It’s curious that traveling can stimulate the imagination. For centuries, writers have used road trips or journeys to bring up deep emotions and thoughts, much the way a brisk walk might stimulate the heart.
There seems to be a definite parallel between the journey one makes across land and the journey one makes into ones own heart. One experiences life differently while traveling. It’s like an exercise in relativity: ones experience of time is relative to the speed one is moving.
An earlier post examined the relativity of time in narrative. Stories take us out of time into another world, sending us on a journey into our own hearts to be deeply changed.
This for me is why stories are spiritual experiences and should be treasured and should be taken very seriously.
Dr Who and its memorable theme song have graced our TV screens since the 60s and have become cult favourites worldwide.
A Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, the Doctor, travels in a TARDIS, which appears as a blue British Police Box. It’s chameleon circuit which allows it to take on the appearance of local objects, broke forever fixing it in its 1960s form.
The Doctor is a sci-fi Sherlock Holmes. Shedding one form and taking on another, he is a deathless being, bent on saving civilisations from various alien foes, and gathering a series of pretty female companions in his travels.
His time machine, the TARDIS is an anagram for Time and Relative Dimension In Space and interestingly, it is not a time machine so much as a portal. The Fourth doctor, my favourite, played by Tom Baker, once explained its curious properties.
While so small in appearance, within its covers lies a whole new dimension of sight, sound, taste, touch and feel. Travellers who enter this TARDIS, rarely come out the same.
