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.
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