a journey

I think I've always been fascinated by journeys. As a child, before we went on a trip, I used to get my mum to show me the way on a map, and be captivated by how the coloured lines and symbols represented the way we would go. I used to draw maps of the woods around my house, dotted lines for paths and colour codes for shortcuts and secret places. I love how something that can fold up and fit in your pocket can hold all that information of time and place that's sometimes so hard to comprehend as you're travelling through it.


Yesterday I went to Manchester. On the bus and train and bus again. Travelling always gets me thinking, perhaps its the combination of moving so fast and yet sitting still, it allows my brain to wander. On the bus it stops and starts, a fleeting look at some bits of the journey, a longer look at bus stops and traffic lights, enforced detail. But it's different on the train, whisked through the landscape, backs of houses, tunnels, secret places, coloured lines. Perhaps its the speed, through time and space.


I imagine leaving a trail where I've been, a tangled mesh of lines around my house, thick where I go often, forging out into not yet visited places, like yesterday. My own map, 4D, 1:1 scale.