"the dying might think of travel, but do travelers think of death?"
An excellent question, furnished by Br'er Bunni, that has knocking around in my head for a couple days. Certainly in literature we could find important examples of travelers thinking of death, but for the most part I've been wondering about my own experiences as a traveler and how they might have been linked. A number of my trips have explicitly involved graveyards, which is straightforward enough, but I'm thinking more of meaning and metaphor. This line of thought was prompted by the aforementioned article in the LA Times coupled with an increased attention to my dreams in the last few years. Travel is probably the most common theme of my dreams. The thought that this is somehow linked to death feels like an epiphany to me, but one whose meaning lies just outside my grasp, much like the memory of a dream.
Bunni has rightly implied that perhaps I am death obsessed at times, but it's not altogether unhealthy. I did have a dream that I was flying the other night; bumping around the ceiling in an enclosed space. I think that's my second flying dream this year and I take that as a good omen of sorts.
