Travel as metaphor

I used to think that travel is life in miniature. You have origins and destinations; you find allies and overcome problems; you suffer setbacks and experience joys; you reach where you planned, or not, or perhaps a haphazard destination if you didn't plan much. 

Now I think that travel is life intensified, like Rip Van Wrinkle in reverse. A traveller lives in a bubble of speeded up time. In one week, you can have several distinct experiences while back home, your family and friends have just had another ordinary week. You have be alert, size up the situation in a blink of the eye and make snap decisions; miss the right stop, and you could end up backtracking for half an hour. You meet people; you make more new acquaintances in a month of travel than in a year of normal life.

But travel is also an existence whittled down to a bare handful of concerns, for example: where do I go next, what will I see, what time will my train leave, where do I have my next meal, how much clean clothing do I have left, and so on. In the evenings, if you are not a barhopper, perhaps you pour your memories into the diary or the blog, clearing the page for the next day's adventures.

I used to suffer from a sense of unreality while travelling, a disbelief that I was there at all. Perhaps mentally I really was not; clinging on to memories of the quotidian life. It doesn't feel that way anymore. Be here now, says the dictum. That is, to be and not to disimulate; at this location, not an imagined one; and in the present, not in the past or future. I hope this feeling means that I'm on the way.