Travel check-in

It’s been one hundred and thirty-four days since I left Chicago, and I haven’t blogged once in that whole time. Sucks to suck, I guess. I’ve had other stuff going on. In brief, my itinerary has been: Denmark, Thailand, Japan, France, Belgium, USA, Canada, USA again, Scotland (now), and then France again and back to the USA. Then maybe Brazil before a longer stint in the USA for a 200-hour yoga teacher training in San Francisco, which really is a delightful city.

I’ve reintegrated into the Esperanto community in a big way: I participated in NASK, the Nord Amerika Somera Kursaro (North American Summer Courses) in Toronto this year and met a number of very elite Esperantists, who rated my Esperanto quite highly. It seems plausible that I’m at C1 in the language, which is wild to me, but I still don’t really grasp the difference between the levels, particularly B2 and C1. But that’s alright. I certainly speak the langauge much better than I thought I did, having let the skill lie completely fallow for several years. The last time I actually used or even really thought about the language would have been in Bologna in November (?) 2021. Then I went in for Toki Pona, out the other end of which I’ve come back into Esperantujo.

I’m now in Edinburgh, a city which remains one of my all-time favorites, not least because of the memories and familiarity, but also because it is objectively charming, the people are lovely, there’s an astonishing plethora of vegan options (really shockingly good support for the diet throughout the restaurants of the city, better than anywhere else I’ve seen), the nature is spectacular, the weather is cozy, the café culture is delightful, the bookstores are good and many; in short, it’s a fabulous place, and I missed it terribly. Three years (!) was too long to be away.

Now I’d said to my friends whom I’m meeting here later this week (I’m here early because I’d done what I wanted to do in LA and was excited to be back somewhere civilized…) that I wanted to take a day trip up to St Andrews, in which they expressed the opposite of interest, namely, that they wouldn’t go for all the beer in Belgium. Today was going to be my day, and it’s still early enough that it could be the day, but I’ve been having second thoughts.

Unprovokedly have been coming to me all the embarassing memories of my time there, every stupid thing I said or did, all the missteps and faux pas (I only just realized that misstep is the direct translation of faux pas…), each time I fucked up one way or another. The old temptation of suicide has been coming back: repeated and long-term recidivism is a symptom of addiction. But I haven’t been able to escape these memories.

Trixie Mattel always says that it’s healthy to look back on the past and cringe, because it means you’ve grown since then. But also if I’ve grown so much, it’s because I had so much growing left to do.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in hauntings. Memories can permeate a place so that your mind is transported to what happened there; they seep into the stones and nestle between the rings of the trees; they shine out of the silver-damp stones’ reflections of the morning light, and the leaves, rustling from the breeze, whisper them into the dawn. It’s too hard to go back to all that.

When I was in London last November we were talking about St Andrews. I said I missed it terribly, and someone asked me whether I missed the place, or the time. At the time I said both, but I think what I miss really is the time, which features as an idyll in my memory: it really is the bubble everybody says it is, because the rest of the world recedes from the perfect little place we found ourselves in. But once the bubble bursts, and I remember feeling thrust into the world as if I was being born, too early, too soon, we can never crawl back into its safety and comfort.

And anyway, that was the time when I was making all these stupid mistakes and embarassing myself, the memories that make me want to end it all rather than continue remembering. It’s like a dream, I’m realizing, a nightmare that’s so awful that the only escape possible is waking up. But this dream is my own memories, and there’s nowhere to wake to; there’s only the world to dissolve back into. At least then I’d forget what I can’t bear to remember.

I think I may give it a pass today, not go up to somewhere I don’t really want to go. I might walk down to Leith and hang out at the waterfront. It’s unconditionally positive memories I’ve got there, and sometimes sad ones. Sad not because unhappy, but sad because they’re times I was there and here with my mother, and I miss her very much.

I’m meandering a bit here, but it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I’ve not got anything in particular to say. Hope things are alright with you. Take care. It’s a desert out there…