Further, Farther by Laura Stevens

Issue 114

When you travel from one physical place to another, you are also admitting the desire for a psychological change, the hope that if your senses are surprised enough your mind might be stirred from the grind of its habits.

The American Road trip remains a mythical rite of passage, promising the freedom that will facilitate this escape from, and rediscovery of, the self.

The wide, empty landscapes quietly hold your loneliness, and within their grandeur your insignificance is assumed.

The desert heat hums you its gentle, endless hymn, as the sands drift, plunge, and rise into colourful rock forms of confounding shape and size.

The unbroken blue of the skies finally blushes into pink as the twilight falls. Animals shake from the dust at evening's breeze, and soon your solitary vehicle is enveloped by the night, its headlights searching the dark horizon for a stray motel.

This is far from what you'd call home. It is an in-betweenness of places. An absence of destination. A road on which your longing is in its element, taking you further, farther…

Laura Stevens lives and works in Paris.
To view more of Laura's work, please visit her website.