AWNING CARPET

In Motion: The Experience of Travel

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging, insightful, and revelatory book, Tony Hiss—the much-praised author of The Experience of Place—delves into a unique and instantly recognizable (though previously undescribed) experience that can happen to us when we travel, a special understanding and ability that can leave us feeling exhilarated. He illustrates how throughout human history—from our ancestors walking upright for the first time to astronauts walking on the moon—we have repeatedly availed ourselves of this seemingly elusive quality, which he calls “Deep Travel.”

The sensation of Deep Travel can overtake us, Hiss says, whenever we tap into a sophisticated, wide-awake awareness we all possess. With a wealth of examples—from evocative accounts of his own journeys to celebrated travel writing across the centuries—Hiss identifies and rescues this powerful capacity and sets out simple techniques for accessing it no matter where we are.

And this is only a jumping-off point for an original and penetrating explanation of how Deep Travel radically alters our perception of not only where we are but also when we are, by placing us in an “extended present,” and how it acts as an open-sesame to enlarge and enrich the world around us. Going even further, he investigates how we can remain absolutely still but travel in time itself, as our horizons move backward to include layers of nature and human culture that have gone before, or project us forward to consider what our actions will mean to those who will inhabit our spot on earth a few generations from now.

Whether travel takes you around the corner or around the world, once you’ve read In Motion, no journey will ever feel the same.

In In Motion: The Experience of Travel, Tony Hiss argues that motion--so often a form of distraction and annoyance in our forward-flung lives--can, if approached in the right spirit, lead to heightened perception of both our surroundings and our own thoughts, whether traveling far abroad or just walking around our neighborhood. With that idea of travel (what he calls "Deep Travel") in mind, we asked him to think of some books that share the same sort of perception. The result is an expansive list of travel books in which the movement takes place as much in the brain as on a map:

Tony Hiss on Ten Books and a Movie That Evoke "Deep Travel"

Each of the following were valuable and enriching guides for me while I was writing In Motion and exploring Deep Travel--my expression for that revelatory sense of wonder and amazement that lets you discover something altogether new even in an old familiar place.

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor: Thought by many to be the greatest travel writer of our time and by others to be the greatest travel writer of all times, Fermor’s story of his walk as a teenager across the peaceful Europe that was about to be consumed by the Second World War is a haunting and poetic narrative of great power.
Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor: A post-war book by the same wonderful author, who this time seeks out the most inaccessible landscapes and villages of southernmost Greece. Beautifully observed and felt; among many treasures is Fermor’s page-long, single-sentence description of the air in Greece.
The Head Trip by Jeff Warren: An exciting, entertaining and authoritative look at the modern science of consciousness, with an insightful chapter on the "SMR"--the sensorimotor rhythm of the brain, which is the physical manifestation of our wider awareness.
My Khyber Marriage by Morag Murray Abdullah: An unknown classic. Morag Murray was a conventional young Scottish woman who married an Afghan prince during the First World War and left her sheltered life behind forever. A fascinating look at the transformative power of unexpected circumstances.
The Dance of Life by Edward T. Hall: A favorite author of mine, who spent a lifetime closely observing human behavior. In this book, this brilliant sociologist shows how time can extend indefinitely, bringing us into a longer "now."
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann: One of the most celebrated novels of the 20th century. Although his subject is the disappearance of pre-First World War Europe, Mann, the Nobel Prize winner, pleads with his readers to keep "our sense of time" awake so that none of us will not have to live through "paltry, bare, featherweight years."
Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Tahir Shah: Rollicking and exuberant and full of insight, Shah recounts his year as a student to an Indian magician, a mysterious and forbidding man who believed in always keeping one eye on the detail, and the other on "the entire picture."
Ceremonial Time by John Hanson Mitchell: Without leaving his small town outside of Boston, Mitchell is able to resurrect the 15,000-year-old reality of the place, as it emerged from glacial times and became a beloved home to Native Americans. Mitchell moves through only a single square mile of space but glides back and forth through the millennia--and it's a magical journey.
Adventures in Afghanistan by Louis Palmer: Sixty years after Morag Murray, Palmer visits war-torn Afghanistan with the freedom fighters, and visits remote monasteries, hidden palaces, healing springs, and other startling treasures that seem like real-life continuations of the Arabian Nights.
Encountering the World by Edward S. Reed: A totally original synthesis of modern psychology and philosophy. Reed, who died much too young at age 42, convincingly places awareness at the center of all mental and cognitive ability. A masterpiece.
I Know Where I’m Going!, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: A lovely movie about a headstrong young woman (a marvelous Wendy Hiller) on her way to marry the wrong man. Suddenly stranded on a Scottish island, she awakens to everything she’s been missing and finds her true love and, more importantly, her true self.

Or as I've heard other Disney park guests call it from time to time, Speed Track and Fast Track.

I still do not see what the point of this awning-like structure is. I know when they were transforming World of Motion into Test Track their was a huge preview poster blocking the view of the building, but now that it is gone, why is this still up? It can't be just because of the lighting, World of Motion never had this and it was still well lit up. I feel the same about this as I did with the EPCOT wand, I think this area would look a whole lot better without this structure in front of the pavilion, like it looked during the WoM era. If they did take it down they would lose the overhead lighting, but they could make up for this by lighting up the front mirrored panels of the pavilion with similar colors.

as a distraction, we went out to lunch yesterday to this fabulous mexican restaurant not far from where we live, called the maya cafe. as usual, i had my P&S in my bag, even though i just wasn't feeling it. i took some halfhearted shots inside of a print above our table depicting a rain god, but they came out as dark and dreary as i felt.

then, as we left to head off to home depot, i looked up.

African Americans, more than any other populations in the Americas, have been shaped by migrations. Their culture and history are the products of black peoples' various movements, coerced and voluntary, that started, in the Western Hemisphere, five hundred years ago. Theirs is the story of men and women forced out of Africa; of enslaved people moved from the coastal southeast to the Deep South; of fugitives walking to freedom across the country and beyond; of colonists leaving their land to settle on foreign shores; of southerners migrating west and north; and of immigrants arriving from the Caribbean, South America, and Africa.

Although the Atlantic slave trade has created an enduring image of black people as transported commodities, and is usually considered the single element in the construction of the African Diaspora, it is centuries of additional migrations that have given shape to the nation we know today, a nation different from that forged solely by the dreadful transportation of the Africans against their will. And it is this vast array of migrations that truly defines the African American experience. Always on the move, resourceful, and creative, men and women of African origin have been risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture have enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settling and development of the Americas. Their migrations have changed not only their world, and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also their nation and the Western Hemisphere.

Between 1492 and 1776, an estimated 6.5 million people migrated to the Americas. More than 5 out of 6 were Africans. The major colonial labor force, they laid the economic and cultural foundations of the continents. Their migrations continued during and after slavery. In the United States alone, 6.5 million African Americans left the South for northern and western cities between 1916 and 1970. With this internal Great Migration, the most massive in the history of the country, African Americans stopped being a southern, rural community to become a national, urban population.

The men and women of the Great Migration not only transformed the cities they settled in, but their neighborhoods became primary destinations for black people arriving from the Caribbean, Africa, and South America. These immigrants often retained their national and ethnic identities, and brought new resources into the African American community. With each wave of migration, changes in the demographic, cultural, religious, economic, and political life of the recipient communities occurred; and the nation's development has been inextricably linked with these movements.

At the same time, from the earliest days, thousands of African Americans have left their country when it became apparent that they would not find at home the freedom and equality they aspired to. Their quest for liberty and better opportunities took them to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Africa. African American out-migration has now become insignificant, but black popular culture, created out of the diverse influences brought about by centuries of movement, resonates throughout the world in an unprecedented cultural migration.

Today's 35 million African Americans are heirs to all the migrations that have formed, modeled, and transformed their community, the country, and the African Diaspora. They are the offspring of diverse African ethnicities who also include, in their genetic makeup, Europeans, Native Americans, and Asians. They represent the most diverse population in the nation. A population that has embraced its varied heritage built by millions of men and women constantly on the move, looking for better opportunities, starting over, paving the way, and making sacrifices for future generations.