The big drop

Geographical location becomes irrelevant once, cocooned in metal; fuelled by fossils, landscape morphs into a mere backdrop of our movement placated with convenience enhancing little rituals. The road you walk down differs from the road you cycle on; the mountain you fly over is a different piece of rock than the one whose snowy pass you subject your fully inadequate little Japanese vehicle to. Speed is one factor here, affection the other.

Temporally subjected as we are, by hurdling past we simply 'get' less from our surroundings, as there is a maximum of impressions finding a way into our head. Running down a hill we simply spend less time doing so than climbing it on the way back. But as logical as this principle works, so veiled is the subject of affection.

Affection describes the case in which something proves able to influence your well-being and become 'of value' to you. This can be both positive and negative in nature: people are affected as much pheromones as they are by nerve gas. The higher the intensity of affection, the stronger the passing of time is felt; the more a landscape affects the traveller, the brighter the imprint left on the mental retina.

The workings of affection are harder to explain than those of speed, and the reasons for its occurrence as playfully multivalent as bound up with personal whims.

It's three in the afternoon as I suddenly wake with a start to find myself drowsily sprawled on a couch, the doors to he balcony open and an oppressive heat touching my freshly sunburnt skin.

It's six in the morning when I exit the house where we ended up after a night around the snowy white town. Whitin minutes on my bicycle the icy pins and needles in my
face go a uncanny kind of numb, as I stand on the pedals to get myself to safety quickly.

Everytime I try to understand how these two occurrences fit within a time frame of 48 hours I realise I can't. The monumentality of affection of each is simply too large. Combined with the unnerving workings of speed in air travel, I find myself wondering how skating on the Amsterdam canals relates to swimming in the Indian ocean, how getting stuck on a frozen rail network ties in with a combi driver who forgot to put diesel, and how getting stung by mosquitoes relates to the feeling that your toes are falling off. And since my still spinning head doesn't seem to produce an answer, I will be grateful for anyone who can enlighten me.