We had been in Peru for 6 days when one of the 5 of us sitting in an apartment in the Miraflores district of Lima said, “It feels like we have been here for 2 weeks.”
This was true. Surely in Atlanta weeks had gone by, not days. Traveling accomplishes the kind of time travel I desire most as an adult–to move through space in slow motion with my perception and my body contained in the sensate world, both of us, all of us.
What I seek is a state similar to childlike perception, but with an appropriate awareness of the state—not so much that the elasticity of time is unbearable. I want the journey through days to be a ride that is without an end in sight. I’d need some consciousness of slowness, though. It wouldn’t be possible to rid myself of my adult consciousness, the hard-earned mind which longs for what those early years offered: how very long a year is, how much changes in that period, except for the seeming permanence of family, of mom’s porous hands, and the knowledge without understanding that granny will die one day.
The loss of my granny brought me to mindfulness, which would be suggested for the slackened time I seek, because if you pause to look at the patterns in the blue and bluing sky, all the sauce-covered wrappers tossed along the sidewalk, there is new in the familiarity of each day, nothing stays the same for a moment–a frightening thought.
No, it’s not entirely mindfulness I want. As the man in our group spoke of time stretching us out with it, we looked over the Pacific from the 7th floor. I stared at it for a while, focusing on it until the waves began to look pixelated or like patterns, not with the predictability of nature, but with encoded messages.
The ocean air blew into the room, fresh, a relief to bodies accustomed to air conditioning. We were enamored with the familiar made new to us—the four not from Peru meeting the reality of place, and yet, we were tired and unwilling to do too much.
The fatigue set me back from immediate experience. I don’t know if the others turned to devices, scrolling, watching, out of tiredness, the phone as pacifier, but I did. There is the addiction, the horror of it.
I am still not who I want to be when I am away. Travel is not a becoming.
Did others, before phones, before globalization on this scale, have a greater intimacy with wherever they were? Did they grow closer to those they traveled with, as well as with others along the way? Maybe, yes. But also, they also sought distraction as we do.
The vitality I seek to open myself to was less accessible during the trip. But maybe one more week, then I would have formed a bond with someone or necessarily fallen to pieces, my shell cracking.
I am getting away from myself, as usual. I’ll allow it.
The point is not how travel opens, closes, or brings me closer to passion. It is the effect it has on my perception of time. Wait, maybe these things are related. Everything here is the subject.
I began writing this two days ago. Now, I’ve been home for nearly 6 days. 6 days gone. Just like that. My emotions are still subdued. I have frozen, but time has returned to its typical pace.
I sat on the concrete path in my backyard, looking up at the maple tree, its light, young leaves and pollen, the still-bare walnut tree, and the blunt sky beyond the branches. I have cleaned the house without stimuli, no music, no podcast, nothing but my thoughts and whatever sounds came through the old windows–birds, souped up cars, the occasional scream. I paid attention. I felt the barrier of the rag between me and the glass table. Still, time is going and gone.
So, I repeat, mindfulness isn’t the whole answer. Must I see the truly new to me, all of the time? Will I have to be nomadic, only coming home to my family every so often for the comfort of a night passed on the couch with pizza, in order to pause the discomfort of wandering months by fast-forwarding the hours? Or maybe I’ll see the second-to-second evolution of my home life, and the fast rate of change will make my home life unfamiliar and eternal—the return of the frightening thought.
My imagination is generating another “be careful what you wish for” story.
Here’s a thought: Could creativity serve the same purpose as traveling? Writing, all creation, has something in common with being a traveler. There is resistance after the initial excitement of meeting with an unfamiliar place, the joy of possibility and discovery. But then, you must relinquish resistance to step into what is there.
You shouldn’t, in the case of travel, transform what’s there, but you can bring something new into being if you go towards the experience with vulnerability and time, always time. You + what is in existence is what is necessary for creation.
Have I been here, at this wooden table in a low lit coworking space for an hour? No, I’ve spent minutes at the page. I began at my secretary desk in the lovely office I’ve made for myself, like a nest for a bird. But I signed up for Switchyards, which calls itself a third space, hoping a different location will aid flow and focus, stifle avoidance. So, here I am—listening to business calls and writing in this leather journal I bought from Livraria Lello, wondering if it’s okay to take what I’m doing seriously, too. And as I edit, annoyed that these questions rule my thoughts, blotting me out.
Here’s time travel again. When are you reading this? The day I hit publish? Or, in another year, years from now, decades on, feeling like you’ve uncovered an artifact of an individual who exists or existed, but has been lost to time? Do you feel close to me because of our similar fears and desires?
Your reading isn’t time travel for me. The point is my perception of time, my experience of it, and of course, yours if you’re here with me, extracting something from this.
I want to be renewed by the novel. I want to get past the agony of writing into the endlessness of creation. Mostly, I long to uncover passion for always, with intervals of the mundane so that I can stay sane and human.
Where will I go next? When will it happen, and how long will it last?