Headline & Editorial

Last Issue: #31 The Journey

Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (1825-1905).
This book is the answer to my thoughts on travel. It certainly anticipated the saga of science fiction, but for me as a little girl in the 60s, not a slave of TV and the Internet, and lacking in any strong personal experiences, it symbolized for the first time that physical and mental emotion that later became true on the real voyages I’ve been on in my life. A mixture of curiosity and apprehension, expectation and incredulity have let me discover, firstly with my mind, what the word travel represents.

The Viaticum, which at the time of the Latin people meant the “supplies needed for the road” (therefore the minimum requirements for survival), later turned into the meaning of journey, of distance from one place to another. The departure is certain. The arrival is (almost) assured. The journey is everything in between these two points and you discover it as you push on towards your destination. Over recent years, the excitement of travelling has got a bit lost in the comfort of many cruises and tourist clubs, that translate the search for the exotic into a cheap package. Today, thanks to the web, when I arrive in a new place, I feel as if I’ve already seen it and even the excitement is wasted on something ordinary. What a pity!

The people who have written for this illywords have all approached travelling in what are surely unusual ways and it is surprising the personal interpretation they give to the topic.

Here at illy, the journey is that of coffee. Here are some lines written to start off the illystories, travel stories interpreted by great contemporary authors through short tales, “… the story of the coffee bean is fascinating… from India to Brazil, the adventurous origins of the coffee plant follows the history of the great geographic explorations. Since way back then, it suggests visions of far off people and boundless lands; and it carries with it the idea of the exoticism of remoteness, of memory. And so, still today, sitting at a table in a café, your gaze goes through the cup following stories and visions.”
And the journey goes on!

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Illywords #31 was produced with pictures by students of the Design School of Kingston College, London

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