Cees Noteboom is a Dutch poet, journalist, translator and critic. Born on July 31, 1933 in The Hague, the Netherlands, he has traveled the world for many years and is known for his travel writing. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Radboud University, Freie Universität Berlin, and University of London. He was awarded the Pegasus Prize in 1982, the Konstantin Huygens Prize in 1992, the European Literary Prize in 2003, and the P. in 2004c.The Hufort Prize, the 2009 Dutch Literary Prize, the 2017 Mondello International Literary Prize, the 2020 Formento Prize and many other international awards. He is known as "one of the most outstanding contemporary writers" and "the last intellectual writer in Europe".
All things arise from change, and have nothing to do with constancy, and if the origin of everything is constant, it must return to its origin, which is nothingness. So the journey never ends, both in this life and in the next. The 12th-century Arab philosopher Ibn Allah said this quote from his elaborate travel manual, The Book of Discovering the True Meaning of Travel, a mystical and extremely devotional work that looks at everything from the perspective of migration: God, the universe, and the soul. The meaning of migration is established throughout the book, and that is to travel. I am neither a Muslim nor a religious, and I used to buy this book in Paris because of the word "travel" (safar in Arabic, asfar in the plural) and because it is bilingual, and I love the beauty of the Arabic manuscript, and especially because the meaning of what I read in the preface when I curried through the book in a bookstore in Paris fascinates all true travelers, whether they are from the 12th century or the 20th century. The book's translator, Dennis Greer, who is also the author of the preface, says that he can also translate "meaning" as "fruit" – not only to illustrate the benefits of travel, but also to etymology, the Arabic word for fruit (nata'ij), which evokes the word "conceived and born", and by extension, the intellectual and spiritual fruits of travel. The preface says that travel gets its name because it reveals its true nature, in short, it is beneficial to those who are alone: "On the journey, you will know yourself. "There is another word in the preface: siyaba, or pilgrimage, which also attracted me, perhaps because of my fascination with the city of Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrimage is defined as traveling around the world, meditating on the mysteries, and approaching the place of God. The latter doesn't mean anything to me, but if I were to replace the word "god" with "mysterious," I'd agree. How did all this happen? On a beautiful day, I know how exaggerated and cliché this sounds, but that's what happened to me: I stuffed my rucksack, said goodbye to my mother, and caught the train to Bleda. An hour later – you know how small the Netherlands is – I was standing on the side of the road on the Belgian border, giving a thumbs up and hitchhiking, and I haven't really stopped since. At that time, I didn't know anything about any meditation, any metaphysical thoughts, and these thoughts came later, just like the usefulness of the prayer wheel. In other words, I never stopped wandering, and I gradually started thinking in my wandering, and it was okay to call it meditation. There are two things worth noting: a person who is on the road is always far away, not here. This is true for oneself, for others, and for friends; Although it is true that you are "in the other place" and not here, you remain in one place forever, all the time, and this is called "where your heart is." No matter how simple it sounds, it will always take you a long time to realize it truthfully. You always have to deal with the incomprehension of "other people". I don't know how many times I've had to listen to Pascal's dictum: "The root of the world's misfortune is that man cannot be in the same room twenty-four hours a day." "Later, I gradually realized that I was the one who settled down and stayed at home. But people at home are constantly questioning travel, and every conversation is the same question, and they are tired of repeating the same old words, so that I can't remember how I answered at the time. They ask, "Why do you travel, why do you always travel?" And then there's "Are you running away from something?" (This is a reproachful statement.) In the past and in the present, this means that you are running away from yourself, and it seems to me that this phrase depicts a terrible, miserable, suffering me, forever exiled in the desert or in the ocean. And the real reason for travel is to learn and think, to seek knowledge and to be confused, but (in the opinion of the questioner) it is not new and strange enough. In 1993, I wrote the preface to a little book, The King of Suriname, which contains some of my earliest travel stories, written in the 50s, when I was a seafarer on the Suriname route on the northeast coast of South America. My preface begins: "Travel, too, is .......""Traveling, too, is something to learn. "Traveling is constantly intertwined with others, and you're always alone. That's the paradox: you're alone in the world, and the world is in the hands of someone else. When you want to stay in a hotel, they control the board and lodging, and the plane only happens once a week, and they decide if you can have a seat on the plane, and they are more powerful because they can decide whether or not to give you a stamp or a paperwork. They speak a language you don't understand, they sit next to you on the ferry, or they sit next to you on the bus, they sell you food at the market, and they show you the right or wrong path, sometimes they are dangerous, but they are usually not. All of this needs to be learned: what to do, what not to do, what never to do. You have to know how to deal with them when they're drunk or when you're drunk; You have to read the gestures and the eyes, because no matter how lonely a traveler you are, you are always close to others, surrounded by their expressions, their advice, their disgust and their expectations. Every place is different, and everything is different from the country you live in and are familiar with. It was a slow process to learn what I needed in Cambodia and Mali, in Iran and Peru in the future, and I was already learning at that point. Not because I knew this well, but because I was swimming in a sea of new impressions. I didn't have time to reflect on myself, but I wrote as I went, like those who didn't know how to travel or how to write. All I could do was observe and try to take stock of what I saw and heard in words. I have no knowledge of the world, and I can't use it to judge all the realities that puzzle me, and what I can't do is clear in the stories I write. Perhaps the true traveler is always in the eye of the storm. The storm is the world, and the traveler sees the world through the eye of the storm. Meteorologists say that in the eye of the storm, everything is calm and calm like a meditation room. And learn to see the world through the eye of the storm, you can know what is true and what is false; Through observation, we will know why all kinds of frost are the same and why they are different. Baudelaire once wrote that travelers leave to say goodbye, and he also wrote that travelers' beliefs are false, that their travels bring with them "painful knowledge," and that this "tiny, monotonous world gives us the opportunity to see ourselves a little, yesterday, today, and tomorrow; Preserve a small oasis of horror in the middle of a dry desert. From this point of view, it seems that only those who stay at home and live the old way every day will be afraid and worried, and will not be able to bear the so-called painful knowledge. For me, it doesn't matter who is the hero, what matters is who heeds the call of the heart and moves forward. Once upon a time, everything I know today was a blur, but I chose to set off, and later, when I learned more, I knew that I would find silence in my travels, and silence is the only way to write, to walk and to be quiet. And this world, with all its stories and magnificence, and the dazzling number of countries, peoples, and histories, is just a lonely journey in this eternally drifting universe. Or to quote Ibn al-Arabi: "If you see a house, say, I want to stay here for a while, but how many times have I set out on my way without resting, because there is still a long way to go." "I once wrote a poem about the way – the path of destiny, the way of summoning and seducing, and I wanted to describe the never-ending, repetitive journey. Let's start with this.
Road. I am the way.
Straight as a bow. Aiming into the distance, in the distance, I float far away.
If you follow me;
Here and there, nowhere else.
You will arrive.
Don't ask where you go.
Far away, is the road.
Excerpt from The Wanderer's Inn
Translated by Du Dongdong.