Returning to my commute, that height of the mundane that everyone faces, or used to. Moving the body from home to work, the mind tends to wander with habitual behavior, the comfort and freedom of a known pattern.
The struggle of life is often to remain present in those situations, to remember and see that even when something seems repetitive and tedious, it’s actually quite different from moment to moment.
Conversely, we have a great tool, some technology we were born with with capabilities far beyond any man-made device, our brain, should we choose to use it. The power to drift and dream and wander to places in our mind, combining memory, fantasy and reality, can feel very good. Some may say it’s nostalgia, maybe, as we can only be a permutations of experiences of our lives.
The cleanest form of distraction lies in our minds (and body), as it blends with our surroundings, untethered from the tiny squares of technology we think of as windows to peer through. With the news of the day, and looking down the barrel of insanity, one is tempted to want to tune out. Drugs are an option, but an unsustainable model.
Crossing over the Schuylkill River from West Philly on my morning commute, I often squint at the lights on the river in front of the columned 30th St. Station and see the Seine in Paris. As if i was commuting there, it’s a moment of mind manufactured escapist fun.
There’s a street I ride often when returning west, that in the right evening light feels like my commutes up the the hill to the Haight-Ashbury. Riding west into the hazy glare of sunset I even sense the impending Pacific fog bank that often tucked the neighborhood in as the day came to a close. I guess I could go further, probably without any disassociation of body and place. I can taste the pale ale at Mad Dog in the Fog, smell the ocean air in Golden Gate Park, the patchouli. This is like the flashes that come with the smell of diesel, creosote and cigarettes, ‘negative’ smells can be ‘positive’ triggers, too.
It’s hard to say if dreamers are vilified or revered in America anymore. I think it might be based on whether one ‘succeeds’ or not. Not a nurturing system, but welcome to America 2.0. The seeds were contained in the OG, to be sure, hyper judgementalism and hyper individualism. Walter Mitty was such a fanciful character, in my own family were capitalistic dreamers and artists met with both reverence and disdain since ultimately ‘nothing came of it’. America surely reveres successful nutjobs and dreamers, Johnny Appleseed, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin.
Miraculously, seen in the above banner photo, one day this so-called ‘portal’ showed up exactly on my commute as i ride through LOVE Park to my nearby grocery store. I think this is how I like my tech. As if I could take that archetypical leap of faith, trust the steps will appear to catch me, run the Harry Potter train gate, climb through the closet into Narnia, if I just turn my bike a tic, i feel like I can ride right into Dublin (above), the z-axis of the camera angle just an inviting extention of the road I’m riding.
I will gladly take the daily opportunity to at least wave to the world in a moments connection. Signage would help, maybe an email address and a simple request…Real portals do exist. And I will keep my passport up to date.
Which brings up the question, am I an escapist or am I searching for true connection? I spent most of my life trapped in that irony. How much of connection is identifying the familiar, like a gateway to the new. If I squint and remember Paris, is that avoidance or acceptance?