Take, for example, my readers' experience of Taiwan. It's though this blog, which is a personal account of one individual's experiences in a small corner of the country. My accounts can't give readers a clear expectation of what they, themselves, would experience if they came here, or what they'd find if they lived in a different area. But my stories and descriptions are from a "ground zero" level--they're from and by a person who is interacting with life here from the perspective of actually living in it. A travel book will tell you how to get to Taipei 101, where the best tourist hotels and beaches are, how to convert money and what the average meal will cost.
I may get around to some of that too, but my information won't involve as many facts as impressions.
Take where I am right now: It's a little street-facing coffee shop called Rufous, located in Taipei. The name means "reddish-brown," like rust, the dark and rich color of "true coffee." Coming inside is like walking into cup of espresso; dark brown decor and a smooth, thick coffee smell suffusing the air. The scent blends with the soft sounds of slow piano jazz. A coffee bar stretches along the right side of the interior, which is only about twenty feet wide and twice that length deep. Tables with cushioned chairs line the wall opposite the bar, and a group of three friends sits in the back speaking in quiet, comfortable tones. Behind the bar, two baristas--a tall young man with hair swept to one side and a short-haired young woman in a black polo and glasses--press, mix, stir, and whip varying drinks into existence with the ease of experience. One drink, set in front of me, is marbled with caramel, milk, and black espresso, their colors still gently swirling together.
I order a hot chocolate, which comes in a curved glass with a metal handle like half a heart. The cocoa in my drink is so thick it's like sipping hot cream, and the natural bitterness of real cocoa beans almost punches past the drink's added milk and sugar.
These are the kinds of little things--the nook experiences--that you get from personal accounts. There's traffic going by me outside, and people coming in and ordering drinks, or paying and leaving. There are friends and couples and business people. There's life going on around me, human experiences playing out in a concerted dissonance, all at the same time but not all in the same way or at the same pace. Everything around me is an important facet of the whole experience, from the coffee smell to the height of the bar (perfect for resting the elbows on while typing on a laptop) to the swirl of color in a drink just after it's made. These little things all combine into one whole experience, and those little things, to me, give a far better impression of the "real" sensation of being in a place than a description of costs and locations.
All of you reading this, I want you to share my experiences here. Very few of us in the world will have the opportunity to travel to all corners of it, whether we desire to or not. But one of the great gifts of our technological age is that, although I'm the only one of all of us (you, my readers, and I, the writer) who is actually in Rufous right at this moment, you are still all able to be here with me, to get a sense of the place, the smells and sounds, the taste of chocolate in a drink and the growing discomfort of one's elbows as they rest on the edge of the bar. (I have that issue everywhere, though. My elbows are never comfortable on a hard edge.)
So when I write about a meal, or shopping excursion, or an observation of pigeons eating bread in a plaza, I'm not simply sharing it to be hearing myself talk. I'm putting it out in the world for all of you. These little scraps of human experience, I hope, will accumulate into a whole experience of Taiwan, one that is as baffling, strange, frightening, and beautiful for all of you as it continues to be for me.
Wow! That was beautiful to read. Ya know, you ought to be a writer...
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