The trick, I think, is not to get overzealous. I found the same thing while traveling. When I got to India, everything was so different, so weird, so incomprehensible, I tried to write it all down so I wouldn’t forget any of it. A new travel journal is like a new blog, but infinitely more enticing. With a travel journal, you can touch it. You can see the pages where you’re going to write about the historical monuments, the axes of history you have stepped on and danced across. With a physical journal, you can flip through the blank pages while on a train to someplace you’ve never been and allow your mind to exit the train early.
Mind the gap, mind the drop, mind the dolly with bags and packages and uniforms. Your mind exits the imaginary station early, explores the perimeter of an unknown locale. You can see it all, as the soft air hits your face, repelled by the flipping pages. You see the old man, sweeping his tea stall. You see the poor donkey, forced to a life of harsh toil. You see the one armed little girl hobble forth to get a good begging position. In your mind, you can see and write all these things, you can write down the details, from the smell when the carriage door opened to the texture and pattern of the ragged dress of the armless girl.
Yet I’m here. I’m in a chair in a land far, far away. There is no journal to flip through. There’s only my mind, scanning the worldtop with as much randomness and pleasure as the casual journaler fanning himself with his Moleskine.
I can still see it. I can still see it all.
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