The hour of departure is not the departure. It is the anticipation for the leaving that remains to come. It is the last minute rushing around the one instant that was planned and pre-planned days, weeks, and months beforehand but then appeared as if out of nowhere, calling to fruition and completion the agreed-upon timetable, the temporal contract to leave where you had always found yourself and go someplace new. It’s the beginning of the motion but not the motion proper. It is the preparation to depart that is itself already a departure.
When I leave, I usually know I’m going months in advance. Ticket bought. Documents in tow. But before actually leaving, I first have to leave my house, having packed my bags. The trip to the airport, to the train station, to the port is the worst leg of any journey. But once inside the terminal, I already feel as if the journey has finally begun, all the while enjoying the last few minutes where I have yet to leave.
The anticipation of leaving is never the journey. Not the time in transit at 30,000 feet. Nor the nine hours on an overnight train. The journey is what happens when you arrive at a new destination, the transformation that takes place when we return home and remember what has transpired. The journey cannot be mapped, cannot be located geographically. It only happens inside perhaps the soul. And that’s precisely why we must go.