I wrote a piece for The Fool’s World magazine at the Raleigh Review Playhouse Office. As “The Time Traveler,” I thought my writing on time travels would be perfect to submit as a travel story. Alas, it was rejected by the “literary travel guide.” Nonetheless, I thought I’d share it here on Lit Time Travel since it sums up why I call myself “The Time Traveler” and why I continue to and aspire to write.

Photograph by Jordan Madrid

From, The Time Traveler

As countless many others dream of doing, I would love to travel to wherever I want at any given time of the year. I would go everywhere, from cosmopolitan cities to rundown historic sites, and do everything I want to do, from sipping dark roast drip at my go-to café to witnessing nature at its purest and its grandest. And maybe one day, I will be one of those lucky globetrotters who get to go everywhere and share their journeys while everyone else sit in their homes and view the world through their eyes. But until then, I’ve decided to resort to time traveling.

It was actually a decision made quite early on in my life, when I was mature enough to realize my (and most everyone else’s) reality. We’re planted like little seeds in the wide round pot of the world, given light and rain to sprout and connect with the other sprouts around us. It’s a wonderful thing, really, to be given a tiny spot in the world to learn, grow, and spread roots. But some seeds like me want to move around. And when one’s dreams and desires don’t match one’s reality, it can be frustrating to say the least. So, what can a seed that wants to explore the world do when it can’t? Time travel.

            As an experienced time traveler, allow me to share some of the ins and outs of the art. First, there are different modes of time traveling. Yes, you heard that right. One mode is the time traveling done through recollections and imaginations. Everyone has done this, though some have more mastery over it than others. It’s when a person is taken back in time within one’s mind, reliving the words and emotions stored inside, or when a person is propelled forward to the hopes and/or fears of the future. What I mean by mastery or the lack of is that most people do this time traveling involuntarily and unexpectedly, when a word or an image triggers their memories or stirs images of days to come.

            To be honest, I haven’t mastered this mode of time travel: I go forward in time without my realizing and sometimes I have to grapple my way back to the present. But as for the going back in time, I feel quite confident. I can close my eyes and go back to my favorite place: my hometown in Seoul that I left when I was eight. Though it still physically exists exactly where it was twenty years ago, my hometown that I had left has since disappeared. Though I can still look it up online and enjoy satellite photos of the place from different angles, the air is different, breathed by people I don’t recognize. The apartments that are lined up like books have new paint on them, and everything that was so familiar and comforting – my favorite stationery store, our village playground that was literally just a crude and very dangerous metal installation, and my favorite TV programs that aired in the evenings – they’re all gone. And I’m as unfamiliar to my hometown as it is to me.

            But I still have the place inside me, and so I go back to it sometimes. When life becomes quite hard to bear, I close my eyes and go back. Pretend that the helicopters outside the townhouse I’m living in are the helicopters that roamed above the apartments. Imagine that outside my door isn’t the hallway to the building but the dining room of my childhood home, where my mom is cooking dinner and setting the table at the same time. Standing in her view is my dad, who has just come home from work. It’s dark outside and I think the first snow of the year is falling beyond the glass window that’s decorated with Christmas lights. Red, green, and yellow lights blink to the sound of my sister and I, who are giggling and jumping around my dad, who is smiling his gentle and kind smile. I see myself, the younger and livelier version of me – running to my mom and telling her what Dad just said. Then I see the little girl sliding her way back to the living room where my dad and sister are, where the big box of a TV is on, near a Santa doll that moves when you clap at it. And I see that this girl, who is as tall as my waist, is overwhelmed with something that is unmistakenly pure joy as she moves her body side to side like she’s dancing to silent music.

            There are side effects to this mode of time travel. For one, it may cause melancholy and nostalgia hard to get over. So, the other mode of travel that I find myself leaning towards more often is the mode done through words. It’s the travel done when a person reads words on a page and is, as testified by so many bibliophiles, transported mentally to a different era, location, and world, even. For instance, I’ve traveled all over the place across all time periods, including Ancient Egypt, Rome, Judea, and colonial Connecticut, thanks to history textbooks, historical fiction, and even sources like diaries, journals, and letters. Some words, like those found in science fiction or fantasy, introduce the reader to new places of endless possibilities: a world where there’s a school for wizards and witches, a world engineered to have no pain or suffering, or a dystopian world that’s worse than the one we’re living in. This type of time travel really has no side effects aside from the fact that the traveler might lose sense of time. But how great is it that you can visit the Incan Empire all from the comfort of your home, sitting on a sofa? No flight tickets, things to remember to pack, or any other thing to consider; just an hour or two to delve inside the words on the pages. Another perk is the fact that you can visit the Incan Empire at its prime, without all the ruins, and meet people from the era when it thrived.

            I think another great aspect of this mode is that it allows one to travel inside another’s mind, not just to a place, time, or world. The words take one inside the thoughts of the writer or the narrator and in the process, one gets to explore experiences and perspectives one never knew or even thought about. What better way to learn to empathize and become aware of others and not just yourself? And what great way to realize that the world is so much bigger than just yourself and those around you and to find out that you are not alone in your experience, whatever it may be? But if your life is truly a one-of-a-kind story, how wonderful is it that you can write and share to the world and connect with those who felt something from your words? And so, I propose that we all learn to time travel, not just to travel anywhere at any time but so that we empathize, understand, and connect.

From,

The Time Traveler

Thanks for reading!

Photographs by Annie Spratt