The Furthest Distances I've Travelled Flashcards
Like many folk, when first I saddled a rucksack,
feeling its weight on my back –
the way my spine
curved under it like a meridian –
Connects herself to a large group of people
Rucksack - Connotes an image of horse riding / the rucksack is riding her because of how heavy it is
Weight - a metaphor for the consequences and burden of this traveling lifestyle
Simile
Globe and her body are intertwined/emphasizing how intertwined her life is with the traveling / suggest that this backpack has opened up the whole world for the persona
I thought: Yes. This is how
to live. On the beaten track, the sherpa pass, between Krakow
and Zagreb, or the Siberian white
cells of scattered airports;
Yes. - caesura and colon create grammatical isolation and emphasize the absolute certainty of travel / slows down the pace / yes suggests the bold embrace of a new life philosophy
Krakow / Zagreb / Siberia - fantasy-like imagery
Scattered airports - a sense of disorder within nature/man-made
Enjambment - presents Flynn’s own swift move nets from one country to another / consistent travel
Cells
-captivity and lack of freedom
-cells of life - travelling within these cells that give her life
it came clear as over a tannoy
that in restlessness, in anony
mity:
was some kind of destiny.
Tannoy - to make public announcements / voice of fate
Anonymity - freedom in being anonymous / line break reflects that
free from convention
Mid-word break suggests there is something a little bit broken about anonymity itself / anonymity whilst nice breaks the narrator from important things such as relationships and personal identity
Restlessness - shows the agitation from traveling / also fractured rhyme/stanza and word creates the same feeling
2 rhyming couplets - emphasis on fate and the finality of destiny / bound not her choice
So whether it was the scare stories about Larium
– the threats of delirium
and baldness – that led me, not to a Western Union
wiring money with six words of Lithuanian,
Lariam
- a drug to treat malaria
- could highlight the fearlessness of the speaker
- or could be a reason for not traveling
Led me not - maybe no travel / ambiguous
Six words - only know so little about the culture / would not make sense to travel or maybe she has immersed herself risk fully
but to this post office with a handful of bills
or a giro; and why, if I’m stuffing smalls
hastily into a holdall, I am less likely
to be catching a greyhound from Madison to Milwaukee
Giro - government support / allude to financial problems / living a much more normal life or just did not have the money to travel
Greyhound - cheap bus travel
Less likely - implying more possibility of no travel
Enjamberment -> speed of the transition back to a normal life / suggests that life got away / they settled down without realizing it
‘than to be doing some overdue laundry’
-Now in the present, she is ‘more likely to be doing ‘overdue laundry’ rather than traveling
‘Overdue’
-sense of catch up / as if she is catching up with her responsibilities after so many years of travel and carefree from duty
Or if we take the interpretation that she didn’t travel
Then it’s overdue maybe just because she doesn’t have her life together
‘Laundry’
-dull everyday tasks / contrast the exciting adventures she had
‘is really beyond me’
‘However,’
One line - conjunction - shows a shift in perspective
After however, almost all the lines are enjambed / flow of consciousness she has a sense of revelation about the furthest distances she has traveled
One word line
‘when, during routine evictions, I discover’
‘Routine’
Continuously happening
‘Evictions’
Going through her old stuff
But also the word carries connotations
When someone is being evicted then they are struggling with money
But in her case
She could be evicting people because of struggles in a relationship
This could mean the speaker is evicting others from her lives
Periodic clearing out
Discover
-carries connotations of value / like finding treasure
‘alien pants, cinema stubs, the throwaway’
Alien Pants
Hint at a forgotten passing / maybe a sexual encounter she has had
Alien - because their distant / sense of unknown
These objects could be representative of her travels
These ordinary objects are imbued with the personal memory of a past relationship
Caesura / gives these objects value / mundaneness of the objects constraint the imagery from before / more fantasy like
‘comment - on a Post it - or a tiny stowaway’
Stowaway - forgotten / baggage in a stowaway / dragging along her past memories and traumas
Could be that she is like metaphorically a for
She is painted as though she is like a vessel of travel / she carries these memories with her and it impacts her
‘pressed flower amid bottom drawers,’
‘Pressed’
‘Crushed’
Sense of reluctance to see the past / yearning for it / but she is suppressing it because the nostalgia brings sadness / highlights the difference to the present
‘I know these are my souvenirs’
Souvenirs
Are cheap and not valuable
However these are the only things that survive from her travels
They are invaluable to her because they symbol the rich experiences of her past
My
Possessive / she seems them as part of her and her identity
‘and, from these crushed valentines, this unravelled’
‘Crushes’
Crushed - loving sense
Crushed - destructive sense
Contrast and juxtaposition / it like she does not know what to make of these experiences she has had
Distorted past / present maturity / or it could be heartbreak
‘Unravelled’
Unravelling of his thoughts / unravelling and comes to the conclusion that her most memorable experiences are her relationships
‘sports sock, that the furthest distances I’ve travelled’
Realises that her furthest distances are not from Zagreb to etc but she gains a shift in perspective
Furthest - distance between romantic partner and emotional relationships
Mundane objects - are the farthest she has travelled they aren’t exotic
Souviners of her ordinary relationship / those are the farthest distances she has travelled
‘have been those between people. And what survives’
‘of holidaying briefly in their lives.’
‘Holidaying’
Symbolic of the intertwining of journey and relationships
Sad tone / could mean she is alone
Holidaying is simplifying her journeys / nothing comparable to her times in other lives
Holiday - escape and relaxation / gains happiness
