“Travel pushes my boundaries. When you travel, you become invisible, if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes people who they are? Could I feel at home here? No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday, or to check messages, or to fertilize the geraniums. When traveling, you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom alongside a canal, calling for nothing from you. Tavel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike crature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower. You open, as in childhood, and – for a time – recieve this world. There's the viceral aspect, too – the huntress who is free. Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.”

Excerpted from A Year in the World, by Frances Mayes.

I found this quote in a Real Simple magazine, March 2006 to be exact. I pulled the page from the magazine and kept it, always remembering how trapped I felt at that time in my life and how much I longed to travel and experience something new.

I've kept it in plain sight ever since, though not really taking the time to look at it or reread it periodically. In cleaning off my magnet board to have a clean slate for the new year, I have refound this page pulled from the magazine. I didn't have the same reaction when I read it, and that's ok. I can't say I'm the same person that tore it from the book almost 7 years ago. But it still meant something to me. 

Maybe someday I'll visit a place like that. And even read the book.