For here there is no place that does not see you!
Dear Avery, Grace, Sydney & Julianne;
As you know, I spent the last two weeks in Italy. Currently, I am sitting in the cafe I visit at for an hour on lunch break during my work week, doing the exact same thing I was doing two weeks prior to my trip, and the return to mundanity has made me more melancholy than expected. It feels almost jarring.
Everything has felt absurd since my return and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m still inundated with the haze of jet lag or if the day we spent traveling for 18 hours from Rome to Munich to Boston—all of which occurred under the glare of the sun, as we were chasing it from across the world and so it did not set and thus I felt myself slowing going crazy because it felt like 4pm, deadtime, forever—transported us to a different dimension that I have not yet acclimated to. The day after traveling was a caffeinated amnesia capped with a visit to the Cheesecake Factory that somehow lasted until 11PM and then yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, where I, dead sober, was surrounded by exceptionally drunk individuals starting from 11:30AM that sucked me into an endless loop of ragecage, fireball schnapps, and repeated conversations.
Traveling is abrasive and aggressive. It is uncomfortable. I was afraid often, or at least anxious. I saw so much that even the exceptionally beautiful started to seem redundant—some, though, endured: the view afforded by Cinque Terre’s coast-side mountains during hikes between villages; Michelangelo’s The David towering over a hallway lined with his series of “Prisoners” trying to wretch their unfinished bodies through raw stone, even though I had seen that face countless times in photos, even though I had been staring at sculptures for days on end prior to visiting him; the Pantheon at dusk, shadowed and warm, columned sides curved like ancient arms to corral and comfort; St. Peter’s Basilica, Mary holding her son’s limp body before a hoard of onlookers, a vastness so vast it is imperceivable.
I saw much that I didn’t connect with. I stepped in many of the same places that emperors of the past stepped and felt almost nothing at all. I chose to skip the Sistine Chapel because I was tired and my feet hurt. Often, my neutrality for each moment made me feel guilty before it, as though my inability to decide how I felt about it meant that I wasn’t appreciating how awe-some the experience was.
The uncomfortability of my trip was very raw and immediate, but it put me into a state that always feels like a gift to me: I get to experience this moment flush with its surface! My regular life presents a different kind of discomfort: it is under the surface, simmering with discontent and a lack of gravity, and experiencing these two states so close together has been revelatory.
I want to see so many places and witness so many lives. I want my life to feel important—not in the grand scheme of things, but to me.
I keep thinking about a poem that I discovered during my trip. It came to me as I was reading an interview of Susan Sontag while taking a break from staring for hours at exquisite sculptures and into the stony eyes of the Roman Emperors and Gods that adorn Florence. She referenced the last line of a poem that I had somehow never read before by my favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, and when I looked it up, the words felt pinned to that intersection of time and place, waiting for me:
For here there is no place that does not see you! You must change your life!
Sincerely,
Mackenzie
Dear Kenzie and VTY women,
Happy International Women’s Month! It’s actually Women’s History Month but I called it the wrong thing once and I’m letting it stick.
Kenz, I was delighted to read of your travels across Italy. The way you described the hazy fever dream of traveling is resonating deeply with me. Do you feel like the end cap to a trip like this exacerbates the pain of the return to the mundane? I do. I’ve just spent days luxuriating in the vacation lifestyle and then have to throw myself into motion for 24 hours to return home and to the life I want so desperately to escape. I also don’t pace myself on vacation -- I want to go to every museum, see every sight, and visit every gift shop, sore feet be damned! Then jolting back to reality feels very much like returning to another dimension.
I recently returned from a week in Spain. I spent 4 days in Madrid and 4 in Barcelona. My younger brother -- much braver than I ever have been, has been studying abroad in Madrid since January. This might’ve been the longest I’ve gone without seeing him since he was born. I didn’t realize how weird it would be to be so disconnected from your family for so long and then throw yourself back into full family dynamics (which are straight out of a textbook on birth order when it comes to my family). He and my sister taught me a few of my new favorite phrases in Spanish: claro que si, and hablar con ella!! Ella es la jefa!! (of course in reference to the 16 year old, Ellery)
Immediately upon arriving in Barcelona, I began looking into astrocartography, life lines, love lines, anything that would enable confirmation bias of my feeling I needed to move there. I don’t really believe in any of it (mostly because it didn’t help justify my feelings). But I did feel such a sense of lightness while I was there. There were times I couldn’t stop myself from smiling because I was just so delighted to be alive and there.
Now I know some of that is due to removing myself from work and not having a constant cortisol spike everytime I hear the God awful teams notification. But as many of you can attest, I don’t EVER have the feeling of wanting to move out of Texas. Sometimes to my detriment. So to feel that after 24 hours I needed to move across the ocean to a country where I don’t even speak the language (yet! I’ve been on my duolingo grind) is a feeling I think I will explore.
I was most struck by a spiritual revelation I had upon walking into the Sagrada Familia. Like most of us - I grew up with the non denominational rock concert of a church service, where the worship leader wears his rhinestone jeans with a cross on the rear. And in turn, I developed a resentment for the spectacalization of the spiritual. However, when I walked through the cathedral, I began to weep. Here was a space that connected Earth with the Divine. And it’s taken hundreds of years and will probably take 50 more to build! Awash in the morning light filtered by miles of stained glass, I felt a sense of awe and appreciation I wasn’t expecting. I felt very small. I felt transcendent. I felt the beginnings of letting go of rushing through life, and being more willing to take time to let things be beautiful. Kenzie, the Rilke poem hit me too: “you must change your life!”
I hope Gaudi got to design even more of the heavens than he did Barcelona.
Very Truly Yours & Regrettably in Texas,
Julianne
Hello weary travelers!! (and the generally weary like myself),
Thank you for sharing about your trips. It’s so interesting how moments of deep beauty like travel can make our everyday look a bit more gray but that occasionally something resonates deeply enough to send a shockwave of color throughout all of our comings and goings. I suppose that sort of risk is inherent to being alive and is part of what keeps the human experience fresh.
I’ve had lots of fun recently - I think too much for my secretly 70 year old heart. Though I’ve been spending less time knitting, I have been spending lots of treasured time with those dear to me.
Time has been moving at a breakneck pace for me recently. But I don’t feel scared by it - honestly I’m a bit delighted. I’m not sure why but I have the sense that the next big phase in life for me will be the best yet. Perhaps I’m just excited to be part of a dual income household this summer [soundtrack: 9 to 5 (Morning Train) by Sheena Easton], or perhaps I want time to move a bit faster between now and when I can fulfill my childhood dream of a happy home filled with lots of pitter pattering feet (any suggestions for curing baby fever??).
Anyways, nothing negative to report on this front, other than that my dishwasher is broken and handwashing is exhausting.
P.S. Julianne being ‘regrettably’ in Texas really made me giggle.
Very Truly Yours,
Sydney
Dear Everyone,
Sydney PLEASE DO NOT GET PREGNANT. The same for everyone else, but especially you. We have so many other things to do. Perhaps you could get a small dog? And knit it clothes, and get it certified as an emotional support animal so you can take it everywhere with you.
To add on to the conversation, traveling used to excite me a lot more when I was younger, but now I am too preoccupied with my current day-to-day life to be so concerned with booking trips. Maybe once all my life changes settle I will have more of an urge. I also build minor trips into my life a lot so maybe that’s why I don’t feel the urge that strongly.
Also I keep IJBOL at the thought of all of us going to a music festival. Like !!!! I have to sleep outside? With you all? Lololol. And then we listen to semi-sad mystifying music.
Anyways…. Love you all so much!! Hope the sun shines extra bright for you when you need it.
Very Truly,
Grace McCraw
