I apologize for this not being very coherent. It's more of a spew and a brainstorm. But here's an old collection of resources I made:

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http://purl.org/net/cfu/Members/colin/vowOfStability/

(monks in some orders vowed never to leave monastery walls)
Includes:
* Stabilitas Loci
* Horace on Running Across the Sea
* Proust on Adventure
* Seneca on the Well-Ordered Mind
* Emerson on Travel


+ _The Magic Mountain_ by Thomas Mann (addresses time perception. . . + the protagonist never leaves the village until the end.) A most relevant part is right at the beginning. . . discussing the effects of travel and the wearing off of the effect upon return (but also the newness of the place to which you return. . . and you are seeing your old place and routine with new eyes). Mann also addresses how different artistic mediums use time.

"Dragons in the streets" has been my vision for the quality of experience-- as a previous poster described as an experience of the absurd.

Thanks for starting this group. Definitely a fundamental question.

Loving / caring cross-culturally and even cross-ability (deaf, blind, etc.) also creates that quality of experience.

To use piaget-ian lingo: Part of the experience we're after (yet also avoid) when the brain requires a re-structuring--new stimuli cannot be assimilated into existing structure; accomodation is required (a reorganization of existing ways of viewing the world). . . but that is not quite right.

(The only way to re-experience the kind of nearly daily restructuring our youthful experiences demand is probably to die, to become a different person. But, again, you get it whenever you very strongly want to understand something that is very different from your current awareness. Can occur in science as in love.)

Wonderful!

Meditation / mental training also: inward travel. Travel in music, art--

Maybe I'll ponder this and come back with a more constructive post.

I do think that for many of us, this kind of questioning will be the future of our travel.

This is a spectrum--not "travel without moving" but "travel without moving as much".

There's another quote I did not include: "why go anywhere when I can go everywhere with google earth. . ."

I think this topic of discussion almost leads to the omega point:
what is it that we are all becoming together?

Peace,
Colin
http://fo-rest.blogspot.com/
http://j9k.org/


Here are some other odds and ends:

15. Please share any other thoughts or experiences you've had as a result of being car- free and/or using non-automotive transport.

If one extends the carfree philosophy to avoid using airplanes, or even rail... one is forced to cover vast distances slowly, or to stay put because of the vast distances one would have to cover slowly. This is an important phenomenon. Even travel by bike is too fast. Think of the realms in the Hobbit... Think of the homogenization of space... The re-enchantment of space and distance. Don't forget other alternatives to cars... Before there were roads, travel by water was often the only option.

and
"carfreeness as spiritual practice"
http://purl.org/net/cfu/Members/colin/spirit/
(the title may be the only thing helpful to read)