Saturday, September 8, 2012

Travelogue: sweetness of each steps (and calories)


Traveling alone in an unfamiliar cities or hiking alone on the mountains, my mind wonders, escapes to some other reality, at times leaving utterly blank inside me, and returns with most unpredictable thoughts, silently conversing with others around me or with myself. I kept a little card stock with me when I traveled to Spain and Switzerland more than a decade ago. Along with the card stock was a tiny pedometer at my hip, counting each steps I made while traveling. I recorded the steps, mileages, and calories, and wrote whatever it was on my mind. On the other side of each card, I made drawings (see Experiment Diary/Drawings 1 & 2.) Later, I decided to refine what I wrote, and typed with an old typewriter on the found paper. Now, more than a decade later, all the details of the particular places and the feelings I was experiencing at that time still come back to me vividly when I read them. It is strange though, because things that I remember, I'm not sure if it was real or if I imagined. It’s like a diary, but sometimes it’s purely imaginable. These notes are my fleeting mind when I was traveling.