Happy Friday, wonderful ones, and welcome to the Open Mic!
States I've visited. Map generated at http://www.epgsoft.com
Summer is upon us (well, in some parts of the world anyway!) and for lots of people that means travel. For a long time I considered myself untraveled because I had never left North America. To validate what I perceived as an insular existence, I looked to people like Emily Dickinson, who wrote nearly two thousand poems while barely leaving her childhood home. It wasn’t until college that I fully appreciated how cool it was that I’d visited nineteen of the United States!
My question to you today is: how does travel influence your life and/or your art?
Also: how do you cultivate an attitude of travel when you stay close to home?
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satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
I’ve gotten my best ideas for stories while traveling. Those are the ones that stay with me the most and keep drawing me back to strengthen them and get them to work right. I like being farther away from where I live, but that may be because I still don’t really feel like I’m “at home.” This place “belongs” to someone or something else, not me. The place I live in has a sort of comfortable familiarity (the house and the city) but it doesn’t really feel like home just because I live here. I think that may be why I long to travel. I don’t just feel creatively opened up by beautiful unfamiliar places, I think I’m also searching for a place where I feel a physical and emotional kinship underneath the excitement. Something that says you’re safe now, you’re home. Now you can open up, unfold and bloom.
When I can afford the carfare, I like to explore communities within and close to my city (some of the interesting suburbs.) And beautifully filmed movie scenery like that in “Eat, Pray Love,” can help me feel like I’ve been away for a while, too.
Thanks for the post, Lisa! Lady Sparks, I can so relate. I feel more displaced. Born in the Caribbean, lived in NYC, PA, NJ, and now IL (probably not too far from you, actually!), but “home” for me is defined at that which makes me feel secure and safe, as well. I can’t say that I ever felt 100% safe and secure in any of those places, but I feel most at home now. I long to travel, but it can be pretty darn expensive with three children in tow, especially when I have to pay a full fare, even for our youngest, age 3. Travel, when afforded, most certainly informs my perspective as well as my writing; however, I find inspiration in life, regardless of where I am physically. Where I am mentally most informs my writing. By extension, the experiences that I’ve lived in the various physical places that I’ve occupied more so than the places themselves, tend to contextualize my stories and inspirations more than anything else. Right now, I’m traveling back in time in my reading of “Wench”. What an awesome read! The author’s name escapes me at this very moment, and I dare not open another window on this computer to confirm her name. I get too distracted! Nonetheless, I digress.
I hope to travel to some other interesting places one day, but in the meantime, I’ll travel through the beautiful stories, photos,and retelling of gifted writers, here…and abroad!
You’ve had such a geographically diverse life, Empress! I sympathize with your travel expenses — I’m sure that’s why my family trips, growing up, were always road trips, and why I never saw Asia until last spring. My parents just couldn’t get all five of us to China at the same time!
RĂ©, I hear you on wanting a sense of home in the place where you live. That’s very important to me too.
I’m so happy that on my recent trip to Chicago, I got to meet up with you to explore the city together! 🙂
I had a funny experience the day I wrote this post. I was on the train, going to the airport to go to Chicago, and as we pulled into one of the Oakland stops I noticed I was seeing the passersby as if I were a visitor — in that “so this is what people from here look like” way that I do when I’m in a new city. I don’t know if I was seeing people differently because I was sleepy, or because I was on my way to a proper “traveling” experience, but it was so interesting! It made me think that so much of our travel attitude must be in our minds, and probably we can cultivate those more-awake eyes even when we’re right at home.