They say that travel broadens the mind. You know the sort of thing where the writer leaves to find his or her self within the morass of humanity. One of those journeys that not only is psychical but also metaphysical. The kind of journey where the traveller in the end becomes a different person shaped by his own experiences of travel. This in the end could not or may not be the case.
In this instance take my self as the example of this travel. At the moment I could be in Paris, or looking for long lost Fado singers on the streets of Lisbon. On the other hand I could be following the Beats on a classic American road trip caught up with some idea of transcendental romanticism. And yet this is not the case. Because here I am stuck in the city of Plymouth, here in the South West of England, wondering what is to come next. The greatest distance I have been this year is to Sennen in Cornwall and then back to North Road Station. Please don't take this statement the wrong way. Cornwall is a beautiful place. Sennen is certainly so, as these pictures that I took there show. Yet I do not feel that this journey shaped me or changed me. It just lent me to the point that I think the initial idea of change through travel may well be a myth. For in the end it may lead one to the point where travel, rather then broadening the mind, may in fact limit the mind to the experience of life, stopping the traveller from seeing what is right in front of them while they stay in one place. The firmness of life rather then the blur produced from out side the window of the moving car. The detail rather then the surface.
After all is this what we mean when we say that life is a journey without a destination?
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