Last night I went to Sweden. Not on a plane with my passport in hand, and not with my bank account weeping at the cost of airfare. I just… slipped there. Outside of time and space, while I was sleeping.
I stayed in a little inn with a big dining room full of travelers. I ate potatoes and fish, simple but perfect, alongside flatbread with an herb-cheese spread that might honestly have been the best thing I’ve ever tasted, even though it only existed in a dream.
It felt real enough that when I woke up, my hands and feet were buzzing, as though I’d crossed some hidden border and only just re-entered my body. Real enough that the memory stayed with me all day, even while I was chewing my way through all my "get it done before the weekend" tasks.
I thought about it while answering emails, while juggling client deadlines, while doing all the mundane things that make up real life. I even made a couple of quick renders of the meal, just to hold on to it and remember how it looked, smelled, and tasted before I forget forever. Looking at it now, I almost believe it was a memory.
The Travel I Never Had
I’ve never really been able to afford to travel. At least not in the sweeping, glamorous sense of hopping on planes and visiting countries whenever wanderlust strikes. I dreamed of it when I was younger and fully took it for granted that I'd do it one day. I thought my adulthood would be full of stamps on passports and photographs of me grinning like a demon with a secret in front of landmarks.
But adulthood didn’t go that way. At all. Adulthood has been a never-ending parade of bills, financial worries, and the grind of survival. Trips abroad were always out of reach, filed under “someday” and then quietly filed away again.
So maybe it makes sense that when my subconscious wants to give me the gift of travel, it does it in the most magical way possible.
Portals, liminal spaces, places you can only get to by stepping outside of ordinary time. When I dream of London, I arrive through a strange terminal full of glowing doors. When I dream of islands, they appear where no reasonable map would place them. When I dream of Sweden, I don’t book a flight. I just arrive.
