Cetaceus

It is a drizzly early morning in Chicago. Here going on a week now, I am just home from the bar, having seen friends and non-friends, talked a bit and drank some. I missed a show tonight, and forgot to call Sam. But all of this is an aside, because it is moments like these, in which I am surprised to be lucid enough to write something like this, that the strongest feeling I have is one of waiting. Right now, I feel like I am waiting for something, perhaps rather someone, to show up. And it is as if I have been waiting for years, like right here on this couch, waiting for a knock at the door, waiting for you. Someone else, somebody, once asked me if I had any patience. At the time it was clear to me that I had none at all and never would. But the proof is in the pudding my friend, and the fact is that I goddamn do have patience: I’ve been waiting this long, and will continue to do so.

The theme song to this waiting is Vetiver’s “Been So Long,” which I will sing to myself and to you when you arrive:

I can’t believe that you’re knocking
Knocking on my door
Oh it’s been so long, been so long, oh

I am home now, by which I mean quite literally home, at this very moment writing to you from my bedroom-cum-storage space at my mother’s house in south Jersey. I returned to the US from 3 months in Paris and a week in Berlin to two nights in New York, one in Red Bank with the little brother, one here after the obligatory and always anticipated stop at my uncle’s place for pasta and sauce the likes of which you have never tasted, and in an hour or two I depart for the ever-loved city of Philadelphia for a night, some beers, a quick haircut, chill time with one of the best of sisters and 2 or 3 of the best of friends, before returning to Chicago to start the whole process, in the form of year 2 of graduate school, all over again. Yes, that was one sentence. The summer was familiarly amazing and important things happened — things serious, ridiculous, and at times frustrating beyond belief even as they brought me happiness of equal measure at others. I reconnected, and to my mind enriched, relationships with good people, and initiated a few important ones that I can and must describe in the strongest terms possible as having marked, changed, and made better my life, and will continue to do so, both in their continuation into the future, and the lasting effects of brief and powerful moments. All in all, the trip improved my French dramatically, increased my love for certain things and people, and has left me with a sense of both peace and settled determination that I haven’t felt probably in years. Above all, I must say that there were those few words,, simple and to other other ears obvious, delivered with both the force of soft but sure conviction, and not only the ring but the smack of truth, that one night in the briefest but best of periods, in a voice at the time new but as of now constituting a lasting echo for me that I am determined not to let die. What an August–I thank you for that.

I had begun to prepare a post upon my arrival a week and change ago in Berlin, a more proper travel-writing statement of the sort I have composed plenty of times now, and which in the past I had felt compelled to pen, with a simple satisfaction that, although certainly not gone, never really arrived in the usual way this summer. Excerpting part of that draft will say something about why I’ve maintained such radio-silence the past few months:

Thursday September 3, 2009

I haven’t done really any travel writing this summer, which I chalk up to the fact that I haven’t done that much proper traveling, in the strictest sense. I lived in Paris for three months, had an incredibly regular schedule, and spent many an afternoon-into-the-evening pounding out a long and hopefully worthwhile paper, casting long leftward glances out of the northerly-facing 6^th floor window of the Maison des Provinces de France at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, framing the site, across the city, of the Sacré Cœur. That view will be perhaps the strongest visual memory of the summer, if for no other reason than that it was indeed assez belle, and that I saw it every day. Of course, there are/were far more beautiful and far more memorable things in Paris, but such things are not the stuff of blogs. The point being, anyway, that I haven’t felt as though I’ve had much to say since despite the many interesting and cool things that have happened, people I’ve met and fun stuff that I came across, it had for me more of the character of everyday living than of travel proper. Really, I only left the actual city (by which I mean, crossed the périphérique) 3 times: once to go to the flea market at Saint Ouen, once to get a haircut, and once to go to a warehouse/squat party in the suburbs, which was, for the record, pretty awesome. I only found myself in Montemarte once or twice, and otherwise made the 14^th, 13^th, 5^th, 6^th, 1^st and 2^nd my usual haunts. There were a few great times in the 19^th and surrounds, but the core of the city really ended up having enough going on in it to keep me occupied while I wasn’t writing. But again, really the pace was slow, regular, marked with familiar faces and places that soon became so, such that to really feel some urgency to put fingers to keypad never really arose in the way it has for me before. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t a great or eventful summer, but rather that I think the photos I have online say more about the entire experience in general than I can really sum up in writing anyway.

So there is that, and I hope it makes sense.

I did write something furiously, in public, on the Berlin U-Bahn in a way that I think confused my compatriots and the random person who got on the train and sparked off the writing fit. I’ll put some of that down for you as well:

Dear Friend,

I saw you on the U-Bahn tonight in Berlin, much to my surprise and startlement. I had sat down next to a man doing complex mathematics who was himself quickly replaced by a placid blond and white spotted dog. You, not being you at all, not even knowing or probably being able to conceive of you or why this other person would make me think of you, and for this reason even more surprisingly, looked up quickly at me as if in recognition, looking away quickly but glancing back constantly during the ride as I scribbled these notes. (I had to display my handwriting for Ruth as we exited the train). You have no idea how bizarre it was, let alone why, to see you in this place and context, especially for a mythologizer like me, one who seeks stories, hidden meanings, secret knowledges and messages everywhere. Above all, that you entered and sat down next to Petra – of all people! right next to her! — and across from me was something I will probably spend months pondering and attempting to unpack. Petra sat there and smiled unaware the entire ride, me hyper-aware, you looking back at me now and then, directly in the eye even, with a bit of the slightly-angry-but-silently-so face I’d been figuring on encountering at some point, a strong hint of fatigue in the eyes, tired eyes across the aisle, and if we factor in the place, well, how can any sense be made of this agglomeration of personal/person-symbols?

Of course, and this being perhaps the most important thing, this almost-you was not you, but a specter of you, which had emerged from the periphery, the horizon, of the space of my own personal experiencing, from where who knows, and aside from the name of the U-Bahn stop, to where who knows. This specter had no knowledge of you and probably never will, no real knowledge of me either, but only a very much understandable curiosity and probable annoyance at the strange and very clearly not-German man across the aisle casting you furtive glances and writing quickly in a flip-pad. Well, so it happens, we stand in for one another, we mean things to one another, even when not really being there ourselves, or when that meaning has no real connection anymore, or perhaps and lost and irretrievable connection, or who knows what else. I have, here and there, discovered my own personal meaning to certain others, meaning I could never have predicted or known had they not made it known to me, and so have I with others. In any case, I will think about this spectral-Petral-German you-encounter for a while, and hopefully for both our sakes will make some sense of it, someday sooner or later.

My sister is home now, the train is in about an hour and a half. So, I leave you with these fragments of France and Germany now from my old seat in Jersey. Next time, it’ll be Chicago.