Summer has settled in with its own camp, and the heat feels relentless, almost like a small echo from a remembered town. The kind of heat that makes the mind drift to Comala, the fictional village Juan Rulfo imagined while walking the streets of his birthplace in Jalisco. There, the wind shudders through trees and the heat seems to hum with the murmurs of the dead, greeting arrivals with a whisper of what lies beyond. A line from a fellow writer resurfaces: the warmth in Comala makes even those who die here return with their blanket, as if the inferno itself is wrapping people in memory. The author repeats the line to steady themselves through sinus pressure and a head that aches from the season’s intensity—the long days, the bright light, the precious gift of daylight that makes the body tired yet somehow more alive.
This year, there is no traditional vacation. The plan is to endure the season in the city, despite a broken elevator, the clamor from nearby construction, and the constant shuffle of neighbors in a rental below. A stay-at-home holiday becomes a personal journey around one’s own room, reminiscent of a late 18th-century travelogue, where a mind trained in travel dreams of distant lands while staying rooted in one small room. The idea is not to waste resources or energy on grand expeditions; instead, the imagination travels—between desk and chair, chair and bed—turning a modest space into a delightful place to rest and reflect on the half-hidden sorrows of life.
In a form of domestic vacation, shelves are stocked and a chosen essay catches attention: Cars, Planes, and Backpacks—Fluid Images of the Modern World—by anthropologist Jose Luis Anta Félez. The author is struck by the electricity of continuous movement and its mercantile nature, a curiosity that leads from airport lounges to the gear carried by pilgrims heading toward Santiago de Compostela. The central question remains: is continuous motion a necessity, or a sign of something deeper we carry with us? If, in De Maistre’s era, travel could be a spiritual transformation, today the same Starbucks seems to appear on every corner of the globe. The traveler looks in the mirror and sees the same person, eyes heavy with the weight of endless journeys. Are others merely tourists, queuing and posting another selfie? Or might there be a deeper restlessness, a questioning of it all, as the observer counts the steps from desk to refrigerator and reflects on a life lived in transit?
As the summer unfolds, the narrator keeps to a quiet routine, a careful balance of reading and contemplating. The thought lingers on the tension between movement and stillness, between exploration and the comfort of a familiar room. The reflections touch on social rhythms, the pull of travel narratives, and the modern obsession with seeing the world through travel photography and quick trips. It asks whether movement truly changes us, or if the essence of a person persists, even as the surroundings shift and the world offers new skies above an old couch. The cadence becomes a meditation on how travel has altered, and in some ways simplified, the human urge to go beyond the familiar.
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