In Praise of Jet Lag
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 03.19.10 | 1:27 PM ET
James Parker makes the argument for basking in its uselessness.
Because really, if you’re not lagged to a standstill, how can you tell that you’ve gone somewhere? This is, in a phrase I intend to copyright, “the wisdom of jet lag.” Let us not back away from it, superstitiously warding it off with rituals and hygiene. Let us rather embrace jet lag. As a positive: a rich and naturally achieved state of philosophical disarray. And as a negative: a refusal, by the ever-sensible organism, to keep pace with inhuman modernity.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
pam 03.20.10 | 11:17 AM ET
One of the things I loved about Lost in Translation (besides Bill Murray singing Roxy Music’s More than This) was the way it captured that crazy feeling of jetlag. I don’t love being jetlagged, but there is something to be said for being up at 3am watching TV in the hotel lobby with the graveyard crew—it absolutely makes you feel like you are Somewhere Else.