There are no answers, only choices: skirting the boundaries of cross-cultural understanding

“Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now... unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on earth. I studied these gestures until they became reflexes again. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything.”


I included this excerpt from Steven Soderbergh’s version of the film Solaris at the beginning of a novella  I wrote on my experiences in Japan. For me, the passage embodies the most powerful - and wonderful - aspects of the travel experience, both geographical and psychological: reverse culture shock - that amazing condition we can find ourselves in when we have travelled, where we have so immersed ourselves into another place or mind space that our very origins become strange to us. Reverse culture shock is testimony to the power of travel - that we can indeed be transformed by our experiences.

Distancing ourselves from our native culture is not, however, the focus of either of the Solaris films, and certainly not of Stanislaw Lem’s original novel. In fact, it is the opposite. Lem was trying to outline the actual limits of our ability to connect with the Other – a limitation not determined by technology, but rather by enthusiasm. As a species we are simply too narcissistic - we don’t care to know; instead, we are constantly trying to find ourselves in a mirror, and it is this mirror we have erected in front of us that blocks our view of others. Of course, we will never understand the ‘true Japan’, or the ‘true India’, when all we see is our reflection. Did Lem see this as a temporary condition of humanity, or something intrinsic? Who can say?

(Another great literary example is Michael Chrichton’s novel Sphere, which Barry Levinson made into a film with Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone - and Samuel L. Jackson. The latter pretty much comes to the point of saying ‘Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking squids on this motherfucking spaceship. Everybody strap in - I'm about to open some fucking airlocks.’ The namesake ‘Sphere’, a mysterious artefact brought back from somewhere in space and the time, actually allows the characters to manifest their subconscious thoughts into reality. In other words, our first contact with an alien mind is one just more exercise in navel gazing.)

One of the most powerful moments in Soderbergh’s Solaris is between the protagonist, who is obsessed about understanding the sentient planet that they orbit, and the shade of his deceased friend:

Chris Kelvin: What does Solaris want from us?
Gibarian: Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there's a solution, you'll die here.
Chris Kelvin: I can't leave her. I'll figure it out.
Gibarian: Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? There are no answers, only choices.

“There are no answers, only choices.” This is the perfect antidote for travellers who have become, like Kevin, obsessed with understanding the essence of their host country. Alternatively, as Japanophile Donald Richie repeatedly says, ‘the ostensible is the real’ – what you see is what you get, and if that is not enough for you, then it’s time to leave.






Image by chop1in