Source: Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive

Sometimes travel is a metaphor and sometimes it isn’t, and often separating which is what, when, can be a perplexing exercise in peripatacity.

Today I am traveling across the United States – from the West to the East coast – on a diagonal, due north, as one half of a tandem. My traveling companion is a beautiful woman in waxing flower: my daughter – fresh off a high school graduation and a summer as restaurant hostess. Neither of which have sufficiently prepared her for this particular journey. Why? Because this is the first leg of the next journey of her life. A trek that is not only physical, but intellectual, as well . . . for she is embarking on her collegiate career. This, a new stage in her life, represents both an ending and a beginning: the culmination of one thing, the debut of another. Cast that way, it is hard to avoid reckoning this moment – these paces she is now undertaking-- as a representation. As a something standing for another thing.

See what I mean? Where does travel stop and metaphor start? The physical and the mystical getting twinned so facilely. Which is what I like about peripatacity. It has a knack for keeping one guessing.

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—tjmHolden

Out on the road I read about the end of someone else’s road; life’s journey curtailed, existence expunged.

Journalist and My Cancer blogger Leroy Sievers died today. If you don’t know him, you can learn more about his latter stages of life in his blog here, and if you are curious about the bigger picture—about the entirety of his life—you can read about that in this obituary here. Reading about him, skimming some of the entries that chronicled the final two years of his life, and taking in the comments from his many adherents—the loyal following he amassed, the community that his vision spontaneously formed—who read his daily posts about his final months-turned-into-years, certainly is more than compelling; it gives one pause.

Pondering what life is about, what it is to be on life’s path, to embark on the journey, then come to the end of that road.

Ready or not, because all roads have an end.

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—tjmHolden

The bang and boom having receded—the flare of fireworks, the wash of color, the bold pageantry, the synchronization of thousands of bodies in motion. Yes, Beijing 2008 has officially begun. And for most of us, all we know of Beijing 2008 is what we witness via the TV feed.

For me, Beijing 2008 is summed up in two lay-overs in capital airport this past fortnight; a total of eight hours strolling through one of the most spacious, spotless, sparkling-est airports our world currently knows.

If you haven’t been there—and especially to the newly-opened Terminal 3—it might be worth trolling around below the jump for a few minutes, to give it a visual canvas.

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—tjmHolden

As a deeply-committed peripatetic, I recognize the indispensible role that serendipity plays in travel. In fact, eight times out of seven, it is serendipity—rather than deep ratiocination or meticulous planning—that is going to determine whether the day’s foray will ultimately be deemed successful or not.

Others might call it “happenstance”, or “luck”, or “fortune”—good or bad. But whatever name you attach to it, it is something that travelers have to get used to; we voyagers can’t live without it. Nor would we want to . . . since serendipity is what makes the journey so pleasureable; so deep-meaningful.

Even when it is not. Which is what I will explain next . . .

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—tjmHolden

According to this site, “Stockholm is built across 14 islands and is often called the Venice of the North.” Water covers one third of the city area.

You might wonder what that has to do with the pictures at the top. And well might you, should you possess a peripatetic mind. Seeing as water and train tracks are composed of entirely different matter—liquid and solid—which often don’t easily co-exist. So what is the connection? It lies in this . . .

Navigating Stockholm’s 14 islands presents the peripatetic in Stockholm’s clutches with a conundrum that only Stockholm’s vast network of trains and subways can solve. With, of course, the aid of a strategically-placed tunnel and bridge (or . . . three or fifteen or twenty-nine).

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—tjmHolden

“You ought not to do that.”

The first time I ignored her because, frankly, I couldn’t believe someone would be speaking to me. A complete stranger, just off the plane.

“I say, you really ought not to be doing that.”

The second time I ignored her, because, although I now appreciated that a complete stranger was speaking to me, a complete stranger, I had no idea what she was saying. Swedish not being a part of my linguistic repertoire.

“You see . . . “ she, now switching to a version of English—(proving that she wasn’t simply a deranged crackpot reciting gibberish in my direction, but, rather was a multi-talent, with an aim to communicate, and quick on the up-take)—“it really isn’t . . . safe . . . to leave your bag sitting by itself like that. It simply is not safe.”

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—tjmHolden