Cyberspace Adventures: Lost in Metaphor

Armchair Adventures

Lost in Cyberspace

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

~Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

For internet search engines, the metaphorical journeys popularly known as armchair adventures don’t compute. This literal-mindedness in cyberspace results in some humorous confusion in the Google space on our home page, where ads for boats, boat covers, boat insurance and gold bullion used to pop up to tempt the misguided net surfers who landed on our page only because they searched using the keywords “gold” and “boat.” These ads amused me until a burial at sea ad started appearing, and I reluctantly blocked all boat ads.

As you’ve probably noticed if you’re a regular Ship’s Log subscriber, Gold Boat Journeys is more about the voyage than the vessel. Because search engines don’t usually recognize metaphors, internet advertisers, researchers, bloggers and readers often miss out on language’s nuanced possibilities.

My “travel blog” defines journeys more loosely than most in this category. Although I chronicle and refer to many actual travels, I also explore the possibilities of imaginary voyages through reading, writing, memory and creative exercises. In the process, I use wordplay, another additive that causes search engines to sputter. As a blogger, I have learned to respect the Sea Monster of SEO, but as a writer I delight too much in metaphor to toss it overboard.

Can Gold Boat Journeys help you realize your travel dreams? Yes: By inspiring you to imagine them, write them down and live them every day. As Homer, St. Augustine, Chaucer and so many great thinkers throughout history understood, life itself is a journey. Even if we never leave home port, our uniquely human ability to imagine ourselves somewhere else means that we are all travelers.

Here are a few blessings for your voyage, including my Navigator’s Blessing for creative travelers.