traveling
If you really think about it, we're always traveling. We are moving physically, we are walking down the street, we are stepping foot over foot into a park, past a mailbox, onto the crosswalk. This is easy travel. It quiets your mind because that is where the real traveling is happening, this is where you are really moving.
Place. I am in a town in Greece that does not exist. I think it, I wish for it, I am there. I am in my perception of Greece, the feeling I've gotten from a few books, a movie. I feel safer in this Greece than I feel in company at times. I can't help it. I pack my mental bags. I do not need to buy a ticket. I leave.
Time. At 12, I was traveling to 24, at 24 I travel to multiple versions of myself at 40. I travel to the house I was born in. I see things I couldn't possibly have seen. A fire that almost killed my family while we slept. My first week home balancing precariously on my mother's stomach, being bathed in a sink with kicking legs. I am married ten times over, I die in dozens of situations each day. I have children I'll never meet, I am a firefighter, the owner of a restaurant, the president of the United States. My perceptions color all these travels, but I am connected to some universal possibility through these possibilities, through this travel.
Time, place, perception. I travel more in Chicago than I ever do when I leave it. I am almost never here, always imagining some other place, time, event, person. Sometimes the me that was, or could have been, or could never possibly be. It is hard for me to control this. If I lose my grip, my hold on this singular moment, I am gone faster than fast, and I am alone once more
on some Grecian island. Puzzled how I got there. Alone. Unsure I can return.
Place. I am in a town in Greece that does not exist. I think it, I wish for it, I am there. I am in my perception of Greece, the feeling I've gotten from a few books, a movie. I feel safer in this Greece than I feel in company at times. I can't help it. I pack my mental bags. I do not need to buy a ticket. I leave.
Time. At 12, I was traveling to 24, at 24 I travel to multiple versions of myself at 40. I travel to the house I was born in. I see things I couldn't possibly have seen. A fire that almost killed my family while we slept. My first week home balancing precariously on my mother's stomach, being bathed in a sink with kicking legs. I am married ten times over, I die in dozens of situations each day. I have children I'll never meet, I am a firefighter, the owner of a restaurant, the president of the United States. My perceptions color all these travels, but I am connected to some universal possibility through these possibilities, through this travel.
Time, place, perception. I travel more in Chicago than I ever do when I leave it. I am almost never here, always imagining some other place, time, event, person. Sometimes the me that was, or could have been, or could never possibly be. It is hard for me to control this. If I lose my grip, my hold on this singular moment, I am gone faster than fast, and I am alone once more
on some Grecian island. Puzzled how I got there. Alone. Unsure I can return.