She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the disconnection between the physical body and the essence of the self during travel.
William Gibson's quote captures the profound experience of jet lag as not just a physical state but as a philosophical observation about the nature of the soul's journey. It suggests that while our bodies may arrive at a destination quickly, our inner selves—our 'mortal souls'—lag behind, struggling to keep pace with the rapid changes in time and space. The metaphor likens the wandering soul to lost luggage, emphasizing how our deeper identity can feel displaced and requires time to catch up with our physical presence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the challenges of travel and how it affects our sense of self.
If you've read a lot of vintage science fiction, as I have at one time or another in my life, you can't help but realise how wrong we get it. I have gotten it wrong more times than I've gotten it right. But I knew that when I started; I knew that before I wrote a word of science fiction.
I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.
As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.
His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary.
I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.
It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.
We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.
A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.
On the whole, monks do not become famous - and that is a good thing - but monasteries do - and that is an excellent thing. In other words, it is the community that matters.
We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.
What is one man's life compared to the eternity of time and space? No more than a snowflake that glitters in the sun for a moment before melting into the flow of time.
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