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I got an old school black and white composition book. If you’ve gone to elementary school in the U.S., you’re pretty much familiar with those black and white composition books that we used for writing. And when you see one, if you went to elementary school here, it could immediately bring back some of those memories. It resonated deeply with me in terms of writing. And I thought that it could be used as a vessel — a vessel to capture people’s thoughts, hopes, dreams, ideas, information that they wish to share during this time in isolation with other women, with the world, just to get it out in a space that feels safe, welcoming, and warm — and that this vessel will then take that information and protect it and keep it and then go on to the next person on its tour to collect again. And then, that person would then be responsible for making sure that the vessel gets to the next person, and then everyone would do their part until the vessel comes back to us.

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That’s what I envision for the traveling diary — to invite people into an experience where they get to perform an act of kindness towards one another, where they are really pouring out their hopes, dreams, ideas during this period that the whole world is in right now. And then, they are making sure that they’re also protecting what’s put in there from the woman that wrote in it before it got to them.

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I wanted to do it in that way because women when you look at us, we’re tribal, we’re a community, and we’re so good at creating community — just always have been — and I thought that it just would have been such a good time to use these stories as a way to thread us all together because it just feels like for the first time, at least in my lifetime, that all over the world we’re going through the exact same thing. We’re being exposed to the same thing that’s happening and it just feels like barriers are broken down and our humanness is coming forth to where we can relate to one another or at least, if we cannot relate, even in the midst of this, but we can do something that is very, very important to every human — and I think that is to be heard.

 

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Kyra Peralte
The Traveling Diary Tour