Thursday, May 2, 2013

How to Know a New Country



  • In this new place (or this very very old place, that is only new to you) hotel doormen say “Welcome home, love!” and customs officers ask with interest about your acting career before bidding you “Cheers!” Now we all know what they say about the skewed gaze of the first impression – plus, a friend will remind you later that it's not just a little insulting to think of the once greatest civilization as “quaint” – yet. YET! Across the pond, it seems that daily life is conducted with a reverence for politic and tradition. A conspicuous weight is placed on accommodating the other. And as a result it strikes you, traveler, that it's possible for faith to come as first instinct, instead of suspicion. This message is reinforced at the U.S Border Patrol, where an officer takes off his glasses to peer down his nose at you when your smile is a tad too eager.

  • In this new place (or this place you've heard a lot of good rumors about and spent but a layover in once, years ago) you must parse out what is true in fiction. People have always described this enigmatic country to you in technicolor, in iambic pentameter, in melodic hook. From this you figured the place was flawless, dainty, full of sweet nothings and little cakes...and mostly you figured this country looked and felt the same to every visitor on some subterranean human level. You figured that here you would always know just what to say and how to be. You figured you would see it in the sun; you figured it would be so. You figured you would follow the same template of all of those poets through all of that history and reap the same reward from this place and then have the same trouble explaining it well, when people asked how it was here and what you've been doing. And if you didn't quite belong in this strange new country, you would know immediately and find your exit with grace. You would find some way to avoid all of the prickles on all of the trees there. And you wouldn't fear those alleys and dark corners you didn't recognize. You'd announce your presence to locals from the hilltops, instead of being a furtive tourist, hiding away your maps. You'd be so fearless. 
But like all good things, the new world is not at all what you expected. Because it turns out that no one anywhere has ever experienced what you're experiencing now, and so the new country is not a 'country' at all but just a few dozen remarkable pages in a little girl's diary. You deduce this because what you've been doing on your trip is not quite in line with sonnets or sitcoms: it's not birds lilting in trees, this terror on top of comfort on top of glee. No one else has ever slow-danced in a living room to Thelonius Monk in afternoon light. No one else has ever walked in silence for eight blocks and almost died, felt like dying, from the floundering feeling in not knowing quite how to apologize, or for what. No one else has a series of Photobooth pictures that maddeningly capture all of your feelings and thoughts in four monochromatic frames. No one's ever been as impressed by anything anyone else has said at an art museum, and no one's ever slept and not slept like this, and no one's ever been this tethered and this free. And no, you cannot explain it perfectly. You cannot explain it at all. But drunk on your uniqueness, the perfect prescience of your own thoughts, you make plans to move ahead on your trek with the deep faith of England's tourism engine. Because you believe that the world should be a considerate place and oh, you want to have faith. You want to go everywhere. You want to tumble forward like a falling tree. Yettttttt, because you are you you cannot quite keep from making these lists and petitions, attempting to suss out the science behind whatever comet this is come stumping across your transom. You mind your borders like a good American. And heck, not entirely without cause! There have been recent tragic events, after all. 
  • In this new place (though really it is the same place as usual, except everyone is suddenly wearing shorts and the occasional tree makes its presence known), you own time and all of the sunny days. You own Lou Reed and Bedford Avenue at dusk, you own your fire escape, you own your body and your voice and your magnniiifffffffficent thoughts and there are days within days where the world seems to electrify with possibility and and other days where you delight in and spin around in the smallest almost-pragmatism: buying flowers (like Mrs. Dalloway!), putting these in jars. And on sunny days, it is easiest to read your book in the park and let all the good luck shine into you, it is easiest to thank whatever force is responsible, it is easiest to believe in anything, the rightness and sincerity of your whole present life. And it seems that on sunny days, above all, you must write your adventures down. Because you will want them in bottles someday. 

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