One interesting part of travel is jet lag. It's not just about time difference -i'd say that's only a small part of it. In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition it is described as the time it takes the soul to come back to the body; we travel faster than our souls can on airplanes, and it takes a while for them to reconnect. You sit still for a long time and when you get up again, you're in a different world. It takes time to adjust, time for the soul to travel the same distance the body just has done.
After Vertical Blue, i went from a blue water white beach warm world filled with friends and passion to a grey and cold London filled with hard work. The transition took a week of grump. The two things that helped were my girl, and water. Water, as an element, is endlessly fascinating in all its forms, and even though i was away from its blue deep form, i was surrounded by its frosty form. It beckoned me to go out exploring again, even if i'd been working outside all day and had become quite frosted myself.
It was near the end of the day, and though i was surrounded by monuments
my attention was drawn down
from monuments to moments, almost literally frozen in time
and i saw the cohesion, the link between blue water and frost
which is when my soul returned to me, i reckon
It reminds me of something my father wrote about the element of water: "That
water is an element means that man could attribute an endless amount
of meanings to it, but only based on the fact, that the water itself
is the centre, and not subjected to an ‘egotrip’. It’s not man
that makes water, it’s water that makes man and invites him to
contemplation. Drifting on water, listening to the waves or with his
eyes following the stream he is confronted with something that in
force and duration surpasses his own existence and on which he
depends."
