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Cunning Individuals
Crackpot Mailbox: the Exile and the Crackpot Discuss Travel
© 2019 James LaFond
NOV/8/19
On Traveling
Inbox
Tue, Oct 29, 6:56 PM (10 days ago)
James,
It used to be fashionable in Europe to send one's children out on cultural journeys across the land. Chaperoned by cunning individuals whose task was to supplement their education and ensure their safety while on the road, they would travel through the Balkans, Italy and Greece. Their visiting such illustrious places was purported to be a formative experience for the youngsters.
After your recent journey on the Left Coast, I am compelled to ask you what you think of travels and people who choose to undergo such pilgrimages now; is travelling the formative experience it was made out to be or should one undertake such perilous activities with great care and purpose only?
Best regards,
- The Exile

I had no idea about this old travel custom. In fact, I only had a desire to travel when I was between 16 and 18 and wanted to be killed walking from Texas to Tera del Feugo. I got sidelined with family quite by accident and, when I found myself alone again, I had not regained the desire to travel. I still do not have it. I travel not to be a burden on anyone, not to wear out my welcome, as I have not the means to support myself beyond nomadism. For, the only places I could afford rent, are areas where Reparations Recovery Agents would clean out my room every time I left it. Travelling for me is simply a writing strategy, with writing being the only thing i care about enough to make continued existence on this wretched planet of the apes tolerable.
For a young person, I do think that travel by train around the nation would be worthwhile, provided they had the personality to speak with older strangers. I have scored dozens of fascinating interviews which have been published elsewhere, talks with elders who could greatly inform a youth positively and negatively and contextually. One could learn much, if a youth unaccompanied by other youths. Youths packing up retards development in the same manner that seeking knowledge, lets say, by the Baltimore Ravens NFL team if they tied to learn how to think as a unit. Youth and children, contrary to our modern notion that they should learn as part of a same-age pecking order, learn best when they are the only young one present. This was the normal way in low-density traditional societies. A bodyguard might be preferred for those rare dips into urban hell holes that trains take. But overall, the chance of being immersed in an adult world rather than jaunting around as part of a brainless social bubble, would be an excellent learning experience as it has for this old coot.
I recall taking a bus from Baltimore to Pittsburgh in 2000. There was a young hoodrat released from some criminal sentence who had been put on the bus and every paleface but me treated him like a long-lost cousin. He was weighted down with food, advice, cash and good wishes. Had he had the misfortune of being accompanied by one or more of his ilk, posing, menacing, flashing gang signs, grabbing their dicks, he would have learned nothing about the wider world. I have often wondered about that fellow, who only I treated coldly, knowing what he was: when he saw suddenly through the lie of White Supremacy to the fact of Pale Effeminacy, did he hence...
-Become a yeti-hunting mastermind, using his knowledge of extreme Euro-American cuckery to become a five-star drug-dealer in a non-violent suburban coke market?
-Or, did he seek a Sugar Mommy from among the Guilty Ghosts, prostituting himself to some pale frail?
On the trains over these past 18 months I have noticed only two kinds of quests:
-The cannabis quest to Denver by East Coast and Rust Belt stoners eager to prostrate themselves at the altar of their resinous god
-The atomized pilgrim, [usually a parent or grandparent] some lonely soul who cannot afford to fly or is afraid of flying, who is going two and from a loved one or family across the country, meekly seeking or retreating from those closest in their heart in all this lonely world, yet distant souls who can only tolerate their presence for a week or so.
Train travel is the safest kind I have engaged in thus far and would offer a unique learning opportunity for a young person.
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Jesse James     Nov 9, 2019

The tradition is alive and well among young European backpackers staying in youth hostels, but almost dead among Americans. In America the only Americans in hostels are old kooks, and abroad there simply aren't any Americans at all. The Euro backpacker kids will often hitchhike, or take buses or trains, things no American youth would do anymore. They still have this romantic idea of America that most of us don't.
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