While the perception of space and physical movement are related, they do not necessarily happen simultaneously. Jean Cocteau3 describes in his poem about his first trip to New York the difference between physical and mental state of arrival, by saying that not all of him has arrived in New York at once: while it takes mere hours to cover the distance by plane, the mind needs more time to fully grasp and adjust to the situation, causing a lag in synchronisation. Similarly, we can rush ahead in anticipation, with the sense of travel beginning earlier than the movement itself.
Aside from where, how long and how we travel, perhaps the most important aspect is who or what we travel with. Anything we take with us is a structure that remains the same — it provides a sense of stability when we leave everything that we know behind. It may be a backpack, a friend, our family, a group of people, a caravan home — the more we take with us, the more we remain within the familiar. Jonathan Olivares4 explains how the car he uses for daily travel has become a calming place for him, a kind of a moving home through which he can experience the journey. Because of its inaccessibility to the outside world, the car becomes an interior, a place within a space. In this case, the movement can become a form of isolation, an escape from the surrounding space and time.
Although travel can be an escape, it does not equal escapism . The experience of escapism is the exact opposite of travel. In its plainest sense, escapism does not even include movement. An escapist is closer to staying still, as he is inevitably linked to the state of being he seeks to ignore. The motivation is not to go or to arrive but to stay away. Paradoxically, through such evasion, an escapist is in fact perpetuating the situation from which they are escaping from, by reinforcing it through constant awareness of the need to escape throughout their experience.
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