Phyllis Rose on expectations and reality

“But professional imaginer or not, when you are at the destination you’ve dreamed of all your life, you’re liable to be distracted by material reality in the form of T-shirt vendors and other tourists as you strive to be moved. The creative imagination works best in solitude and silence and not on demand. It is hard even now to acknowledge my own disappointment, for I know it is unattractive. What did I want: More ruin? More danger? Even less progress? To be the only tourist in Cambodia?”
–Phyllis Rose, “Anticipating Angkor, a Dream Deferred”, New York Times, July 2002