I tend to idealize travel…traveling by train across the US will be, I assume, as glamorous as North by Northwest…sailing across the Atlantic will be like re-living the crossings of earlier days…Paris will be romantic, just because it’s Paris gosh darn it.

Of course, nothing lives up to these high standards but, instead of causing disappointment, there comes the realization that the trip was wonderful for its own unique and personal reasons. The sleeping cars on modern trains may be compact (to say the least) but there is something very quixotic about packing a bottle of wine and some food and having a picnic in the confined space as the world passes by. Similarly I now know that I can beat most contenders at shuffleboard and that one of the most romantic things about Paris was standing, by myself, at night, in the rain, on one of the bridges over the Seine.

Another of my travels ideals was created by the Jim Jarmusch film, “Mystery Train” and the Japanese couple in the first segment of the film. In the movie they make a pilgrimage to Memphis to see Graceland (something that’s on my travel list). Though it’s not an integral part of the movie I always think of this film in terms of the woman and her suitcase. The case is her Aladdin’s Cave, filled with clothes that are just so laidback and “right”…it’s hard to explain…it’s not glitzy, in fact the settings are decidedly grubby, but there’s something about the overall message of just packing a bag and hitting the road which is very alluring. And, if that bag is a microcosm of your wardrobe, distilled and refined…so much the better.

All this was brought to mind by these pictures from “Take a trip” in the April issue of Jalouse. These images gave me the same feeling as the Mystery Train woman and her suitcase. They seem to encapsulate everything a road-trip should be; which, of course, means the reality will be different…but just as good.