Passing Stranger!

It is 12:30AM on what is Thursday now Friday I guess. Except, tomorrow I am starting a new job, and so really it feels like a Sunday. Sundays scare me less than they do before. And yet, here I find myself, in the same position that I was, a few short months ago, writing because it feels like a matter of urgency, as if the act of putting thought to paper will fix everything.

I was lying in bed just a few minutes ago, with just one last lamp still on, reading a book called The Idiot. Not the one by Dostoyevsky, but by an American author from in the 21st century. It was nominated for a Pulitzer, which surprises me, because the style of writing screams Sally Rooney-esque contemporary literature, with a young female protagonist, who is every shade of emotionally illiterate yet simultaneously brilliant but in a I-don't-even-realize-it way because she is so lost in the jumble of her thoughts and her oddly specific niche interests. I don't know why I am being so harsh, I'm enjoying the book so far. I am unsure of why it prompted me to write, although I do know what I want to write about. It suddenly hit me while lying in bed that I missed London, even though London was arguably my least favourite place that I visited this summer. I think it was this fact in particular that made me feel unsettled, because if I missed dreary London, how much did I miss everywhere else? I haven't allowed myself to think about this since coming home. But of course, the one night when I need to go bed early, is the night where it starts to dawn on me.

For practical reasons, this will be a very unedited blog post, I will write with the sole purpose of moving forwards, and avoiding the backspace button because at 12:45AM I cannot afford to go backwards. If there are still readers left on this blog, well then I apologize for the jumble of thoughts that I am certain will come. You will come to appreciate the extent to which I used to meticulously proof read my previous posts, and perhaps you will miss it dearly after reading this.

Anyways, where was I? Oh yes, my mini existential crisis about Europe. How has it taken me a whole month to realize I missed it? Perhaps it is because it has taken me a whole month to shed the remnants of the European-ness I had gained in those 2 months, and now that I am fully back to being 0% European, I can properly start to miss it. Because how do you possibly miss Europe if you still have some European-ness in you?

Here are some of the European-ness that I have lost in the last month

1. Eating dinner at 8:00PM - I now eat at a sad 5:00PM

2. Using AM/PM to describe time instead of the 24 hour clock

3. Saying hello when you enter a store and saying thanks when you leave. My first few days back in Canada, I would reflexively turn to look at the counter whenever I entered. The first few times, this puzzled me. Why was I doing this. Until I realized amidst the silence that I was waiting to be greeted. And yet no greeting came.

4. Euros. I find myself at times converting the prices in canadian dollars back to euros to see if it is a good price. I don't know why I am like this.

5. My friends, the European kind

But none of this is important. Tonight, I am writing about myself, the one from a month ago, the one that feels almost like a stranger now, and not just any stranger, the kind of stranger you look longingly upon à la Walt Whitman style ("Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you"). I digress. What I mean to say, is that the act of remembering who I was 1 month ago, feels akin to the effort it takes to recall a dream. Everything is hazy, and when I do recall snippets of who I was and what I had done, I can't help but notice that it is tainted with a hint of envy. I envy, because that person is no longer me. I no longer possess that buoyancy, charisma and joie de vivre that was effortlessly mine in the summertime. I think not only about the people I had the pleasure of knowing, but the depth to which I knew them, and what a privilege that is, perhaps I didn't appreciate it enough at the time.

I had always wondered what it was about Europe that made me feel this way. Was it the nature of the people there or was it the nature of who I was when I found myself thousands of miles away from home. I did not feel homesick at all. I felt braver than ever. Everything felt inconsequential, I could talk to strangers and never see them again, which made me want to talk to them even more. I sang in a bookstore and learn to swing dance by the Seine. I rode a scooter by the colosseum at sunrise, before the city had woken, and climbed up to its highest perch to experience a brief moment of peace in city that was chaotically alive. I had an impassioned conversation with strangers at the table across until the waiter noticed and dropped a free bottle of limoncello and told us to drink up to keep the conversation flowing. I swam in crystal clear waters in Cinque Terre and belted Mamma Mia at night with my two friends who I had known for the entirety of that one day, but whom we all agreed felt much longer than that. We called ourselves Donna and Dynamos after my friend Louise bought a jumper that looked exactly like the one Donna wears in Mamma Mia, and we still keep in touch, and I think of them every time I hear ABBA. And how could I forget wonderful wonderful Mathijs, my roommate for a month in Paris, my rock, my fashion advisor, my go to person when I want someone to tell it to me straight with no bullshit, who facetimed his boyfriend to command him to give me a tour once I reached Amsterdam. Of course, there are also friends who have come and gone, some of whom I may never see again. Lovely Bea, who told me about the cold Norwegian weather, as we sat on a warm beach on the Amalfi coast and talked about our tendencies to people please and how it's about time we stopped. And Mei the art student from NYC who spent an afternoon with me at my favourite rooftop library drawing the Duomo. And the french medical student whom I met when he played piano at my favourite bookstore in Paris, the one that I went to nearly everyday to read, until I finished all 448 pages of 100 Years of Solitude.

There are so many more people, so many more moments that I am now remembering all at once as I begin to write. And strangely enough, what I now feel is the opposite of envy, the opposite of regret. Because I still recall these memories quite vividly, I was there, and it was very much me who experienced all of these things. Although yes some nights such as tonight, I worry that maybe I belong somewhere else, where I can fully feel all these things I am know I am capable of feeling. But at the same time, how sweet it is to be able to reminiscence and treasure and thus anticipate and long for and work towards. There will always next summer. And sure, I will be one year older and maybe a little different, but I don't think that this feeling will ever fade. I will still be me after all, and I know that I will not lose whatever it is that will allow the magic I possessed this summer to happen to me all over again.

Before I go to sleep. I wanted to leave you with the full version of that Walt Whitman poem I alluded to earlier, which I'll admit I have never read in full. But out of curiosity, I googled it just now, and after reading it, I can't help but smile at how fitting it is after everything I have written. In those last two lines, he has perfectly captured what I know to be true, but at times still need a gentle reminder of, particularly on uncertain Thursday nights that feel like Sundays.

To a Stranger

Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,

You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)

I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,

All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,

I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,

I am to see to it that I do not lose you.