back in black

hello. i am back in the US, heavily changed, it may be. i'm way into wearing black, got a kind of new haircut, and i'm looking for a bike and selling my car, may be. i just want you to know that you got your money's worth on my european immersion.

back again in new york, whence we started, I wonder if it only looks as beautiful as this because I’ve been away from it, from the US, for so long. Feelings about places change the longer you are there, and the longer you are not there.

but walking the six or so blocks back from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in the everlasting twilight, the same thing happens to me that happened the first night i started this carnival ride. blowing like a piece of newspaper through the hot subway tunnel, meeting eyes at a respectful wary distance, sitting in the sun so alone and in multitudinous company—those are the things i’m speaking of, the answers for homesickness.

i've long been aware that my sickness is not for a place but for its people, but I find it’s not even just individual voices or faces that i miss, but their commonality, their communal history. america doesn’t have that deep grounding of history that the people of england or france share, but they have one of their own, and for better or worse, it’s mine, too.

it is nice to go traveling. but I look forward to going back to work, to labor in a way that needs no translation. Maybe that is the good of visiting an artist’s milieu. we need our own houses, our own cities, to make us feel both safe and rebellious.

when i travel, i look at a place with a mind to whether i could live there or not, and whether i would want to. i’m discovering that it isn’t just the fixtures i’m looking at, when making that evaluation. i’m looking at the people. i’m sniffing out the atmosphere they create. the hardscape is both of them and by them. i think that’s why i like paris and new york as much as i do…they are constantly in flux, trying out new buildings or parks that don’t perfectly blend with the existing hardscape. london, by contrast, or amsterdam, seem to have a stricter ethic of construction consistency. (coinage of a new term…you like?)

then, also, there are the clothes they wear, the way they get around, how long they meet your eyes for when you pass them on the street. there is to consider what the street buskers are doing, the pitch of conversation among merchants, policemen, bartenders, businesspeople coming and leaving their offices and cafes. I’m getting better at picking up those clues. if you want to know about a specific place, i’ll tell you. the full comparison is more than you want to read right now.

now I’m on the amtrak from penn station to baltimore. we’re passing through new jersey—suburban trenton, at the moment. green lawns, municipal ballparks, chain link fences and the widest front porches zoning will allow. i like america so much better these days than i used to. i still love france to distraction, i’m charmed by amsterdam, i’m putting london in my pocket for a rainy day…but i haven’t seen such ballparks anywhere else. who takes such care of their suburban ballparks but americans? (maybe cubans do; i don’t know, i haven't been there yet.) what does it say about us that we put that kind of
value in that kind of commodity?

you tell me.

i’m serious. i’ve talked long enough.

even if it’s only across town to pick up your car, or across the country to visit your mother.
in retrospect or in real time, let me hear your travel stories. please.
i miss you.

(from the end of my divine scholarship trip to europe, in the summer of 2007)