Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

From Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

I’ve spent the evening packing–bits of my life are strewn across the beds in the guest room. I leave tomorrow night at 9:30 for London Heathrow and then on to Istanbul. My trip will start taking me when I get there.

Of course, I had known about the tragedy that is Zimbabwe: the repression; the one-man rule; the inflation, then hyperinflation, then (is there a prefix more intensive than hyper?) even-more-hyper inflation; then famine. I had also picked up on the fact that there was an election coming up, and somewhere in the cobwebs of my memory there even sat some of the details about the candidates. I didn’t really learn any new facts from this article, and yet to see it all laid out in 685 words provided vast new insight: an appreciation for the profound helplessness of Zimbabweans, of opposition leaders, of anyone not named Robert Mugabe.

Is this a commentary on the writing, or the facts, or the way in which I have been consuming and processing (and cynically accepting) the news? Probably all three. This is why we write and this is why we read. Facts, headlines, and newsfeeds do not–cannot–give the whole picture.