I’ve just arrived in Dubai – I still find it somewhat incomprensible that I can settle into a book, take a nap (not v comfortable), do a little work, and end up on the other side of the world. It doesn’t, somehow, feel real. I’m in that post-flight fuzz-state, a kind of delirium what some parts of myself still feel as though they’re streaming behind me across the polar skies… so maybe nothing is quite real at the moment. But it leads me to wonder, what have I really left behind, and what have I brought with me besides two really heavy suitcases full of trainer toys?
I walked over to the Mall of the Emirates to find a bit of supper. The few minutes from the hotel to dinner felt, in some ways, stranger than the thousands of miles from earlier in the day. Walking is not so much the thing, here. I did manage to weave my way through the maze of roads and, with some help, found the entrance to the mall. There I found an ad for some new TV, “step into a 3d world,” and I wondered, “I thought I was already in one?”
Is the real world arcing through the air, chasing night? Is it the super-saturated 3d realm of never boredom? Is it the shifting sands of desert somehow lost now between Dubai’s skyscrapers? Is the mega glitz of a huge mall?
Not thinking of this in a philosophical sense, rather an emotional one. What feels real to you? What are you connected with?
And are you noticing it?
This has become one of my favorite themes, maybe me trying to justify the amount of travel, that somehow bounding out of my daily life propels me to a new view. But I wonder, couldn’t I shift perspective, and see a new view of my daily lift from inside it? Not to spend 15 hours in the air, but just 15 seconds (or 6, thank you) to see it more clearly, more vividly, more in 3d?