How to travel when the possibility of non-essential travel is impossible/socially frowned upon/not a good idea.
By: Abigail Moselle
Tags: Stay At Home, Coronavirus, Travel, Travel Writing, Capitalism

Find beauty in the mundane.

There are no rules restricting beauty to awe-inspiring mountain ranges, the turbulent whirlpools of a majestic waterfall, the serene pink of the sky as a radiant sun sets over velvet blue ocean waves. In these times, it is imperative that we widen our imaginations and discover the fantastic in the everyday.

Opposite my building lies a thin strip of grass, an unnaturally bright green that almost glows in contrast to the decaying vines and dead leaves around it. The grass sits between two buildings: on its right a pub and carpark, on its left a newly-built block of flats. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that the grass was initially conceived as an addendum to the flats, to bring some nature to contrast (or complement) the smooth white surfaces and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. In execution, however, the grass looks sad and out of place, dwarfed by its neighbour in a way that brings to mind the absence of nature. The grass contains four manhole covers, further reinforcing its position as an uninspired afterthought to the havoc wrecked by this parole of cheap 21st century architecture. Everything is grey: the sidewalk, the building, the atmosphere, the sky. The grass and everything around it is squared off into its own quadrilateral, a nice visual contrast somewhat reminiscent of Mondrian. If Mondrian had used green.

Explore your local area.

Geoffrey Chaucer. Murasaki Shikibu. William Shakespeare. Jane Austen. Many more great and celebrated artists who never left their native lands (as far as we know). These particular titans of literature lived between 200–700 years ago and carved out worlds from texts, from conversation, from history, and from that most precious resource, their own imaginations. Travel has been romanticised, exoticized, idealised, made many people very rich, destroyed communities and areas of natural beauty, and weaponised as a personality trait of the self-proclaimed enlightened and open-minded. And yet, history is full of people who managed to create beauty from their surroundings.

“There is a world elsewhere.” A beautiful and oft-quoted phrase (ironic, considering its author’s lack of first-hand experience in the field of “worlds outside England”), spoken upon Coriolanus’ banishment from Rome, that may never have been created had its author been tempted by a package deal holiday to Lanzarote. In fact, Shakespearean creations are not usually travellers by choice: they are banished from the kingdom, forced to fight in a terrible war, run away from certain death or their great love for the sire of a mortal foe. This aversion to leisure travel makes sense. From the perspective of someone with a poor grasp of material history, I would imagine that travel was more burdensome in those days, the lack of efficient transportation and comfortable hotels playing a central factor. And yet, they persevered. Who needs to travel? In fact, it could be argued that this obsession with going to new places plays a part in one of the world’s great ills: colonialism. In many ways, travel has ruined the entire world, and is entirely unnecessary.

Inspired by this thought process, I read a few lines from Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ and head outdoors, perchance to happen upon my own golden daffodils, in whatever form they come to me. Setting out to appreciate my local area. I move beyond the strip of grass, which I feel I have sufficiently explored. There are many cars, and also some people. It is cold. I decide to head back to my flat, making sure to buy a beer on the way so as to support local businesses.

No one said travel had to be taken literally.

The beauty of language is that much of it is open to generous interpretation. An online therapist can help you safely travel into the depths of your childhood, your own feelings, your inner self. A trip from your bedroom to the kitchen can be fraught with danger and adventure, if you have enough imagination. I have been using this time to travel through different furniture arrangements. I asked my brother, a maths student, if it would be possible to work out the number of different positions each item in my room could be located in, and then find the total number of combinations. He did not reply to my message, but I assume it would be a lot. And so I delved into a new and exciting world of interior design. Literal travel is not the only thing that widens the mind and broadens the horizons. Is it better to put a desk by the window looking out onto the street, or by the wall, with fewer distractions? Why not try both! And thus the desk begins its own journey across and around my room, stopping and starting like a gap year student with an interrailing ticket and only one night to spend in every major European city.

Talk to your old friends.

Taking a trip down memory lane with a therapist can be upsetting and open up glaring emotional wounds that you may rather leave untouched. So why not open a bottle of wine and have an online catch-up with the people you went to primary, or secondary school with, or university? Or summer camp, or the music camp your parents made you attend as an 8-year-old, or the people you met doing the youth theatre residency 5 years ago? I had never considered how many people I had met and befriended through my life. If we present different faces to different people, if we change so drastically as we age, then what could be a greater adventure than encountering the people who knew and loved us as our past selves?

I got as far as the open bottle of wine stage of this particular adventure before deciding that it would be weird and awkward, so instead called my friend Lucy.

Buy things.

Miss the sun? Get a SAD lamp! We are lucky enough to live in a world where anything you want can be ordered from a variety of online platforms and delivered to your door. Travel through different versions of yourself with the help of clothes, make up, exercise gear, expensive cooking equipment, a subscription to a language website operated by smug 20-somethings who somehow managed to learn four new languages in a year, a fact that you can’t help but feel sceptical about but then realise that you, as a monolinguist, will never be able to repudiate. Recreate that essential holiday souvenir feel by buying anything and everything that takes your fancy and then shove it all on a top shelf where it will sit and gather dust until you try to sell it on Facebook or another online platform. Life is a full circle.

Alternatively, use this time to save money. Stay optimistic.

This can’t last forever.