Richard Stupart

Fingers press the stories insistently into the keyboard. Sometimes gently, or sarcastically, or desperately weaving something that happened into a wordpicture that my smile – or yours – will find in some time hence. Sometimes finding a story is hard. Sometimes finding it is easy, but recalling it is harder. Memory fades and few stories remain untarnished under time’s gentle and persistent breath. Other times they are as close as the ring that brushes the space bar. A gentle discomfort whose value keeps it close.

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Away from telling stories for a second, and on to asking questions of travel writing. Stylistically and storytellingly (yes, that is a word now) At Matador, the question occasionally pops up as to what makes for honest, compelling travel writing – the stuff that makes you read to the end, leaves an impression and makes you want to do something, change something, see things differently? In journ. class, particularly the literary style course, there are questions of how to make a story which is more than simply a recounting of events, how to connect a story so that it engages, moves the reader. For what it’s worth, these are my thoughts on what can work.

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The night is a cold place. Empty streets freeze imperceptibly under sodium lights. The warmth of human life dances and slurs elsewhere, its echoes stumbling out into the cold midnight darkness before slowing, stopping. Retreating in nervous uncertainty. Never crossing the gritty line that the cold wind carves between the world of those who revel in the night, who stay warm and safe, and others.
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I don’t so much wake up as have the sleep evaporated from me. Morning in the Sudan drifts warm into the room. My bed sags forlornly, too worn to squeal in protest as I climb out of my sleeping bag; packing it and my toiletries into my backpack in minutes. I’m getting good at moving. I’ve been moving for almost two months now. It’s easier to be efficient today, since today is a moving day. Yesterday was not. It was an exploring day. For fifty mornings, those are the only days I have known. Moving days and exploring days. Traveling fast and light is efficient, but can keep you a permanent stranger – someone around long enough to see, but never to understand.
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