Through a moving window

The this and then of travel and life

Annual milestones like birthdays can cause you to look for connecting threads that link one year to the next to the next. What experiences brought me to this place in my life? What’s my story?

Blame it on Jedidiah Jenkins and Dax Shepard that I’ve been noodling with the idea of a “double helix of experience and narrative.” I don’t know if they were referring to a concept that exists in some established literature, or whether that expression was born in the spontaneity of their podcast conversation. I think the distinction is intended to separate your personal, subjective experience from the narrative story you make of it. Real life versus your Instagram grid, maybe?

View through a window: a train station in a town I’ve never visited.

If you’ve sat in a window seat on a train, you know that mesmerizing feeling of viewing the landscape as an ever-shifting series of still life images. You may feel a shot of poignant curiosity when the train stops at a station in a town you don’t know. See that balcony there, with the clothes drying on a rack next to a couple of patio chairs? See those tiny rows of crops growing there in that allotment garden? Here’s a quiet road drawing your eye inwards toward a town centre you won’t get to see.

This is the business end of the town. This is where life happens while folks are busy making other plans.