ON “SIGHT-READING” A NEW CITY, THE COMFORT OF RITUAL, AND THE IMPACT OF PLACE ON HOW WE SEE.
Dear Sarah,
I’m living this week among the continued oddities, luxuries, and delights of travel, of being away from home — eating something different every day, obligated on none of the days to prepare a meal for myself. It has been a whirlwind stretch and I’ve realized that the strangeness of travel is the general lack of repetition, the idea that I’ll do something new and see something new every hour of the day. At home, in my daily regular home where I wake and sleep, there are familiar patterns, familiar views. The trees I see out my windows are the same every day, except when they aren’t, when the leaves are changing colors or dropping from the branches to settle in crisping heaps on the ground, exposing more of what’s been hidden from view all along. Even when I travel I want to feel regular, try to tread some of the same paths more than once, try not to be a tourist, and think of myself as not-a-tourist — but I don’t live here, and who do I think I am, trying to get comfortable in a new city in just a couple of weeks? I look at myself, see myself as different — but also try to see myself as same, as “tourist” in this land, visiting where I do not live, walking along streets brand new to me, testing bits of another language and feeling appreciative of the number of people here who are excellent English speakers or otherwise are very willing to give our communications a go. I can travel in part because of their generosity and goodwill.
What is the intent of travel? To see new things, try new things, learn new ways of being, experience what is important and historic and delicious and meaningful to other people — to get outside the self as the only way of being. But I feel the disconnect, the exhaustion of being new, absorbing newness, being receptive to newness every day. In my regular life I am building something (metaphorically speaking), laying brick after brick, making something sturdy, a foundation, hours and minutes stacked side by side then staggered and stacked and repeated. This repetition the process that builds something over time. Repetition is at the core of our lives, the daily turning of the earth and its annual orbit of the sun, and our attunement to patterns and rituals.
Today I looked for a special bookstore in the place I knew it to be, walked up and down a stretch of shops, looked closer each time — did things look different in daylight, had I simply not paid close enough attention when I’d come before, was the bookstore somewhere else altogether? I wanted M to see this bookstore I’d seen. I tried to engage my powers of deduction — it was a multifloor bookstore, could it be hiding nestled within one of these taller buildings? Suddenly, on a third or fourth (maybe fifth?) pass we understood that the store was not yet open; what I’d sought from memory — an open space leading to shelves and books and staircases and winding paths through the collection — was instead a closed door, and I could not recognize it, could not see it. It took multiple rounds to see what I could not see. Eventually it showed itself, and I was simultaneously able to see it.
I’m pleased and grateful to be fresh and away from home, and I’m also looking forward to the repetitions of home, the me that exists through the regular mornings, afternoons, evenings. Right now “me” is a collection of hours, footsteps across a city that will graciously have me. M asked how else I’d travel, how I’d travel differently, and I imagined staying put for a stretch of time in a new place, trying out new rhythms. I’m thinking of sight-reading music, the moment when you turn back the cover of your musical part and you play, and you might not know the piece but you bring all you know about pace and tone and dynamics and you cobble something together beginning to end, a new foundation for something you’ll then repeat on, build and polish and refine layer after layer. But in those first moments you try to show what you know and have learned, you hold up your corner of the building, as you build something new. Traveling, you can sight-read a new city and a new you, teach the eyes to see new things, join an existing song, listen to its rhythms. Let yourself be changed, and bring home new bricks to add among the old layers and rituals.
I’m re-reading your letter from last week — it was in the back of my mind as I wrote this, even though now it seems like this is something different. But I think part of the thread back to our conversation is the idea of getting uncomfortable, getting into new situations with new people, and navigating them together to the best of our ability. It requires an inkling of trust, and a willingness to make it through things even as they go a little bit wrong, and the regular belief that we will be able to treat each other with respect. These interactions might not always be the deepest but they help set the stage for how we are together as humans. Is this connecting up? We’ll see how things continue to flow with some time for reflection and the mixing of new memories with older patterns.
Talk soon,
Your friend,
Eva
Dear Eva,
Coming off of vacation, I’ve been thinking a lot about how place affects us. You wrote about this in week 3 as you contemplated how Minnesota Eva might compare to California Eva. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past 5 years about how place affects identity. When we moved to Iowa, it took me quite awhile to recalibrate how I defined myself since I had spent my adult life being “the one who left.” But the way I’m thinking about place this week is not so much about how it shapes our identity, but how a new setting can sometimes function like a new pair of glasses — suddenly we can see.
As I wrote before we left, I had hoped this would happen on our trip, and it certainly did. In fact, I think I started to feel a veil lifting even during our layover in Philadelphia. Just a wee bit of physical distance, some new surroundings — it can be enough to snap us out of our mental patterns to see things anew.
One thing I thought about on the trip was the pale blue dot and how funny and a bit sad it is that we can spend so much of our finite time as inconsequential blips in the universe obsessing over our internal struggles. There are times when you have no choice because you are sick in some debilitating way or suffering the sort of anguish that consumes you. But there are so many times when you do have a choice. So many times that I have the choice of whether to indulge my worry of the day and allow it to grow or look at it for a beat and then turn away.
In my post-travel glow, this all seems so clear. Will it last? Or will I slowly return to the familiar mental patterns in the familiar place? How to keep finding new ways to “give the thing a shake” as you say, without having to relocate or travel across the sea?
I wonder if you’ve found your own new shake on things as you travel through Portugal this week. Or were things already so fresh from your move that the effect of a new place was more subtle? I am excited to hear about your adventures when you return!
Yours,
Sarah