Prompts for Travelers, Part One

Considerations for journeying, limbo, and the experience of elsewhere

I spent the summer solstice in Denmark, where the sun rises at 4am and sets near 11pm. The lack of night causes the days to blur together, and you do things like take walks at midnight, stumbling around like a gleefully sleep deprived, heliotropic zombie. Light’s constancy offered its own illumination: such a world could exist, had existed. I was the one who was late to the experience.

This month—the peak of a season associated with elsewhere—we’ll spend the next couple weeks considering travel: what it means to temporarily leave your corner, to seek some sort of abstract something, and to voyage to unfamiliar places…and yet remain (sometimes inescapably) yourself.

Let’s think in acts. To begin, a list of prompts for accompanying the journey.

Act 1:
Prompts for Travelers — On Journeying


LIMBO
Waiting to board the train. Mid-flight. Sitting on the sidewalk before dinner. Travel requires specific intervals of waiting around, transition, and locomotion — recall a memorable moment that took place during a state of limbo.


TALISMAN
While away, identify an object that has played a specific (or perhaps taken on a different or new) role?


QUIET REVELATION
Attention hits differently while away from one’s routine. [ie: while walking through a museum, I found myself hunched over one of the descriptive cards, suddenly reveling in a printed factoid about newly-discovered sand varietals.] Identity a singular fact you learned or enjoyed purely because your attention was tuned to a different dial.

To view the complete list of this issue’s Prompts for Travelers, we invite you to subscribe to Moon Lists.