Transmotion Vol 1, No 1 (2015)
DIANE GLANCY
According to
[the physicist, Richard] Feynman, a system has
not just one
history but every possible history—
THE
GRAND DESIGN, Stephen Hawking
There
is land and sky and the car passing between them making a small rip in the
passage as it goes. The moving car
unzips the sky from the land.
I remember
this as a child.
The oppressive life in my house opened to the land.
In
the early days, we traveled from Kansas City to my grandparent's farm near
Fulton. Then my father was
transferred to packing houses across the great plains.
Slaughter houses they were called. The cattle entered and were
killed. 1. The
cutting off. 2. The slitting of sky from land.
It
was a hollow place between parents.
3. Feudal and 4. futile. The starkness of
their lives. The land. The sky. The grass between them.
My
moving life continued moving when my father's transfers continued— 5.
Kansas City, 6. Indianapolis, 7. St. Louis, 8. Reading, 9. Kansas City, 10. St.
Joseph, 11. Denver, 12. Chicago, 13. Sioux
City.
My
great ship of exploration was a moving van. 14. Atlas. 15. Mayflower.
I
had more than one beginning. I
have travels from multiple beginnings.
16. 17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
Kansas
is named after an Indian tribe. The
name means 31. people of the wind,
though I remember hearing
it also meant 32. blue smoke from Indian campfires on
the
prairie. Kansas became a state in
1861.
In
travel, I become the moving place that distance is. Driving the land has every
possible history encamped in rock
and stone and soil and voices smack against the
windshield. Smackie. Smackie.
Have
I ever known who I am— but in the placement of thought in travel? Travel
is the establishment of a moving
place so I can't be swallowed by storms that
thunder. I can be 33. one place, then 34. another.
Travel
is a map of connections. A group
of correlations in the (t)rip. My mother
was born in Hume, Missouri on
the Missouri / Kansas border. My
father was
born in Viola, Arkansas and died in Sioux City, Iowa. The moving car exhumes
the past. It is a travel of associations. 35. Exhaust and 36. exhumation.
37.
Pastward and 38. forward
to every possible future—