Posted on

A Mini-Trip

I’m writing from a brown leather couch in the middle of America.

[Thanks to Southwest Airlines and my incredibly delayed flight back in February, I booked my current trip for a grand total of $99. Who says travel has to cost an arm and a leg? If you’re willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of future reward, it is totally doable.]

Haven’t taken a single picture yet, and that’s likely to remain unchanged…unless my friend takes a couple. I didn’t bring a camera (shame on me), but I did bring a stack of good books (Tim Keller’s Reason for God, Anne Sexton’s poetry [yes, still plugging away/reveling], and a novel called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake). I read on the plane ride, but there is too much to do here to really sit down and devote myself to a book.

100_1125

Here’s a late-addition from my walk around the museum.

So how am I writing right now, you ask? Because my friends are still sleeping. I woke up early to cars and trucks out the window, the sound of sidewalk sweeping, the smell of already-hot-sun-on-brick. It’s 86 degrees here in Chicago, and, while I am proud of my friends for their economy-savvy, I now realize the beauty of air conditioning. It’s good training, though, for when I get my own place; judging from my past budgeting choices, things like air conditioning won’t make the cut.

Little apartments are perhaps the best thing ever. I walked in and immediately felt at home. Wood floors, large kitchen, open windows lining the street. Books and books everywhere because M. was an English major, and we English majors feel the need to remind everyone by the stacks that line our walls. It’s fun to see how people grow up – I’ve know L. since 8th grade when we sang in choir together. Now, I get to see her new life, her adventure into adulthood. The brief trips she’s taken to come back home cannot show you a person’s new life, really.

[They love coffee here, so when I woke up I made a pot of dark roast, and breakfast consisted of a nice mug of that along with a Trader Joe’s wheat-free muffin (good? yes. thick? yes. tough? a little.).]

Today consists of a trip to the Bean. Don’t even know what this is, but everyone back home was like “See the bean,” and even here, my friends, the anti-tourists, claim that yes, it should be seen. Then a delicious solo-trip to the art museum while L. works at the theater for the afternoon. I can’t tell you how excited I am for that. This whole three-day excursion is smelling remarkably like Austria, and I can thank my experience there for allowing me to navigate this new city with less angst than I’ve ever traveled before.

100_1121

And proof of the trip to the Bean.

Posted on

On Beginnings

I had the best nap of my life. Everyone had told me, “Whatever you do, don’t let yourself sleep. Push through. It’s worth it.” But after showering the grime of three airplanes and a VW van off my body, I suddenly found myself lying on the thin mattress in my hostel bedroom, the Salzburg sun streaming over me. I smiled in my cloud of wet hair and fell into the deepest sleep I’ve ever had. I didn’t toss and turn like usual; my insides were weighted down to the bed like an anchor, and when I woke up, I knew where I was but I still did not believe it. My first day out of the country and I’d slept three hours gloriously away.

I remember other things about my first day in Austria: the walk I took – alone, American, enchanted, and floating – along the street lined with trees and open fields speckled with feathery white flowers. I thought they were edelweiss, only to find out later they were weeds no one cared about. For one afternoon I lived in an edelweiss dream, and if I’d had a wicker basket on my arm I would have been swinging it. I bought a loaf of rosemary bread and a small carton of blueberries to satisfy my overdue appetite. I felt like a dimwit when I couldn’t figure out how to open the sliding glass door of the supermarket (turns out I couldn’t open it because it was a wall). And the late arrival of my roommate and good friend, her toes dirty from travel, but her eyes alight with Munchen stories.

~     ~     ~

I’ve always been fascinated by beginnings, by first things. Maybe that’s why I have a whole computer and numerous notebooks filled with witty story-starts, left to dangle in time, either through my quick boredom or my fear of lying. Because that is what I feel like sometimes – I must only write what I see, not what I make up – and all I ever see are beginnings of things. My friends who are artists and writers do not understand this, and really, I don’t either. Isn’t everything we create something we “make up”? And yet the best writing I’ve done is of the things I have seen clearly, the rooms that create themselves with plush red couches and pottery mugs filled with coffee. Whenever I try to make my own rooms – my own characters – they seem false and flat. Even when I see a character clearly, when I see her desires, her hair, her intense way of speaking, I do not always see much more than that, and it is always harder for me to finish stories than start them. This worries me sometimes, if I start thinking too much. Then I calm my over-excited self by telling her, You’re only young, you know. You haven’t really had many endings, so how could you see them?

 

The truth is, though, that I’ve had plenty of endings. That day in Salzburg was over in a flash, leaving itself in my mind in yellows and golds and freshness that few other days have given me. Over thirteen years have passed since the death of my grandfather; those long months of his illness are blurry and sharp at the same time. I’ve seen relationships change that I never thought would end, and I’ve struggled to grant forgiveness even when I haven’t been asked for it. I’ve experienced the end of four long years of studenthood – complete with rushed papers, devoured books, and attempts at lofty poetry. This move away from academia is without a doubt the largest change (and harshest ending) of my life. I am stepping out on the path to adulthood, and I’m not sure I like it. I bucked at the idea of moving home, and now that I am here, I close my eyes against the reality that I need to leave soon. I no longer have a classroom to sit in, a professor to meet with, or a project to put off until the night before. I have glossed over all the hardnesses that have littered the last four years, and I’ve shaped my college experience into a beautiful, winding, light- filled laughing thing that siren-calls to me, Do not let this go. You were never so happy, and you will never be so happy again. This is probably the first time I am dwelling on an ending instead of a beginning; it’s a lot easier to feel unchanged when you are looking back than looking forward. But there is little difference between “unchange” and “stagnation,” and I must constantly fight to keep myself out of that place.

 

I know that endings have a kind of beauty, and I know that the ending of childhood has a melancholy beauty all its own: the close of dependence, the close of naivete, and the lifting of the burden we all feel to be different from who we are. While I can attest to the value of endings, I still think I’ll always prefer the mystery and newness of a beginning. Not only does the beginning hold unknown (and therefore, full-of-potential) events, but you don’t know who you will become in the upcoming story, either. I love beginnings because of the horizonless hope they provide. You do not see the endlessly long plane ride back from Vienna to Boston. You do not see the overwhelmingly sad break-up that leaves you wishing you’d never embarked on the risk in the first place. You do not see that what you’d been studying for years to perfect is, after all, far more difficult than you’d thought. What you see is the world laid out before you, stretching stretching and beckoning you to jump in.

Posted on

Back Home!

Back from a week of the midwest. How’d I do with my list?

On the Plane
  • Finish Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and start Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Let’s just say I finished The Year of Magical Thinking long before I got to the plane, and I didn’t have time to grab Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Did read Diane Keaton’s Then Again, which was pretty good. Could’ve used more pictures of Warren Beatty though…
  • Watch all the passengers
And make up stories about them…BIG CHECK
  • Write in my journal
Of course this happened, but it’s always harder for me to write when there is so much to look at and experience. What if I miss something?! The real writing comes later.
Oklahoma
  • Hang out!
We got lost on the way home from the airport (not so shocking to people who know us), and we talked the entire time. And didn’t really stop until the last hug at the Tulsa airport three days later. A lot happens in two years, but it’s amazing how you immediately fall back into the way things always were.
  • Eat sushi and barbecue
Yes, I consumed both sushi and barbecue while in OK. I didn’t even have to ask for them. Now that’s good hosting.
 St. Louis
  • Relax
Definitely. Read. Wrote. Ran dogs in the woods. Went to Barnes and Noble, drank coffee, and looked through books with beautiful houses. Talked a lot. (I’m pretty sure I left A. exhausted, both emotionally and verbally. He’s not used to my lifestyle.)
  • Check out a church
Went to church. A lot. Early service in chairs in a make-shift sanctuary while the real sanctuary is being renovated. Then on to Sunday School (and yes, people are interesting/weird/lovable wherever you go). Then to help out in children’s church. I have a new appreciation for people who work with children. The patience those helpers exhibited could only come from God. Then at 6:30 there was evening church. The evening sermon was thought-provoking, and on the way home we got burgers. A good ending.
  • Check out a museum

Um, St. Louis closes down on Mondays. No art museums were open! But my girlfriends and a husband and I rode the tram up to the arch and looked out over the city. While we waited to go up, we strolled through the Lewis and Clark museum, so I guess that can count. The tram was like a little capsule for five people. We only had four in our group, so some unsuspecting bald man had to squeeze in with us. And the three of us girls sure know how to be annoying when we’re happy. Poor guy.

And I come home, a little more broke than when I left. But who’s complaining? Too many good memories to care.

Posted on

On My Way

It’s a cloudy day here, and I’m doing some last-minute packing and a CVS run for travel-size “necessities.” It’s embarrassing how many things I feel I can’t do without.

I realized last night that I have the tiniest bit of anxiety about travel and new places. It seems obvious and not that big of a deal, but the fact is, I will never be the same after this trip. Every time we do something brand new, have a new experience, meet new people, we cannot remain the same. And I know my goal is not to remain the same, but still. Change is intimidating.

But then again, who’s to say that the Midwest won’t be changed by me?

Posted on

What I Want to do on My Trip!

On the Plane
  • Finish Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and start Slouching Towards Bethlehem
I opened Blue Nights by Didion last week and it was as if I’d already read it. DRAMA ALERT! As if she were an old friend, and our souls had spoken to each other. I felt this way when I read Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood the summer I worked at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – there is something about women who show you their truths. I think they illumine my own.
  • Watch all the passengers

And make up stories about them…

  • Write in my journal
Writing on planes is so much fun. It’s like you’re suspended in time and whatever you write was written in an alternate reality. Also, the idea of writing before you have any idea what your trip will hold is so romantic. All the hopes, fears, and anticipations rolled into a little notebook, no matter what kind of  trip it is.
Oklahoma
  • Hang out!
I can’t wait to spend time with old family friends! So much to talk about, so much to fill each other in on.
  • Eat sushi and barbecue
I make it a point to eat sushi as much as possible, but the idea of eating it in the midwest is a little strange to me. I guess people who don’t live near the ocean still eat fish…? And who doesn’t want a little Oklahoma barbecue?!
St. Louis
  • Relax
One of the best things about my friend A. is that he has no expectations. I can be whoever I want, do whatever I want, and he won’t mind at all. So if I feel like hanging out on the couch all day reading and drinking coffee, he won’t be surprised.
  • Check out a church
Growing up in New England, I’ve only had fairly typical New England church experiences. Most churches have been really small, many hurting, and the few larger ones I’ve gone to have been so academic that it’s hard for me to implement any aspect of the sermons in my life. I’m looking forward to seeing if the churches in St. Louis are different, or if young Christian men have to hide from the ever-eager young Christian women everywhere you go.
  • Check out a museum

I want to hit up the St. Louis Museum of Art and/or the Contemporary Art Museum. Also, there’s a great outdoor art exhibit called the Laumeier Sculpture Park. On Monday, my good friends from college are meeting me in St. Louis (you should be humming the song right about now), and I’m hoping they’ll be up for a little art!

25 Things to do in St. Louis:

http://explorestlouis.com/visit-explore/discover/25-things-to-do-in-st-louis/?gclid=CJDGs9WWlK4CFY9W7Aod6UGCMQ

Posted on

Packing My Bags

Four days and I will be on a plane to a place I’ve never been. Oklahoma may not be the trip to Italy I’d imagined taking this winter, but old friends wait for me and I don’t need more of an excuse to see a new part of the world. There’s something about planning to travel that I can’t get enough of; a few nights ago I felt overwhelmed and anxious about finding a job, about feeling useless, and as soon as I logged on to Amtrak.com and looked at the various routes I could take across the country, my anxiety level dropped to nonexistent. My blood pressure didn’t drop, though, cause whose doesn’t rise at the idea of a train trip?! I may be a dying breed, but then again, check out a little Bill Bryson…

The anticipation of travel has me floating through my days, unbelievably excited and unbelieving in God’s blessings. A whole week to see new things. A whole week to talk and laugh with people I love and who love me. A whole week to be a little bit of someone I’m not. You can recreate yourself every time you step foot in a new place, and that is maybe why I love it so much.

After a few days in Oklahoma, I’m flying up to St. Louis to stay with an old friend. I was worried at first: what do I tell him when he asks what I’m doing with my life? Do I admit that I still don’t know? Do I talk about the glories of retail? He’s not the kind of person to expect cookie-cutter people, but I didn’t want to present myself sadly or pityingly, even if I sometimes feel that way. Now, though, I have an answer. I got accepted into the TEFL program, starting in May. Oh the joy and relief of knowing the next step in life!

So, on to the midwest I go!

Some photos from my summer in Austria. Just too beautiful not to keep looking at! I wonder if the photos from this trip will be able to compare?!

evening sun on Salzburg

If you want to read more about my travels in Europe:

singinginsalzburg_catherine.blogspot.com