I was going to write a piece on the joys and perils of "friend sex", which is something I've had on the back-burner for about two years and was recently reminded of by a friend and her experiences. I'll get to it soon (no, really), but for now I've been inspired by a recent experience of my own to do a little psychospiritual navel-gazing on the subject of travelling.
I love to travel.
Most people who know me personally will read that statement and say, "Eh? But you've never been anywhere!". They'd be right, too. When most people talk of travelling they're talking about visiting far-away lands, experiencing new cultures, catching dysentery and so-on. I've never really done that because I've never been able to afford it, or when I could I've had other things to do with my money.
I did go to Paris once on a school trip, and I've been to County Clare, western Ireland a few years ago, which I loved. That's about it though. I'd love to do more, and maybe in future years I will but that's not the sort of travelling I'm talking about here.
I love to travel.
What I mean is the act of physically moving through space for an extended period of time - completely alone and under my own steam. I'm talking here about walking, cycling and driving. Trains, boats and buses are really just ways of getting somewhere. They aren't under my own volition nor am I alone.
The two most vital elements appear to be solitude and free will, and it's something I've been doing for a long time. When I was ten years old I used to take myself off for walk quite regularly, for about four hours at a time. I had no idea where I was going and neither did anyone else - it's a wonder my mother still has hair!
Aside: This all seems to be making me look like an antisocial
misery. I'm not. I love my family and friends, and I love their
company. This just seems to be my yin to their yang.
My bicycle has become a very handy part of this process, and I've managed to work out a compromise whereby I will take the train to some distant location and cycle home. I took the chance for a travelling session very recently by riding to and from a Morris band practise day about 20 miles from home.
I even do it in my dreams. Some people have situational dreams where they experience events in one place. In mine I travel (usually) aimlessly from one place to another, usually on foot and usually within my own dream-town. Oddly, I'm very rarely alone in dreams - I'm almost always accompanied by at least one other person and usually someone I already know quite well.
So, what is this travelling all about?
I've just looked up a dream-interpretation website. This is what it says about travel:
To dream that you are traveling, represents the path toward your life
goals. It also parallels your daily routine and how you are progressing along.
Alternatively, traveling signifies a desire to escape from your daily burdens.
You are looking for a change in scenery, where no one has any expectations of
you. Perhaps it is time to make a fresh start. If your travels come to an end,
then it symbolizes successful completion of your goals
That's quite interesting, but surely it can't be as simple as all that. I'm not exactly sure what my life goals are, and never have been. Do I even have any?
The stuff about escaping daily burdens and changing scenery (temporarily) makes sense nowadays, but I had no daily burdens when I was a kid. I do like the statement that the ending of travels means the completion of goals, because my travels never end.
There is a strong element of shaking off routine and expectations when I'm travelling - and when I return my batteries are definitely recharged - but there's more to it than that. It's a kind of meditation, unlike the accepted forms of shutting down against external distractions and concentrating, yet meditational nonetheless.
In fact, being open to the landscape and things going on around you (like not getting killed in traffic!), and getting distracted are important parts of the whole experience. The traveller becomes a part of the landscape through which he travels and the person, place(s) and act of movement become one overall process. That's an important word - it's not a thing, it's a process.
As Kerouac once said, "The road is life".
I'm not going to make any conclusions in this examination as to what it all means, and I'd welcome other opinions. (Am I asking for psycho-analysis? Hell, why not?) I think it's important to keep travelling though, because the journey seems so much more interesting than the destination. Sometimes it's better not to have a destination at all.
Love and sore feet,
Seán
