INTRANSIT 2021
Hello 2021. So far I have noticed that it is warm. It is a new year. It is hot. It is sticky. It is wild. It is all a bit fuzzy. It is unfair and it continues. I am sure 2021 will do many things and I know we have a LONG WAY to go. We shall see…or not.
I have below a short essay for anyone in the Northern hemisphere who is wrapt up in some form of winter reading mode as it is much safer in bed with words than anywhere outside or this essay is for those in Southern summer climes who are wallowing about on beaches and totally bored with reading fashion magazines, hard-core comix, pulp fiction, the bible, COVID reports or department store catalogues. Heres a lump of thoughts on travel. Something I used to do quite a lot of and on a large scale…
TRAVELESS
We all travel even when we do not. Even without a passport anyone can have a massive, surprising or shocking experience perhaps while just trotting down to the local shop to buy a loaf of bread or one can have an utterly boring routine time while right in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime far from your homeland. Many things can happen anywhere and at anytime as we move from one latitude to another or from one room to another. Travel normally refers to long distance movement but how long is long? And how far is faraway? Permit me to broaden the term ‘travel’ to incorporate all distances; long, short and in-between. From macro and micro and back again with or without luggage.
Xavier De Maistre (1763 -1852) author of the novel - A journey around my room. played with this fact while locked in a hotel room in Italy. He travelled physically from his bed to the window and from the window to his desk as well as wandering a great deal in his mind. Then he put it all down on paper. Shamanic characters across the centuries who admittedly consumed hallucinogenic potions often went on unusual trips without much movement at all. Travel can be big or small and it is never, ever going away.
Travel is about mobility not just the quantity of distance but the quality as well. Our legs simply want to be used and if legs are not operational then the brain can easily visualise elsewhere. Imagination involves the frantic movement of electro-chemical impulses within our brain which is far less in distance than crossing an expanse of water the size of an ocean but they are both distances that require mobility and navigation. As the saying goes - “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu. That single step is indeed a journey in itself.
Does anything not move? Movement is normal, not stability. Nothing stays still for too long. It may even be totally impossible to stay ‘dead still’ even when we are dead. Death is travel of sorts. Our cells, gases and DNA all disperse when we die so death is actually the movement of particles and chemicals that used to be us. We cannot feel or see that movement clearly and to consider the thought of mortality is a little tricky I must admit as the concept in itself is rather ‘moving.’
Some humans want to move, some need to move and some in dire situations that require immediate relocation must move fast. So we move, wander, hunt, track, explore, flee, chase, skip or crawl. We love to move and move we do as is very clear throughout the history of our species. From hunter gatherer societies to exploration mission to others planets. The Apollo 13 mission went to the dark side of the moon in 1968 which is about 400,171 km away from Earth to the potential colonising of Mars (54.6 Million kms away) to the unmanned spacecraft Voyager 1 which is now about 21.2 billion km away from home, humankind is in a perpetual state of wanderlust. We are not shy at all of being nomadic it seems.
The concept of stability or staying at home is surely pleasing and comforting in terms of familiarity which certainly creates security but as John A. Shedd declared, “A ship in a harbour is safe, but it is not what ships are built for.” Some ships are capable of longer voyages than others and some have no interest at all in docking at any port but all ships are seaworthy to a degree. Matsuo Basho the famous Haiku poet wrote - “The journey itself is my home.” Basho was fond of trekking across Japan to feed his curiosity as well as his poems while other folk have zero desire to stroll from their village or the port where they were born in order to poke around elsewhere.
Some people do have broken paddles and they cannot move easily and some fear to move too many steps in any direction at all for a plethora of real and/or unreal reasons. (Earthquakes, loneliness, wars, sea-monsters, disease, overpopulation, foreigners eat babies.) Others are not willing to take risks as they have ample food, water, family and shelter to keep them happy and all those basics are close by in a smaller radius. The desire to move further away is just not there and why should anyone if they are in a good position?
Personally I like a good long-haul peregrination. Being “on the road” is normal for me. Strangely after almost forty years of active travel this year (2020) will be the first year since 1981 that I have not used a passport. (Excluding 1985 when I was entrenched in university study in Tasmania and also in 1987 when I spent the year traveling around an enormous island called Australia.)
The fluid adventures and unpredictable situations encountered over those years have all been manageable, stimulating and the process almost automatic as I do possess this terminal, rabid wanderlust. I have been very lucky not to fall into too many horrid predicaments. Usually nothing deters me from walking far from my bed, relocating via some form of transport to a new town or buying a plane ticket to another continent. I reiterate all those forms of movement are indeed just different forms of travel. Of course sometimes peripheral events do stop travel plans just like the current COVID-19 pandemic but even now I am mobile on my old bicycle peddling off to see other parts of the world in the local neighbourhood.
Am I trying to convince myself that I am still wandering and not home-bound? Perhaps, but it does seem that we are all non-stop travellers from any perspective we look at it. Certainly some ramble more than others. Further or longer, shorter, deeper, by accident or virtually; we all still travel in some manner. We are never still. Even if we hold our breath in one place and pretend to be a stone statue the Earth spins us around and around at a wild velocity. We just cannot feel that movement. Or maybe we do unconsciously. Perhaps that wild planetary velocity is responsible for the constant vibrations within us that generate our impulse for an un-still life.
S.E. Broome. W.A. 2021.
We all travel even when we do not. Even without a passport anyone can have a massive, surprising or shocking experience perhaps while just trotting down to the local shop to buy a loaf of bread or one can have an utterly boring routine time while right in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime far from your homeland. Many things can happen anywhere and at anytime as we move from one latitude to another or from one room to another. Travel normally refers to long distance movement but how long is long? And how far is faraway? Permit me to broaden the term ‘travel’ to incorporate all distances; long, short and in-between. From macro and micro and back again with or without luggage.
Xavier De Maistre (1763 -1852) author of the novel - A journey around my room. played with this fact while locked in a hotel room in Italy. He travelled physically from his bed to the window and from the window to his desk as well as wandering a great deal in his mind. Then he put it all down on paper. Shamanic characters across the centuries who admittedly consumed hallucinogenic potions often went on unusual trips without much movement at all. Travel can be big or small and it is never, ever going away.
Travel is about mobility not just the quantity of distance but the quality as well. Our legs simply want to be used and if legs are not operational then the brain can easily visualise elsewhere. Imagination involves the frantic movement of electro-chemical impulses within our brain which is far less in distance than crossing an expanse of water the size of an ocean but they are both distances that require mobility and navigation. As the saying goes - “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu. That single step is indeed a journey in itself.
Does anything not move? Movement is normal, not stability. Nothing stays still for too long. It may even be totally impossible to stay ‘dead still’ even when we are dead. Death is travel of sorts. Our cells, gases and DNA all disperse when we die so death is actually the movement of particles and chemicals that used to be us. We cannot feel or see that movement clearly and to consider the thought of mortality is a little tricky I must admit as the concept in itself is rather ‘moving.’
Some humans want to move, some need to move and some in dire situations that require immediate relocation must move fast. So we move, wander, hunt, track, explore, flee, chase, skip or crawl. We love to move and move we do as is very clear throughout the history of our species. From hunter gatherer societies to exploration mission to others planets. The Apollo 13 mission went to the dark side of the moon in 1968 which is about 400,171 km away from Earth to the potential colonising of Mars (54.6 Million kms away) to the unmanned spacecraft Voyager 1 which is now about 21.2 billion km away from home, humankind is in a perpetual state of wanderlust. We are not shy at all of being nomadic it seems.
The concept of stability or staying at home is surely pleasing and comforting in terms of familiarity which certainly creates security but as John A. Shedd declared, “A ship in a harbour is safe, but it is not what ships are built for.” Some ships are capable of longer voyages than others and some have no interest at all in docking at any port but all ships are seaworthy to a degree. Matsuo Basho the famous Haiku poet wrote - “The journey itself is my home.” Basho was fond of trekking across Japan to feed his curiosity as well as his poems while other folk have zero desire to stroll from their village or the port where they were born in order to poke around elsewhere.
Some people do have broken paddles and they cannot move easily and some fear to move too many steps in any direction at all for a plethora of real and/or unreal reasons. (Earthquakes, loneliness, wars, sea-monsters, disease, overpopulation, foreigners eat babies.) Others are not willing to take risks as they have ample food, water, family and shelter to keep them happy and all those basics are close by in a smaller radius. The desire to move further away is just not there and why should anyone if they are in a good position?
Personally I like a good long-haul peregrination. Being “on the road” is normal for me. Strangely after almost forty years of active travel this year (2020) will be the first year since 1981 that I have not used a passport. (Excluding 1985 when I was entrenched in university study in Tasmania and also in 1987 when I spent the year traveling around an enormous island called Australia.)
The fluid adventures and unpredictable situations encountered over those years have all been manageable, stimulating and the process almost automatic as I do possess this terminal, rabid wanderlust. I have been very lucky not to fall into too many horrid predicaments. Usually nothing deters me from walking far from my bed, relocating via some form of transport to a new town or buying a plane ticket to another continent. I reiterate all those forms of movement are indeed just different forms of travel. Of course sometimes peripheral events do stop travel plans just like the current COVID-19 pandemic but even now I am mobile on my old bicycle peddling off to see other parts of the world in the local neighbourhood.
Am I trying to convince myself that I am still wandering and not home-bound? Perhaps, but it does seem that we are all non-stop travellers from any perspective we look at it. Certainly some ramble more than others. Further or longer, shorter, deeper, by accident or virtually; we all still travel in some manner. We are never still. Even if we hold our breath in one place and pretend to be a stone statue the Earth spins us around and around at a wild velocity. We just cannot feel that movement. Or maybe we do unconsciously. Perhaps that wild planetary velocity is responsible for the constant vibrations within us that generate our impulse for an un-still life.
S.E. Broome. W.A. 2021.