have you gone?//We dream of your lights, your arcades, and your sweets/We dream of your fountains, your parades, and your sheets//Meshong, Meshong, why won’t you stay?/Never happy at home now you’ve gone far away.
It’s no wonder that children should sing such sad songs, surrounded as they are by parents and grandparents who speak wistfully about the city: how they remember its fountain in the center of town, or its candy stores stacked high; how they’d met a woman there and fallen in love but never asked her name; how the ice cream was unlike any they’d tasted. And then, one day, the city was gone.
Maybe the city decided to run away, taking its buildings and town squares with it. Perhaps someone broke its heart. Maybe it was bored. The city was young, as cities go, and possibly, like an angry teenager, it’s now holed up in an apartment with three other angry cities, all of them drinking and smoking too much. Maybe it went for a walk one night and got lost in the woods, or got drunk and wandered into the ocean, where it drowned. And here the fishermen all nod. It’s certainly a possibility; it would explain the chairs and lampshades they bring up from the deep. Who knows, Meshong may have simply disappeared with another village in the heat of passion, and they’re off in the mountains, too busy making love to care about the tourists who come seeking its candy shops.
Whatever the case may be, everyone awaits its return. One day, they imagine driving around the bend, and there it will stand, back in its rightful place with all its windows unshuttered and its stores open to the sunlight. Ah, how they’ll appreciate it then. They’ll spend hours in its embrace, tell it how much they missed it, visit its museums, and sit at its outdoor cafés. They’ll take the whole family and stay for weeks. This time, they promise to never take it for granted. And here the grandmother raises her head again to say that, like a boyfriend who left before one got to know him, everyone’s remembering Meshong wrong. Meshong, she says, was as common as any other city—boring, actually—but no one pays her any attention.
The Forbidden Museum
It’s probably best to avoid the Forbidden Museum. There are, after all, much better museums. There’s the Modern, with its two floors of experimental art and postmodern sculpture, or the Houston, which has an extensive collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings. There’s the Handworkers Museum, the National War Museum, the Armory, the Science and Technology Museum. All provide a charming and wholly satisfying experience. The Forbidden Museum, on the other hand, is a misnomer—it’s not forbidden to buy a ticket, just highly discouraged. And while admission is free, it’s in your best interest to forgo exploring its halls. We suggest you visit the Aquarium’s live octopi instead, or gaze at stuffed antelopes at the Museum of Natural History. Don’t enter the large iron doors of the Forbidden Museum, whose gallery’s holdings are further hidden by heavy curtains. Go see the Space Museum, where children can climb inside a plastic replica of a rocketship and watch constellations appear against the planetarium’s darkened dome. Do not part the curtains of the Forbidden’s main entrance, where you’ll encounter guards warning you that the collections will disturb you in unalterable ways.
Disturb you how, you ask?
We cannot presume to know the answer this holds for you; we can only suggest that you go to the National instead, where one can admire pastoral paintings and bronze statues of war heroes.
Much better you do this than be the husband who enters the darkened Rooms of Discovery on the first floor and witnesses all he never wished to know about his wife. Children should be kept from the North Wing, where their parents’ lies will be revealed, and parents are advised to avert their eyes in the Main Gallery, lest they be pierced with regret over lost childhoods. Whatever you do, at all costs, do not visit the Catacombs, where, on display, are a collection of the many secrets which romantic partners and family members have attempted to keep from you for all these years.
We give you this warning, but it’s increasingly clear there’s little hope left for the avid museumgoer. Other galleries report decreasing attendance; room after room of paintings go unseen by the masses; the sculpture wing collects dust and its statues stare blankly at empty halls. Every other museum has decreased their hours until they’re all as good as closed. But at The Forbidden, one finds a long line stretching from the museum’s front doors, everyone anxiously awaiting their entrance.
The Country of Dużcók
We’ve noticed that very few travelers believe there will be an end to their adventures. They drink wine, smoke cigarettes, and fall in love expecting their itineraries will never expire. And yet, there will always be a last destination. And while many hope it will arrive after their decades stretch behind them, there are those who arrive to the Country of Dużcók early in life. Some come as children, others in midlife, and still others after having landed their dream job or meeting the love of their life. Regardless of whether they arrive alone or with families, the country of Dużcók proves to be the last vacation they’ll ever take.
If only travelers knew the tickets they were booking were one-way when they purchased their flights to Dużcók. But, alas, it’s the very nature of Dużcók which eludes everyone’s perception. For the country is a chameleon. It dons the disguises of other destinations, and appears to the common eye to resemble Par- is or Amsterdam, Manhattan or Montreal, in precise detail. And so travelers pack their bags, double-check schedules, hug their children goodbye—feeling the ghostly urge to hold them for a moment longer. Then they climb into the cab that will take them to the airport, their homes fading behind them. Sitting on the plane, they watch clouds out the window or flip through the in-flight magazine, daydreaming about the next trip, planning for a future vacation they’ll never take.
Upon arrival, visitors anticipate their travels with the same restlessness as they always have. They hurry through dinners to catch sunset boat tours, make their way through the many streets, and stand in line impatiently awaiting tickets to the castle, unaware that each second is a moment closer to the end. And yet, for any traveler visiting Dużcók, moments of quiet will flutter across their vision, resembling most closely the emotion of awe. Sitting on a park bench, it’s the turning leaves that catch their eye, or how sunlight strikes a street corner in perfect radiance. In such moments, visitors seem to understand that something momentous is occurring, though they can’t quite grasp its significance. Indeed, many tourists spend their last moments completely unaware that this is the final time they’ll bring a glass of wine to their lips, listen to a street musician’s melodies, or ask a stranger for directions. And soon their hotel rooms become forgotten destinations, along with the memory of their hometowns, and booked seats remain empty when flights depart weeks later.
If we spare you the details of Dużcók’s museums and hotels, its cafés and restaurants, it’s not because we’re trying to save space in this guide or to keep you from knowing the details of its cities and towns. Your guidebook writers assure you, there’s no reason to describe or visit the country; for all we know, you may be visiting it at this very moment.
The Town of Saliz
In the town of Saliz, every monument, church, temple, and park reminds us of something else. Following the main boulevard north, one comes to the Grand Cathedral, one of the town’s most famous landmarks. And yet, not much can be accurately described about the building or its history. As one of our guidebook authors has written: Seeing the cathedral, I was struck by a memory of the last time I had coffee with my father. The refrigerator in his new condominium hummed loudly. He said he hoped to get it fixed soon.
As is immediately obvious, this description is of no use to any tourist wishing to learn of the cathedral’s past, its religious architecture, or any of its many rooms and intricate passageways. And while it would seem that somewhere such a description must exist, one finds instead only visitor guides filled with similar digressions. The brochure, available at the Cathedral’s information center, contains the following description from Saint Philippe, the cathedral’s first priest:
I gaze upon the work of our masons and remember eating warm porridge at my grandmother’s house. I was alone with her in the kitchen when a beam of light struck my face. “Grandmama!” I cried out. My grandmother reached across the table to wipe a bit of porridge from the corner of my mouth.
Such are the nostalgic and completely useless testimonies of all who travel to Saliz. And let’s be honest—how many of us have tried to describe the sites we’ve visited, only to find we’re retelling a story of sitting in the back seat of our parents’ car, or about the perfume of a woman we once loved in college? It’s for this reason that though your guidebook writers have visited all of Saliz’s main attractions, we can only inform you such attractions exist. Yes, there’s a National Gallery. Yes, there’s a wonderful fountain at the center of town. Yes, there’s a train station. A sculpture garden. An aquarium. But, more than that, we cannot say. We can only inform you that the flower market brings to mind the memory of being separated from our mother in a department store.
And so, Saliz remains one step removed from our photo albums, a destination hidden behind the fog of our memories. When we speak wistfully of Saliz’s streets, we are never speaking of boulevards or cafés, but only of distant loves and childhood dreams, and it’s not uncommon to find visitors and guidebook writers alike weeping when they recall their time in Saliz. Every site we visit quickly becomes dear to us—the lakeside café, which reminds us of playing ball with our sister on a winter day; the tower observatory, which recalls that moment when we were walking with our beloved, arm in arm, along the streets of our hometown. This must be the reason why we are all drawn back to the town again and again, to wander its dusty streets and monasteries. Your guidebook writers have become avid visitors—we’ve already cleared our schedules to return this summer—and you’ll find us standing in the town square or visiting a local tavern, just as you are, discovering, to our surprise, our own lives awaiting us.