A First Attempt: Travel Bear
NYC --> BOSTON
A Megabus Love Story
Something about travel makes me feel very much myself. Perhaps part of it is having time, isolated, in transit, without distractions, much less stimulus. Time to stew.
Yes, Sometimes it's nice when you don't pick up the phone and I'm left to my own devices.
Focusing on needs, feelings, interests. Maybe it's getting out of the water you swim in.
Coming to this solo meditation a few times of year -- from places I care about to places I care about -- I'm aware of the tremendous passion it takes to hurl yourself across great distances to put yourself in uncomfortable situations that nonetheless fuel that spark. This is utterly clear if you've ever visited a bus station or airport near the holidays. Why would you ever put yourself through the lines, the trudge, the delays, close proximity, the smells, the endless... endless, waiting, if not for love? It's proof! It is proof of the true grit, resilience, and fire of our own spirits!
Due to the expanded consciousness granted by technology (even in the most historical sense e.g. trains, planes, cars, etc.), our domestic lives span much farther than perhaps we have even adapted to fully yet. Our concept of home may be thousands of miles from our current residence. We may spend our holy days far from the communities we inhabit all the time. We may even spend the eve as we approach our destination, communing deeply with the human spirit: in an airport, using an available outlet in a crowded bus station to charge a phone, driving with one hand while fishing for a CD (a relic!) from the glove compartment. It is all a prayer.
To arrive on a bus in the middle of the night -- it's almost an old way to do things. one of those rituals in the human experience that will always carry a warm weight of "Ah, yes. This is how we do things".
I like the way Eleanor said it in a song whose name I don't recall: "I came here the old way, by a train". A singer and composer from the West Coast, it reads as so steeped in her familial experience. Although, perhaps it wasn't "the way" (much less "the old way") for my ancestors to travel (as they were mostly East Coast Northern Americans less affected by the American Westward Expansion), the idea of traveling somewhere promising by train or by bus is still a concept that drives a deep resonating chord of human experience.
Busses especially remind me of myself -- how I hurled myself from the edges of Miami, in my formative years, at 15, 16, 17, years-old, without ever even being able to drive... Oftentimes without my parents' knowledge. The time was mine. It was all mine. Miami is a large expanse and the public transit system is fantastically inefficient, to a whimsical degree. The time I spent incubating on those busses was invaluable, filling deep reservoirs of creativity that would continue to supply juice for years to come.
Even the functional attire we wear on these long commutes is personal. How can I be the most myself during this in-between? Travel roughs you up. Travel gets in your hair, and skin, and under your nails. Washing your hands is a blessing. It makes me think of what human life must have been Pre-Plumbing.
We relied on instinct -- something nearly eroded out of all of us smartphone (is that even a functional term anymore?) carrying humans. It's like you're in a hedge maze without a map or in a desert without a compass. You feel the pull of both the familiar and the new. The deeply programmed and the psychic. It mixes together and that is your path.
~
KFP