Plane rides always make me think. Right when I'm descending, I like to push up the windows, look down, and suddenly and inevitably be taken to a liminal space of in-between where the feeling of home and destination, coming and going, all melt away, and I'm left with an overwhelming feeling of being in and part of this beautiful awe-inspiring world. It's one of the few times I can feel undiluted appreciation and optimism for something greater, so sublimely crafted.
Looking down this time, as we approach Madrid, I notice layers of patched yellow, green, olive: colors of tilled soil and fallow land. Farm circles and lines drawn into the earth by highways that cut the earth into quadrangles, beautiful geometry yet a man-induced phenomenon. I wonder how the aerial view of the land would have looked like before farming, a sweeping history of Europe chronologically plays itself before my eyes.
Towns are circular. Unlike the U.S. cities, the ones outside Madrid grow in concentric circles, the roads are a crisscrossed labyrinth that date themselves back to medieval days. The rich cultural history of Spain is fossilized in the shapes of those towns. Spain's a country proud of its cultural past and has elected deliberately to live among buildings of another century. What does it feel like to live in modernity but be surrounded by frozen time? Does it change a person's way of being or sense of belonging? I've always wanted to experience the habitus of historical immersion...
Why I travel: to take myself out of the inevitable myopic experience of rooted every day life where tunnel vision is a natural psychological phenomenon and perhaps mechanism for emotional equilibrium, and see, feel, be with people who live differently, see differently, yet are part of the highs and low of our human drama. It's a deliberate attempt to open myself up again like a child, or an oyster, and soak the world in, in all its grainy curiosities metabolized into an essential part of myself. To learn and be humbled, and to be reminded that there are many paths to goodness and happiness in the world and carry on with courage to forge a path of my own.
Looking down this time, as we approach Madrid, I notice layers of patched yellow, green, olive: colors of tilled soil and fallow land. Farm circles and lines drawn into the earth by highways that cut the earth into quadrangles, beautiful geometry yet a man-induced phenomenon. I wonder how the aerial view of the land would have looked like before farming, a sweeping history of Europe chronologically plays itself before my eyes.
Towns are circular. Unlike the U.S. cities, the ones outside Madrid grow in concentric circles, the roads are a crisscrossed labyrinth that date themselves back to medieval days. The rich cultural history of Spain is fossilized in the shapes of those towns. Spain's a country proud of its cultural past and has elected deliberately to live among buildings of another century. What does it feel like to live in modernity but be surrounded by frozen time? Does it change a person's way of being or sense of belonging? I've always wanted to experience the habitus of historical immersion...
Why I travel: to take myself out of the inevitable myopic experience of rooted every day life where tunnel vision is a natural psychological phenomenon and perhaps mechanism for emotional equilibrium, and see, feel, be with people who live differently, see differently, yet are part of the highs and low of our human drama. It's a deliberate attempt to open myself up again like a child, or an oyster, and soak the world in, in all its grainy curiosities metabolized into an essential part of myself. To learn and be humbled, and to be reminded that there are many paths to goodness and happiness in the world and carry on with courage to forge a path of my own.
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