No Time....For Things (Part 5 of 5)

At my friend Packer’s house up on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York, there is a small decorated magnet with words painted on it. It says,

“The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things.”

I discovered this magnet the second day of my time at the River, and I – still waking up a bit – puzzled over it for much of my blueberry muffin. It annoyed me with its vagueness and seemingly obvious contradiction. Refrigerator magnets were supposed to be funny and easily understandable, but this one was neither. It was confusing.

But as I stepped back to pour myself some orange juice, I suddenly noticed that a picture was being held up to the refrigerator by the frustrating magnet. I stepped back up to the magnet and the picture.

It was a picture of one of Packer’s uncles – his Mom’s brother – sitting quite regally (with a huge grin spread across his face) in a kayak on a river. He held his oar proudly across his puffed chest – like a child bringing home a fish (not necessarily large, but caught all the same) to his parents. There was absolutely nothing noteworthy about the picture. I don’t even remember whether it was centered or not, though I do think it was a bit askew on the refrigerator on account of having the freezer door close too many times. But there was something about his unsinkable smile – one that could only have come from a true love for whomever was behind the camera that afternoon – that suddenly made the magnet make sense. And then, at least for that moment, everything was perfect.

****

The day before I was to take a train out of New York, I was already ready to leave. Beyond a quick impromptu trip to Columbia University and an exciting – though lonely – discovery of a delicious lunch place deep within Chelsea, I had failed at even coming close to cracking the city (or any city I had visited) on my own. D.C. had been perpetually confusing with my sense of direction completely shattered, while New York – though feeling accessible and exciting – became a place I could hardly ever drag myself out to explore. The cities – as I mentioned earlier – had remained mysteries.

So as a part of my New York requiem, I stopped into a wine shop after having eaten lunch in the neighborhood to find a few nice bottles of wine for the person who had so generously let me stay in her spare apartment for a week.

I should mention that, though this sounds like a nice gesture, I know so little about wine that had I been left to my own devices, I would have most definitely (though unintentionally) picked out the most offensively bad bottles of wine that would have rendered my gesture meaningless, if not seemingly sarcastic and possibly malicious.

However, just as I moved into the unknown realm of Argentinean wine, a voice from behind me asked,

“Can I help you find something?”

I turned around to see that I had been asked this question by an (and forgive me for this, but it’s part of the story) absolutely beautiful girl. I won’t go into details, because no one wants to read that – but I can say that I was completely taken with her from the way she smiled to the way that, when I asked her if she could help me pick out a few bottles of wine, she said, “Sure, let’s go to Italy,” which meant that we were going to look at Italian bottles of wine. (I think from anyone else this would have probably been hokey and slightly obnoxious, but, seeing that reasoning was not exactly present in my mind at the moment, I thought it was great and completely endearing). Anyway, for the next ten minutes or so, we puzzled about the store, looking for various bottles of wine and making sarcastic side remarks about whatever I could think to say. After we had picked out three bottles, we went to the cash register and talked about home and coffee and anything else that could possibly be used as the tinder for conversation, and then she handed me the bag, said what a pleasure it had been, we smiled, and then I left.

I don’t usually write about this type of thing, and typically with matters of the heart, I can be nearly silent and terribly reserved about them, but what was significant about this encounter was the way I felt when I walked – with wine in my hands – outside into the cloudy New York afternoon.

I don’t want to leave.

The New York landscape wasn’t exactly making a great case for staying – it was cloudy, smelled a bit like urine, and as I rounded the corner of the building a large clod of construction dirt exploded to pepper my eyes. But as I continued to walk back to my apartment to drop off the wine, my heart started to drag – like a stubborn dog on a leash that just sits down when it doesn’t want to walk any further – and I became overcome with an asthmatic sadness that I was leaving the next day.

*** I should stop here and mention that I have tendency to fall in love with the most hopeless circumstances. It’s the symptoms of romanticism, I suppose, but it’s ridiculous, while anything possible, feasible, or logical is out of the question. From falling in love with the girl at the gallery on a weekend trip to Oxford to our substitute teacher in Vietnam to the wine girl on my last day in New York, the majority of my love life could be called unrealistic and, at worst, imaginary. And yet tangled with my imagination is a deep sense of hope that sustains me but more importantly wakes me up to the wonderful things that I am graced with daily. (I should add that - after returning to my apartment, wallowing in heartache, and listening to the song “She’s Gone” by Hall & Oates about 15 times straight, I decided that I had to go back and get more wine. The second time, we went to Chile and Sonoma. It was lovely.)

Of course, I got over the fact that I was being unrealistic and hopelessly hopelessly romantic about the whole affair and future of my relationship with the wine girl, but when the sadness of leaving continued to weigh upon me, I began to realize that – as a general feeling of sadness and regret that I felt in each city was actually not a feeling rooted in regret for not having fully taken advantage of the city. Of course there were fun and unique things to do in both of them, but I didn’t feel terrible that I hadn’t taken a tour of the Capital or gone to the top of the Empire State Building. No. What I realized was that the sadness that I felt was rooted not in geography but in humanity – the people that had made my time in each city so wonderful and unique and worth the plane ticket and the cramped seat.

My ties to these cities and the connections that I made with them were based solely upon the people with whom I had had the absolute pleasure of sharing it. It is why walking the entire length of Chicago with Taylor last summer is still one of my best memories. It is why the Tamarins that are the happiest are the ones that share in the fury of new discovery and experience with other Tamarins – you little takers of lemons and makers of lemonade.

It was the people not the places that were making me feel so sick about leaving D.C. and so sick about leaving New York.

****

The other night, I went with my brother and sister-in-law and some other folks to a Fourth of July balloon-glow and fireworks display. We sat out on a small green hill away from the bulk of the crowd and spread out a blanket and covered it with little plastic containers of potato salad and barbecue, which we ate on paper plates with beer and bottled water. It was hot and the mosquitoes were out – hovering around our ankles and our ears.

The night grew darker as the horribly awful band continued to play. We only wanted fireworks and yet it seemed as though they would never come. Hours passed.

Finally, we started joking about how the fireworks would never come, and how the name of the band (this was Will’s idea) was Steve Azar and the Fireworks. We all laughed together and began to complain about our situation, and yet as our hope began to dwindle, a lone rocket flew into the air and exploded with a brilliant, shimmering yellow that smeared down across the night sky. And then, they came in streams – every color you could imagine, booming, swerving, and streaking across the sky. We lay down on our blankets – the grass crunching beneath us - and grinned at the explosions in the sky…together.

We smiled, because it was perfect.

****

So with the first half of my trip completed, I want to thank my interview subjects again – wonderful fellow Mississippians – but more importantly, I want to thank the people that gave the cities that I visited a heart and a soul. So, here’s to you Taylor and Brendan. Here’s to you Emre and Hannah (and Claudia, of course). Here’s to you Frances and Masha. Here’s to you Gabriella and Annalee. Here’s to you Packer and Mary and Pop and Gram. Here’s to you Mitch and Dixie and Jake.

Thank you all for making the past month absolutely wonderful.

Thank you all for making my heart feel like shit whenever I have to leave a city.

Thank you all for making what could be very ordinary spaces into extraordinary places.

And finally, as we say back Home – a place that I love – I want to say “Thank y’all” because it was y’all that made me feel like I was there every moment of the way.

No Time...To Discover the Soul of a City (Part 4 of 5)

In the past month, I will have slept in at least seven different places: a squeaky fold-out couch in Brooklyn, a large bed in a lonely bare room in Chelsea, a crooked inhospitable couch that looks out over the St. Lawrence River, a small single bed a few rooms over from the couch, a luscious looking bed in Atlanta with frightening tribal masks overlooking it, a desperately uncomfortable seat in a train traveling along the Hudson River, and in a cramped seat on an overbooked flight from JFK to Atlanta next to a large southern woman lightly humming bad modern pop songs to herself.

In the past month, I have woken up to Italian realtors banging on doors, turbulence somewhere over Virginia, and taxis blaring their horns at one another. I have woken up to behold a hidden lake in upstate New York with a lonely fisherman shrouded in low hanging fog and drizzling rain, and I have woken up to a lonely room in Chelsea with a loud window unit sputtering icy air at my feet. I have woken up to the sun rising on the St. Lawrence River with the most horrific crick in my neck and my back, and I have also woken up completely rested in a rainy, dark apartment with an overpowering craving for chocolate croissants.

The past month has been made of one-way trips, fast connections, and quick lunches for one. It has – at times – been supremely rewarding, while at others it has been infuriatingly unsatisfying and cripplingly lonely.

Let me start with the frustration…save Part 5 for the rewards…

The general protocol with most of my interviews has been like this: after a few emails (with lots of looking-forward-to-meeting-you’s from me), we finally meet. The location is different every time. I have interviewed people in Starbucks, living rooms, offices, noisy markets, lobbies, bars, conference rooms, and on dinner tables with the recording equipment snaking through the wine glasses and dirty dishes. The “foreplay” is pretty simple: I explain the project, they ask exactly what part of Mississippi I’m from, we usually find someone that we know in common, and then begin the interview. Interviews last somewhere between 30 minutes (at the most brief) to over two hours (at the longest). I think that the best ones fall in right around an hour and ten minutes. In general, I ask the same questions, and a lot of the time (and this is a good thing for finding themes), a lot of the answers are basically the same. Smiles are exchanged and laughs of understanding are shared. Connections are quick, our Mississippi-ness is acknowledged, and then as quickly as we meet, the interview is over.

But I think of two particular interviews in which I felt that a deep connection was found between the interviewee and myself – a rare, precious understanding in which comfort is not a concern and smiles come easy and frequently. Naturally, these two particular interviews flew and as we began to walk from the cafes in which we met – just like old friends, moving to the next place for dinner or just back to an apartment – we quickly realized, in both cases, that our relationships (at least for the time being) were doomed.

We come to a street corner. I say I am going North (not forever, I swear), and she says she is going South. We stop and waver awkwardly as though pushing against a greater more natural force, shake hands, and then walk away – resisting the urge to look back and smile.

No time.

We descend into the body of D.C. – the metro. Again, I’m going Uptown. He, downtown. “What a pleasure this has been.” “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do.” The lights on the floor begin to blink. The wind roars through the tunnel. My train arrives. We shake hands. I step on the train and watch his figure – now a dark silhouette – turn with the backpack over his shoulder to wait for his ride.

No time. No time at all.

The life of an introverted person traveling alone, I’m discovering, can be incredibly unsatisfying, and I would be lying to you if I said that I wasn’t lonely. I am. Not always and not to the degree that it begins to hamper my ability to move. It’s not that. On a day-to-day basis I’m quite happy, but, at times, I almost feel as though my discoveries and adventures (if you want to call them that) mean less because I am alone – unable to share with others in the joys, the mistakes, and the questions of the road.

I’ll be the first to admit that I bring this discontentment upon myself. Good and happy traveling demands a courage and a willingness to make mistakes. It demands that you stop into a restaurant that is not called Whole Foods and that you be willing to spend the afternoon at a coffee shop that is not called Starbucks (I’m guilty of both). It demands that you get lost, ask for directions, and – most importantly – ask for (and trust) recommendations. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I walked the streets of New York just trying to find a good place for lunch – only to settle with the Neighborhood Whole Foods. I would literally walk 30 blocks uptown and then 30 more downtown, just to return to the comfortable choice. Something that I knew I could count on. A place I knew that I could get soup and juice. What I really wanted, though, and what I knew I wouldn’t be brave enough to do was to stop into a café I knew nothing about – that may or may not be good, that may or may not have soup. How do you even begin to crack these cities?

If he or she was wise, a good traveler would try to be as much like a Tamarin as possible.

I recently came across a Discovery Channel show called “Survivorman”. The premise, as I understand it, is that an unfairly capable guy is dropped into the middle of some savagely brutal wilderness with a camera and seemingly worthless equipment. For the next seven days, the man records himself surviving in the most extreme circumstances before his film crew comes and picks him up. He is never comfortable - as he snuggles into his bed of gathered grass and says with a parched grin to the camera, “Sure hope there aren’t any scorpions in here!”

In that sense, I don’t envy him. I don’t wish I could eat live scorpions that pinch my tongue as I try to swallow them. I don’t wish that I not be able to find water for three days. My current self doesn’t wish for the struggle, though it wishes for the feeling – a love for the land as deep and profound as any love can be.

I need to yearn for the struggle that makes the love.

It’s a love that doesn’t hesitate putting scorpions in your bed or giving you food poisoning – but it’s a love that sustains and keeps you aware all the time.

Needless to say, at the end of my time in New York and D.C., I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed with the way I had treated my time in both places. I didn’t feel that deep Survivorman connection. I hadn’t survived anything. I didn’t feel like I had discovered anything about myself, nor had I discovered anything about the cities. In Survivorman terms, I had not found the water in the cactus nor captured the scorpion and eaten it while it still pinched at my tongue. I had not almost caught frostbite in the desert night only to be saved by the beauty and warmth of the dramatic red sunrise.

I am not a Tamarin. I am not Survivorman.

And yet, disappointed as I may be, I wouldn't change a thing about my trips as they occurred. Cities are tricky places. They take time to appreciate, but, in the end, they are just things.

Let me explain.