From the Feb 17 – Feb 23, 2000 issue

Visual Art

Casting Off

Stacey Levine Cruises the Seattle Travel Show

by Stacey Levine

IN 1949, Paul Bowles wrote in The Sheltering Sky that the difference between a tourist and a traveler is that the tourist hurries back home after a few days or weeks in a strange land, but the traveler likes to linger in foreign lands indefinitely. That certainly doesn't make the traveler a superior person, just a more interesting one, and in present times, the one with money to burn.

Had you been at the Seattle Travel Show at Seattle Center last weekend, you would have met no travelers. You would have noticed instead a frenzy of promotion and the nutty, intrinsic absurdities and contradictions that accompany us in this era of corporate-owned jungles and cool, invisible crime.

The cruise aisle, featuring display photos of lovely, clear water and pillowy reefs in deeply saturated blue, orange, and yellow hues, gave prospective travelers no clue as to the recent convictions of the Princess, Royal Caribbean, and Holland America cruise lines for their blatant pollution law violations. Promoters unloaded glossy, suffocating heaps of pamphlets, booklets, "discovery packets," and the like on Travel Show attendees (most of whom seemed to be yakking on cell phones) as they sought relaxation, bargains, or perhaps a cure for the sad fact that living a Northwest winter is like wearing a close-fitting skull-helmet of gray. The ink-reeking cruise brochures were thrown about in such number that the air was literally scented with ink, and their glossy photos depicted healthy pleasure-seekers consuming the spas, Italian dining, and cabaret acts that apparently await us all on the open seas.

I asked Michael Cohen, Marketing Director of the Ft. Lauderdale-based Renaissance Cruise Lines, about the pollution violations (in 1999 the Coast Guard videotaped a Royal Caribbean ship trailing a seven-mile long wake of oily bilge water). Cohen said his company makes no pollution on its Greek, Iberian, and South Pacific tours; and pointed an accusing finger toward the Princess Cruise booth, saying in his Bronx accent, "Ask them about the pollution, not us! People don't have to worry here. People have a FABULOUS time on our cruises. They come again and again." I asked him why people might leave home to board a cruise ship.

His black eyes, smoldering with the ongoing calculations of a businessman, scanned the expo room with its rhythmic drone of voices. "Let me tell you. Our cruises are fully encompassed and worry-free." He spoke in a deliberate staccato, emphasizing each word, as if giving a tutorial.

"Why do people go away from home at all?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was trying to squeeze lemonade out of a cabbage, which I was, and went on: "Our patrons trust the safety of a cruise, that it's all inclusive, all contained. They don't have to leave the ship if they don't want. They trust the Americanization of it. They trust that they're surrounded by other Americans, that they're eating American food...."

More absurdities abounded that afternoon, while the festival, the very spirit of the festival, whispered in my ear that exotica is something to buy up as quickly as possible. Trailing past tables propping up poster photos of kangaroos, natives, lederhosen, and happy Europeans eating lunch, I veered toward the Northwest aisle. The table for Centralia, Washington boasted that Centralia is one of the state's biggest shopping destinations, owing largely to a factory outlet mall. The exhibitor poured a slithering mass of pamphlets into my hands, which immediately fell to the floor. Facing up was a brochure about a massacre of IWW Wobblies in Centralia in the early 1900s; atop it lay a photo of a woman pointing orgiastically at a new T-shirt. "You can plan it," the exhibitor said, "so when you get to Centralia on the Amtrak, a van will pick you up and take you to the mall!" She was pleased with this efficient arrangement; at the table across from her, a man handed me a plastic bag stuffed with more ink-smelly pamphlets, and a friendly woman from Seaside, Oregon, reminded me about that town's upcoming chowder festival in March.

"What kind of chowder?" I asked.

"Oh, all your chowders!" she piped up.

The Travel Show included one eco-friendly booth: Maui's Pacific Whale Foundation, which, according to Marketing Director Marsha Sarver, assesses and works to mitigate the environmental impact of its tours. "Our whale-watching boats are made from recycled materials, and their engines are super-quiet, to protect the marine life and people's ears," she said. For the second time that day I got a blank stare when I asked, "Why do people go away?"

"It's for the R and R," Sarver said, after a pause. "People want to see something new, to get out of their routines." She was as stumped as I was, but the true answer to this question lies somewhere in a lost hollow space where the sterile suburbs are brought to mind, or the wealth of some versus the poverty of others, or the loneliness that comes after the cruelest struggles between savages.

Across from Sarver's kind gaze, the tanned Honolulu tourism promoters sang to traditional ukulele music, dancing in floral-patterned clothing, emitting the phoniest smiles I have ever seen. They performed on the half-hour all weekend, and without exception their bare feet were strong, smooth, and lovely looking.

People stood around chewing macadamia nuts and staring at the photo displays of garish high-rise towers on Honolulu beaches. One of the Hawaiian phonies placed a shell necklace around my neck. "Oh, have you already been leid?" he asked phonily, and minced away.

Stopping at another aisle, I found a suited gentleman handing out information about Barbados, a locale which, it appeared from the map, is sponsored by AT&T. A woman with short, black, blunted eyelashes, holding a little jewel-like, jade-colored cell phone to her ear, passed the table in a cloud of perfume that blended uniquely with the ubiquitous ink scent. She was one of the people with money to burn, who, in exotica, finds that life rolls along like an easy dream.

"Barbados!" she exclaimed. "I was there two years ago and I miss it to death!"

"What do you miss about it?" I asked.

"Everything!" she raved. She described, in not-so-nice terms, how the "natives" working at the island resorts are incredibly willing to help and serve. "I work for Apex Development!" she told the exhibitor, dropping some names, and before I could ask her why people really go away, she ran off. But her answer would have been an honest "I don't know."