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The travel bug is big in my tribe right now. Reading about Justin's Japanese adventure, not to mention his mileage giveaway, and hearing of another friend's plans to go across the pond with a backpack and a laptop, reminds me of my own adventure in 1999. And how I never did publish that book I wrote then. And how much my spine tingles with the desire to do it again.
Most of it, anyway.
I miss the way writing feels important when you're traveling. Hell, everything seems important. That the train was late seems important. And it is, too, because it let you strike up a conversation with a stranger, which led to a travel recommendation, which led to a trip to a hostel on an island you would have never visited, and on and on.
It feels important because it is. More important than bitching about the new iMac or debating about weblogs, anyway.
The motion of trains is what I miss most. The way it blurs the outside world. I miss that. The feeling if being carried. Taken. Of moving forward. Going someplace new. Someplace away from what you know. The endless newness of the next town and the town after that. The endless parade of bright faces that ask the same questions. Who are you? Where are you from? What's it like there?
Nowadays I get that feeling from friends in faraway places, and the hope of those about to go. Travel well, my friends. Kiss a train for me.
{ 1:30am }
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