Ecdemomania

A morbid impulse to wander

Ecdemomania (n.): a morbid impulse, an obsession with traveling or wandering. A compulsive need to move away from home.

Siberia, India, Iran, the United States, Tibet, Australia. The names hardly matter. None of these places is a destination: surfaces crossed, points of passage, pretexts for motion.

Between reality and daydream, the images do not describe the world. They survey an inner landscape, mapping it drift by drift. A way of looking while always standing somewhere else.

Out of this wandering, slowly, a lexicon settles. Fragments of space, faces met in passing, traces left or found. Tens of thousands of images, whittled down to a few hundred. A stubborn accumulation, in the image of the impulse that drives it.

Stay in motion. Refuse to settle. Take no root. Distance becomes a feeble weapon against Chronos, against the dread of passing time. Every kilometer offers the illusion of a victory.

It lasts only an instant. Then you move on.