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The violence in travel
Dec. 18th, 2008 05:14 pmBefore I forget: my friend D just calculated the distance that the D&D Half-Marathon Running Team Extravaganza have run so far, so I am obliged to report their completion of a distance of 80 miles and congratulate them accordingly. That's pretty impressive, when you think about it--129 kilometers, to put it in rowing terms. It will be fun to cheer them on on January 18 when they run the half-marathon.
Now, on to the subject at hand. It's related to what I wrote on Sunday, although about what's to me a more saddening aspect of directing my thoughts towards Seattle. It means my thoughts are divided between two places--they're torn between what's happening right here and now in this place where I am sitting and standing and moving around, and what might happen in an abstract place sometime off in the nebulous future. I have to think about this nebulous place to some degree, lest I am caught off-guard by the cold or the change of pace. I have to think about all of the people who are important to my life who I want to see while I'm there, the haunts I wish to haunt, and the thoughts I want to think, so some planning is in order.
At the same time, I've been watching some of my friends and colleagues depart for their own hometowns, places I've never visited and can only imagine, their thoughts also distracted and directed elsewhere, and suddenly we are lost to each other. It's no coincidence that the majority of these friends are academics, with livelihoods more closely tied to the abstract than the concrete, lives lived out elsewhere.
There is violence in this sudden leaving, on many levels, but especially through the breaking of connections to the seasons and the life and the people here [but I am ever-grateful to those who have traveled with me, or who seek to travel differently]. The mode of transportation is part of the violence--traveling by airplane is disruptive, for one experiences movement across a vast landscape on a non-human scale that is mind-boggling. My narrative frame must shift and I must think about a different set of conversations across different stretches of time in my life.
The sudden jump of travel is a fundamental disconnection that gets downplayed with respect to how humans relate to each other and the world around them.
Now, on to the subject at hand. It's related to what I wrote on Sunday, although about what's to me a more saddening aspect of directing my thoughts towards Seattle. It means my thoughts are divided between two places--they're torn between what's happening right here and now in this place where I am sitting and standing and moving around, and what might happen in an abstract place sometime off in the nebulous future. I have to think about this nebulous place to some degree, lest I am caught off-guard by the cold or the change of pace. I have to think about all of the people who are important to my life who I want to see while I'm there, the haunts I wish to haunt, and the thoughts I want to think, so some planning is in order.
At the same time, I've been watching some of my friends and colleagues depart for their own hometowns, places I've never visited and can only imagine, their thoughts also distracted and directed elsewhere, and suddenly we are lost to each other. It's no coincidence that the majority of these friends are academics, with livelihoods more closely tied to the abstract than the concrete, lives lived out elsewhere.
There is violence in this sudden leaving, on many levels, but especially through the breaking of connections to the seasons and the life and the people here [but I am ever-grateful to those who have traveled with me, or who seek to travel differently]. The mode of transportation is part of the violence--traveling by airplane is disruptive, for one experiences movement across a vast landscape on a non-human scale that is mind-boggling. My narrative frame must shift and I must think about a different set of conversations across different stretches of time in my life.
The sudden jump of travel is a fundamental disconnection that gets downplayed with respect to how humans relate to each other and the world around them.
