Away

and some wayfaring companions

the soul travels at the speed of walking

〰 proverb 〰

photo © Conscious Design on Unsplash

Travelling

Travelling—it leaves you speechless

then turns you into a storyteller.

〰 Ibn Battuta 〰

Travelling sounds like adventure, smells of freedom, and has a foretaste of holidays. Travel is filled with memories, mostly good ones outweighing any niggles and turbulences, which makes it such a popular pursuit.

Given its spread of positive associations, you might expect that the word itself has had an exciting journey ~ wherever it came from ~ before settling into its contemporary English comfortzone.

Neutrally speaking, travel is a kind of movement, a passage through space or time. Travel can be fast or slow, depending on the means of transport. In any case, it involves departing from one place and arriving at another.

Of course, we all know that travelling can wobble through transient hardship and stumble into the odd pothole ~ delayed flights, upset stomachs from exotic food, clashes with strange customs, failed communications lost in translation.

However, who would have thought that the history of travel is anything but comfortable? That this innocent looking word, causing itchy feet and wanderlust, is carrying a dark story, disturbing, painful, and cruel…

Travel has taken a unique turn along its journey through the English language. Common to all Roman languages ~ travail in French, travaglio in Italian, trabajo in Spanish, trabalho in Portuguese ~ this word has never signalled an allusion to leisure and fun in the sun (unless you’re an outdoor activities instructor).

Only English has given it a glossy image of glorious sunsets, happy smiles, and cocktails served on ice, as advertised by the travel industry.

In French, Portuguese and Spanish the same word means quite the opposite of holiday. Travail/ trabalho/ trabajo spells work. The Italian travaglio is used in the sense of labour (as in childbirth), and also hardship, agony, pain. The related verb travagliare is all about suffering, toil and trouble.

The original noun travail [from Old French travail = work, labor, toil] was adopted in English in 13 c., meaning labour, toil, suffering or painful effort, trouble; arduous journey.

The related verb travail ~ used in the sense of to go on a difficult journey ~ is the turning point, where the contemporary English word began to follow its own route.

Travel is the anglicised version of travail and has been used since late 14 c. in the sense of journey (both noun and verb).

A step back in time takes us to the Latin tripalium, revealing its heavy baggage…

Tripalium ~ or tripalis (= three pales) ~ was a torture instrument made of three stakes, three wooden posts crossing each other in the middle, and served as a tool for crucifixion!

Along the Camiño de Santiago : photo © Les Argonautes on Unsplash

Peregrinating from Abroad to Alien

Walking is how the body measures itself against the Earth.

〰 Rebecca Solnit 〰

Fortunately we can choose less troublesome words for moving away from home and back. When our ancestors went on a trip abroad, four or five centuries ago, they might not have mentioned ‘travel’ at all. They might have called it peregrination.

This rare and beautiful word, born of an entirely different conception, makes a lot more sense than travail. Peregrination has dropped out of use, but it’s not extinct and may be worth reviving.

Peregrinate [from Latin peregrinari = to travel abroad] literally means to be alien. The verb is used in the sense of to wander, roam, walk about, meander. It is derived from the noun peregrinus (= foreigner).

The noun peregrine referred originally to foreign lands, beyond the borders of the Roman territory. Now used for the peregrine falcon, it may have been applied originally to migratory birds in general, or birds ‘caught in transit’.

The journey of a human peregrine was done on foot rather than by other means of transport, an activity we now refer to as walking.

Walking (= travel on foot) originally had two meanings ~ (1) to move around and (2) to roll up. Perhaps this refers to the rolling movement of the human foot from heel to toes as the soles of bipeds touch the ground?

From 13 c. the meaning of walking expanded into passage of time; going away; fulling cloth; exercising a dog or horse; and moving a heavy object.

Peregrination [from Old French meaning pilgrimage, long absence and Latin peregrinatio = a journey, sojourn abroad] is the formation of a noun based on the adverb peregre (= from abroad).

Peregre [from Latin per = away, through + ager = acre, field; land, country] indicates that the boundaries beyond which the wanderer becomes an alien are not necessarily the borders of a country. They can be as tight and close to home as the gate of your own backyard.

Alien [from Latin alienus = belonging to another, not one’s own, foreign, strange] is simply a synonym for another, other, different but with some emotional baggage attached. The original English meaning (mid 15c) referred to residing in a country not of one’s birth.

It did sound a little odd when Sting used the word alien in his song Englishman in New York in this sense…

I don't drink coffee, I'll take tea my dear

I like my toast done on one side

And you can hear it in my accent when I talk

I'm an Englishman in New York

I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien

I'm an Englishman in New York…

But he was exactly spot on ~ give or take half a millennium out of date.

Alien shifted into the sense of ‘wholly different in nature’ in the 1670s. The definition ‘not of this Earth, coming from another planet’ took hold by 1920.

Alias [from Latin alias = at another time] is a close relative of alien, where the travel is focused more on time rather than space. The sense of ‘assumed name, pseudonym’ has been recorded from around 1600.

The English word else (originally meaning in a foreign land) is a close cousin. It can refer to being in another place in space or time.

Somewhere Else Along the Way : photo © Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Pilgriming and Journeying

All of us are pilgrims on this earth.

I have even heard it said that the earth

herself is a pilgrim in the heavens.

〰 Maxim Gorky 〰

The English language doesn’t have a single word for ‘beyond your garden fence’, mainly due to a lack of perceived need, I guess. Instead, the Latin peregre has gifted us with the word pilgrim ~ originally defined as “a person travelling to a holy place as a penance or to discharge some vow or religious obligation, or seeking some miracle or spiritual benefit.”

The meaning of pilgrim has since expanded to include crusader, traveller, wayfarer.

The name Pilgrim Fathers is associated with English Separatists who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620 and founded Plymouth in Massachusetts.

Pilgrimage ~ the journey undertaken by a pilgrim ~ is now used in a broader sense for a specific type of travelling, either to a holy place, or any other destination which has a specific meaning to the pilgrim.

A pilgrimage is usually a long journey, commonly undertaken on foot. Defined as a long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance, a pilgrimage can take many forms:

A religious duty, like the Islamic hajj to Mecca (with direct flights from other Muslim countries)

A walking along a specific route, e.g. the Camiño to Santiago de Compostela, for religious or other purposes

A spiritual journey on a personal quest

Journey [from French journée = a day’s length, from Latin diurnus = of one day] originally (1200) refers to the distance travelled in one day, or to a day’s work. From around 1300 the word was also adopted for the “act of traveling by land or sea.”

A synonymous word was journal, used in both identical senses,“a day's travel or work.”

Journal, in the sense of a personal diary, has been recorded since 1600, followed by the meaning of daily publication from 1728.

Journalist, as in a person “whose work is to write or edit public journals or newspapers” has been around since the 1690s.

Journalism, the “business of writing, editing, or publishing a newspaper or public journal,” was born in 1821.

Both words, journey and pilgrimage are also used metaphorically for the transition from birth to death we call human life.

Wayfarers Chapel

Wayfaring Away and Back

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

〰 Martin Buber 〰

The alluring 15th century English word wayfaring can be used for any of the above listed modes of travel. Traditionally a traveller by foot, wayfarers can have a tremendous impact on their environment

According to American folklore, one of the great wayfarers was Johnny Appleseed. Johnny got his surname by “wandering across the country, always planting apple seeds.”

Wayfaring [from Old English weg = way, road, path, course of travel + fare = to journey, set forth, go, travel, wander, make one’s way] literally means following a path.

The verb to fare can also be used in a figurative sense of being, happening, existing, being in a particular condition. Fare is related to a forward movement and survives in the words farewell, thoroughfare, seafarer, and a bus- or train-fare as a payment for passage.

The noun fare was originally also used in the sense of ‘means of subsistence’, and ‘food provided’, perhaps referring to the food provisions taken on a journey.

Way as a noun [Old English weg] is a very versatile verbiont. It used to carry the meaning of room, space, freedom of movement, and in its figurative sense can be used for course of life, habitual mode of action, opportunity, possibility, manner or method of doing things, personal choice, direction, progression along a certain course, talent or natural ability, and more.

In combination with the prefix a- it becomes and adverb ~ away ~ meaning on the way, absent from an accustomed place. Away implies distance in space and time without specifying a place or date.

Away generates time and space, by creating distance, freedom of movement, and new possibilities.

Getaway ~ originally a word to capture a quick escape from the scene of a crime, it is now used for trips of people who need to take a holiday and travel some distance to get away from their own everyday lives.

Awayness, a recent backformation into a noun, is listed in some online dictionaries as the state of being absent from an accustomed place.

Don’t ever underestimate the value and power of doing nothing sometime.

〰 Aditya Ajmera 〰

So here I am, on my way to awayness for a few weeks. Not totally away from substack, but awaying from regular publishing every Wednesday on Symbiopædia and every Saturday on Synchronosophy.

It’s been a most delightful adventure to meet you all, my fellow wayfarers, crossing so many paths with inspiring companion peregrines on this substack journey. It’s been a wild and wonderful ride since starting my substack channels end of September 2023/ January 2024. It’s not easy to take a break, but totally necessary, while my mind is already buzzing with ideas for the next chapters and new wordcasts.

I’ll be away on a couple of getaways over the summer, replenishing the creative wells of being.

Now ~ bring me that horizon.

〰 Captain Jack Sparrow 〰