How to travel? Don’t ask me, for if anything is individual, that would be traveling.
Here is a composite (made up) conversation: I was amazed at the married couple who traveled and didn’t fight. “Back home,” they said, “we have all our expectations worked out. Traveling means new negotiations… and to our wonderment, we were so well matched. We both wanted walking tours (such as Doctor Who and Jack the Ripper) we both wanted to see the tower of London, and then, being bookworms, we both had to stop and read every single little exhibit sign.” No fights. “And since we both like exercise, that was just fine. Hard on our feet, but just fine.”
Well, I thought, as long as they are having fun. Some folks, like my bank officer, travel “like Wile E. Coyote,” racing to see “four attractions per day.” Which is why he and his wife needed to stay in central London, where you get the most bang for your buck. Others do two or three: I know, because if you buy a tourist lanyard, giving you free “head of the line” access, then you have to see two attractions per day to break even, cost-wise. (According to reviews)
And then there’s me. One attraction per day, that’s all I need. “Too much sight-seeing cuts into my drinking time.” Also my poor legs get enough action just going up and down the lighthouse-style stairs of my hotel, as I am too cheap to stay in one with a lift. Elevator to you Americans. And if I eat two bags of crisps per night in my room (potato chips to you), with my tired legs, then that enough to cancel out all the benefits of a day’s exercise. Well, that and my huge economy-size duty free bottle of red wine.
My legs also get action from… You know how that English teddy bear would stump along? I can’t resist bouncing along, like that English tigger. I mean, who can resist being a happy tourist? Or meeting a bouncing tourist? No need to dress tacky when you bounce like a tigger, with never a gloomy thought. Not like like some English donkey by a bog.
No sir, with gravity helping me down the spiral staircase, I always bounce out of my hotel doorway, and then say in my best voice like an English piglet, “I wonder what exciting thing is going to happen today?”
I also like how in England my third eye—normally blind—relaxes and pops open. For example, two ordinary chaps left the tube station, the gay bookstore was two blocks away—that’s LBGTQ to those who have to discriminate—and I just knew: sure enough, they are an author and his companion, going there to be feted and sign books. (I followed them) Further up is a used bookstore, and, once inside, I happened to be wondering why, in contrast to “the continent,” English language words are so short. I didn’t think the staff was the usual English or liberal arts major. No, my third eye prompted me to say, “Are you a linguistics guy?” Yes, that was his major.
Across from my hotel was a cafe where they filmed part of Killing Eve. The owner was talking to a young lady at a table. For a moment, I could see. “Are you a poet?” I asked. She was lately working not on sonnets—a hard form—but on the hardest of all: sestinas.
My gift only works if I am relaxed, such as when I am immersed in art. Not when someone I know is with me, but when I’m among strangers. That’s when my past comes rushing in…
I was in Banff, at a special art gallery thing, where we could write our names on a backroom wall for posterity. I was gazing at a landscape, standing beside a stranger, a stereotypical city slicker: Shiny high heels, fur coat, pearls. We both said we liked the picture. Apropos of nothing I asked, “Do you hunt?” She replied, “Yes, I do. I’m Metis.”
I guess most people who see auras do so from childhood, but I was already an adult before I saw. That’s why I choose to go a year or more between looks with my third eye. Before you ask, let me say no, I never tell folks what I see of them, and I never, never, look at myself in the mirror when I am seeing. In fact, I never look around seeing people for more than a minute at a time because it is just too hard on me: it’s too much and I don’t want to know.
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Sean Crawford
London
February,
2026
The race to see attraction after attraction always makes me think of dreadful survey courses, where the time devoted to any given work is a joke. (One class meeting for The Sound and the Fury? That’s what a student once told me about a survey course.) Better to slow down and really look at, listen to, think about fewer things.
Michael, my college professor would agree: for our Outstanding Lives course, (all 20th century lives) we only took three people during the entire semester. (Thomas Merton, Simone Veil, Mahatma Gandhi)
For another medium, my local art gallery host concurs with your view.
Before I went to London for my first time she advised me on seeing only a part of a sprawling gallery, and returning to my favourite pieces—and, ever since, that’s what I have happily done. As in my last essay post, returning to room 38 to see The Execution of Jane Grey.
Recently, at the huge Tate Britain gallery, we gathered for a tour at noon. Our volunteer tour guide led us to only four—count ’em, four—modern pieces and it was time well spent. We all clapped our “thank you” to her at the end.