Travel

With movement, change, interaction,

We learn

Seeing the world with new eyes,

Understanding things we never saw before.

Through shared experiences we bond, finding new meanings for "togetherness"

Friends, family, strangers, as One

Things in common, drawing us together

Transcending barriers both social and physical.


Let’s get in the car

Put on the Black Keys in the background

Driving over gravel

Kids playing with a white dog on the side of the road

Passing an old friend’s house.


We go through life as gatherers

Gaining knowledge, friends, memories.

We gather most during times of change

Collecting that which is new to us.

Travel provides change,

Gives us what we are missing,

Allows us to clear our heads,

Inspires us with outside influences.

Without travel, nothing is new, nothing is unfound, nothing is left.

How can we learn if we see the world from one perspective?

We are taught that to find truth we need to see all sides of a story.

We should seek to find truth through seeing all sides in life.

Travel provides us insight

Gives us the ability to experience the lives of others

Informs us of the previously unknown

Shows us that which we have never seen before

Allows us to see the sides we did not know existed

Fulfilling the paradigm taught to us as children,

Providing things to gather.


7:22 pm. Speed limit: 35.

The seat belt is too high and my chair is too far back.

Heading downtown

Stan’s records

One way streets

Turn around, got lost

On the highway

Banged-up guardrail, that’s not a good sign.


Travel

It stirs each individual life

Brings back elements that settled to the bottom of our consciousness

Introduces us to new parts of The Great Puzzle Of The Human Experience

Creating an amalgamation that becomes an identity.

Forging our friendships

Shaping our personalities

Creating our memories.


7:42 pm. Speed limit: 40.

Finally moved the seat belt down.

It started raining.

Memorial Park

I don’t think this is the right place

$300 fine: littering

Turned a little late, almost hit a stone wall

Missed the turn for the cemetery.

Grey house, teal shutters

Blue chevy pickup.

Driving in circles

This is one of those neighborhoods that tricks you.

Stranded.

Trapped in a cul-de-sac filled development.


Travel inspires us -

Reinforces our desire for knowledge

Helps us to love what we do not love

Alters the courses of our lives.

It makes us passionate -

Drives us to pursue what interests us

Points us to new ideas

Allows us to reshape our perspectives

Both changing and sealing our fates.


Those people are watching us

“They’re going to call the cops”

Probably not

There are Christmas lights on that house

It’s May. Take those down.


Does all travel change us?

A commute to work, repeated day in and day out

Seemingly unchanging

The same background, but with new interactions.

Like using one set for two plays,

The experiences are different though the setting is the same.

Time has passed, changing the very nature of the moment.

Each day a different place in time, a different place in our lives.

Seeing and interacting with different characters, different personalities.


7:49 pm. Speed limit: 20.

Made it to the cemetery, finally.

That dog is staring at us

Trees line the road

Why is there a house here?

A sign reads No Dogs Allowed.

Where are we?

Lost so many times today.


Motion, Change, Travel.

The merit of travel depends not on its length.

Canoe trips on the river

Elevator rides to the top floor

Flights across oceans

Highway drives to nowhere

It doesn’t always matter where we go, just that we are going.


8:03 pm. Speed limit: 25

Current driving speed: 45

Stop sign ahead.

In the wrong lane

No, this is a one way street

We’re just going the wrong way

A car double parked in the middle of the intersection

Pedestrians walking in the rain.


Travel builds relationships

Shared experiences

Interdependency

Cohabitation

Acting as bonds between us.

Coming to know the unknown together,

Seeing unexpected places and people,

Things we’ll never see again.

You ask if travel can be meaningful

How can it not be so?


8:16 pm. Speed limit: 30.

Heading home.

Why are we stopped? It’s a green light.

My old dance studio is around here somewhere.

“Rain rain go away, come again some other day”

Lightning flashes.

I used to play tennis against that wall with my mother as a child.

Pulling into the driveway

Sprinting inside to get out of the rain

Finally home.

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

This was originally written as an application for a travel course on the beat poets. the prompt was 2 pages long, but the closest paraphrase is "what are the merits of travel, if there are any?" It was written as two separate pieces - a poem and a narrative of a car trip i took with my friend - that i spliced together into one piece, but with different fonts so you can read the whole thing or only its components. It's unfinished, since I only just started working on it and it isnt technically due for a while. I kind of just wanted to share it with the world.

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