Getting lost on purpose. Can one actually do this? Maybe the List of paradoxes Wiki page presents a similar phenomenon, named after some famous explorer that refused to use a compass. I could look through all the many paradoxes to find one that fits this scenario, but then I’d be reading through Wiki pages instead of writing these thoughts (The Paradox Research Paradox?).
Anyways, I’ve been doing just this. I’m in the midst of a nearly 2 week travel period, much of which I am doing alone, in mostly places I have never visited. Last week I arrived in Montreal and decided that a long, exploratory walk was needed. With airplane mode on and my camera strapped over my shoulder, I got to the corner of where I was staying and studied my surroundings, dropping a mental pin of my location.
For the next few hours I wandered. I turned down alleys. I walked into a museum. I immediately walked out of the museum. I hugged a tree. I ate a kebab at Turkish restaurant in which I didn’t look up the reviews (it was good!). I wove threw parks, up wooden stairs that led me through forested hills. I had the cashier help me count my coins. I asked a guy that looked very cool if I could take his portrait.
Traveling alone always comes with a tinge of melancholy. Nobody to share the moments with, no one to point at things with, to help you make decisions. It will be up to me whether or not I bring the memories I experienced on that walk with me moving forward, as spoken stories, photographs, or simply in my mind. It’s a big responsibility.
But at some point I realized that I was okay with letting things float past me. That worrying about how I packaged a story to deliver later was taking me away from the moment. Suddenly, I wasn’t lonely at all. A yarrow blossom stuck its white umbel out through a fence in the park and Kira was with me. A piece of paper lay on the sidewalk that said “Abby” and she was with me. A sticker of Frida Kahlo clung to a light post and my sister was with me. The trees, the people, although strangers, the two plums I picked up from the corner market were all there with me, patient, and needless of a narrative.
I started listening more too, getting a glimpse of the lives of the people around me. I could sit down and try to write creative dialogue for hours and it wouldn’t come close to what reality has to offer. At my gate at the airport a daughter was apologizing to her mom for doing cocaine and ruining a whole day of their trip, bedridden with a migraine. “I want to stop, but I can’t tell you that I will, because I’ll just let you down when I do it again.” Today, a woman hastily turned the corner and walked passed me with what looked to be a hickey on her neck. “No!” she yelled into her phone, “I literally burned myself with a hair curler.” A few days ago, I watched a woman berate her husband in front of their young kids and his mom as he tried to help her navigate. “You piece of shit, why don’t you fuck off… 30?! I’m 31 you fucking asshole.” (Well she was sure acting like a 30 year old!). That night, I sat alone in the center of a restaurant, six inches from the table next to me, and learned so much about a daughter, mom, and stepdad just from the way they bickered about the logistics of the following day. I get used to how I communicate with the people in my life, and listening to others is like stepping into a Museum of Human Behavior.
Tomorrow Kira will join me in this new place that I have spent a few days in already. Things will be different. I’ll want to take her to spots I’ve already been to, so she can also indulge in the experience that I had. We’ll take photos of each other, share meals together, point out cool shops and architectural details. We’ll split entrees and pass iced matcha back and forth as we walk the town. She’ll chase after me as I spontaneously jaywalk across the street, and maybe we’ll use our phones to navigate to our next destination. We’ll create our own little world, one that she’ll help me carry with us. But traveling alone in a new place has reminded me that everything I experience is carried with me, even with no photograph, evidence, story, or memory. That the many happenings, no matter how seemingly trivial or inconsequential are, in total, what makes up my life.