The
night train rattles and whirs its way out of Paris and down through
France. I squat on the floor in the
narrow hallway outside the closet sized room of bunk beds that I’m sharing with
five strangers. I suppose that at some
distant point in the future this day will be a story I will proudly tell to
someday. Or perhaps I will write the story
as a funny travel anecdote in my graduate nonfiction writing class this
fall. But for now, while I am in the
story, I rather wish I wasn’t.
This
morning I woke up early in Salzburg in the hotel room I was sharing with my
best friend, Andrea. Together we took a
train to Munich and together we stood in Terminal 1, facing each other and
forcing sad smiles and saying goodbye.
“I’ll
come visit you in New York,” Andrea reassured me as a final parting sentiment.
I
just smiled and nodded. She had visited
me in Chicago twice in the four years I’d been living there. And I had seen her on a mere handful of occasions
on the ten or so trips I’d made to my family’s home in Platteville in the past
four years.
Andrea
and I had both been studying abroad in Europe this semester we had spent spring
break traveling together. This week with
Andrea is the longest amount of time I’ve spent with a family member or friend
(who doesn’t live in Chicago) since I left Platteville for college almost four
years ago.
I
remember the last time I saw Andrea before I left for college. She, her boyfriend Ben, and our friend David had
come to my house early the morning of my departure. The fog that hangs in the humid air of an early
Southwestern Wisconsin August morning had yet to lift and the grass still
sparkled with dew. I had hugged them
each goodbye. I had hugged Andrea
twice. I had thanked them for being
there to see me off. They were my real
family. They had come together and taken
care of me over that past year. When my
mother scared me and hurt me, they comforted and healed me. When I searched for light in my darkness and
a reason for the harshness of the world, they gave me compassion and
understanding and they read my writing. But
we were young and what they could not give me was a safe place to stay so I left
them for Chicago and an idealized idea of the safety of freedom – of being
alone.
When
I am not living abroad, I have been living in Chicago ever since that morning. I am currently living and studying in Cannes,
France. Cannes is the final destination
of my night train from Paris and will be the end of my long journey from
Salzburg to Munich to Zurich to Paris and then – at long last – to Cannes. I left Cannes alone over a week ago and spent
a weekend alone looking at castles and cathedrals in the Loire Valley. I also arrived, two months ago, alone in
Cannes after a similarly long journey from Chicago to Paris to Cannes. In Chicago I had gone alone to the airport,
seen myself to the gate and wondered if there was something wrong with the way
my life was turning out if – as it happened – I had no one there to bid me
farewell as I left the country for four months.
And
today I wondered it again when I found myself alone in Paris, my wallet back in
Munich. I had no money, no phone, and no
idea of who in my life might be willing to help me. I felt terribly alone. I was
terribly alone. This loneliness – this terrifying
alone-ness – is the real price of my
freedom, not degrading jobs or student loans.
This is the cost of having a safe place to stay: never staying anywhere
for very long, having no one stay in my life, being a transient in apartments
and countries and beds and bars and train cars. Being a connoisseur of last looks.
My
last night in Chicago I had stood on the corner of Balbo and Wabash outside a
dingy 3am bar, watching my friend walk away.
Though I had promised to be back June fifth and made her promise to have
a drink with me when I returned, I still found myself memorizing her black silhouette-like
stature as she made her way from the South Loop bar off to the red line “L” station. Her black leather jacket and her black
leather rhinestone and spiked boots. Her
long black hair. The wonderful feeling
that I had when she was around – the feeling that nothing truly bad could ever
hurt me. She had helped me find an inner
strength that I had almost forgotten to look for. She had told me that I had helped her to be a
better person. And we had promised to
not forget each other. Whether I go back
to Chicago or not, I will keep that promise.
When
I finally disembark from this train I will be met at the station by a man who –
I fear – two months from I will be looking at for the last time. As an inevitable transient and thus a connoisseur
of last looks I’ve recently found myself nostalgic for the present because I
know how easily it becomes the past. I
know the frustration of waking up one day to find my most loved moments gone
and myself alone with no way to ever get them back. So I play the scene that I know will come in
time. I picture myself months from now, silently reminiscing over the slide
show memories of this man who held my hand as heart-shaped fireworks fell into
the Mediterranean and kissed me in front of the Eiffel Tower and with whom I
shared a fear of being average -- this man who picked me because I had subtext
The
boy I left in Chicago had promised to see me once more before I left but even
as he said the words my eyes had taken him in, burned his image into the black-coal
bed of my heart. His short brown curly
hair. His red leather jacket. His thin
pink lips. And the way his eyes looked
at me as if they would love to keep that promise.
“I’ll
see you again before you leave. I
promise,” he had said. And my eyes had
searched his and found no answer to the question that my heart begged me to
ask. I didn’t see him again.
And
so it happened that our first kisses were also our last kisses. My fingertip’s first timid touch of the silky
fine stubble on his cheeks would also be my last feel of him.
He
called me right before my plane took off for Paris. I told him I thought I could love him. He said he thought he could love me too but
that he didn’t know. I said “okay” and I
thanked him for calling and twenty hours later I was in Cannes. We never spoke of love again.
In
our hotel room in Salzburg I told Andrea that I hadn’t meant to leave for
college that morning and never come back.
I told her that I was sorry for never really coming back, for leaving
her behind, for – if not quite losing touch – misplacing it from time to
time. She told me that she had never
expected me to come back. Perhaps the
boy who promised to see me again before I left Chicago and then didn’t keep his
promise – the boy who said he thought he could love me but that he didn’t know –
perhaps he never expected me to come back either. Perhaps I never expected to come back. Perhaps that’s why I wanted him to know that
I thought I could love him – because I knew I could, but I didn’t expect to
ever have the opportunity.
The
night train pushes on towards morning and as my knees grow sore from squatting
on the floor in the narrow hallway so I can write while the five strangers I’m
sharing a closet sized room with sleep, I think of a W.B. Yeats poem, “When You
Are Old.” I think of the part I know by
heart; the part that says:
How many loved your moments of glad
grace,
And loved your beauty with love
false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul
in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing
face.[1]
From
time to time I wonder if I might someday find a man who will love me for my
pilgrim soul. And I wonder too what it
is that I’m making these pilgrimages for, why I am so inclined to go from city
to city, country to country. I’m not
looking for love – that’s not something you’ll ever see by looking. Nor am I looking for myself. The only answer that ever comes to me is that
I am looking for a place to stay.
***
Almost
a month has passed since my night train pulled into morning and I disembarked
in Cannes, to the smiling face of the man who had made the effort to read my
subtext. This Wednesday we made a trip
to Antibes to find the twin of his favorite statue from his hometown in Des
Moines, Iowa. This was now our third trip to Antibes and our second trip in
search of this statue. Finding the
statue was of great importance to the man, after all it was the mirror image of
his favorite statue from home.
We
found the statue on the coast of the town, overlooking the sea and the port.
The statue was an almost two stories high shell of a person, made entirely out
of white, steel letters. The statue’s
alphabet knees were drawn up to its chest as it faced the sea, seeming to
ponder what to make of itself – what to write with the many letters that
comprised its being. I loved the statue
instantly.
As
the man photographed the statue I read the plaque on the ground beside it. The statue was called The Nomad. I stared up at The Nomad. This
was the man’s favorite statue. This
tall, pensive, larger than life, person.
This nomad constructed entirely of steel letters.
The
man finished taking pictures and came to stand beside me. He put his arms around me and, cheek to
cheek, we both turned to stare up at The Nomad.
“You’re
like the statue,” he told me. “A nomad,
taking nothing with you but your words.”
“I’m
like your favorite statue?” I inquired, hoping to coax out a more specific
sentiment.
“Yes.”
There,
in that moment, my heart smiled and hurt at the very same time. Though I was in the moment, I was already
mourning the inevitable loss of it, for I knew that this moment was the kind
that I would hold as both hope and proof of something presque[2]
perfect, later when my pilgrim soul had brought me somewhere new and lonely and
far from that port and the language of the day.
So
I memorized the way rays of evening sunlight shot between the letters of the
statue before we walked away. But it won’t
be the last look that I miss, it will be the feeling of the day. That’s the thing with last looks: they’re
really just a poor attempt to capture a feeling inside an image.
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