Adieu to Friendly Ghosts
The days before I leave a place are always quiet ones, even if I'm roaming about town, taking last looks at people and places. My final few weeks in London were a bombardment of social activity, an attempt to fit in as many friends and neighborhoods and exhibitions as possible. At the same time, though, I read constantly, trying to fix my memory with books as much as experiences, and in the process forming the idea for this blog. I suppose the time of changing locations is my personal equivalent of those holidays that call for reflection and resolution.
Yesterday, despite the return of a wintry disposition to Philadelphia, I spent a good three or four hours walking around Center City, looking with that 'tourist's view' that I'd set out to explore with four months ago. What I discovered: that kind of distance is impossible for me; a context is always present. Instead of seeing the steely, indifferent high rises around City Hall; the upscale furniture stores nestled into my favorite brick row houses on Pine Street; the garish, leering grin of the sex shops on South Street, as some sort of sociological markers indicating a particular atmosphere (cosmpolitan; gritty; angry; friendly), I found myself on some kind of childhood ghost tour. Each sandwich shop and corner park called up a host of people I've lost touch with, as well as my own awkwardness standing at the fringe of their circles. I was walking, pacing the city as I used to, seemingly in the same gray light. For an hour or two it seemed possible that in fact I am the same self-conscious teenager I was when I left five years ago. I took myself to the movies at one of the Ritz cinemas, curled up on the plush seats and relished my manufactured loneliness as I watched Philip Seymour Hoffman ace the role of the selfish and troubled Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood. Nothing like the 'tortured artist' cliche to help a writer lick her wounds.
It was all terribly self-indulgent, in short, but probably a necessary part of my preparations to board yet another plane in several days and whisk myself off to a life I've planned vaguely, at best. I suppose that's what I crave, the indeterminate: that's the difference between what I used to know, and am learning to know again here in my hometown, and what I can imagine poorly and invent as I find it. At lunch today with a friend (at a place I'd never been before, incidentally, a falafel shop on 20th), I felt the temptation to 'make it new', find new ways to connect with my old self. But all this context, this history -- it makes me awkward, and uncertain. I'd rather be the sure center of a changing landscape, not just another bundled ghost-chaser wandering the brick walkways around Independence Mall.
Yesterday, despite the return of a wintry disposition to Philadelphia, I spent a good three or four hours walking around Center City, looking with that 'tourist's view' that I'd set out to explore with four months ago. What I discovered: that kind of distance is impossible for me; a context is always present. Instead of seeing the steely, indifferent high rises around City Hall; the upscale furniture stores nestled into my favorite brick row houses on Pine Street; the garish, leering grin of the sex shops on South Street, as some sort of sociological markers indicating a particular atmosphere (cosmpolitan; gritty; angry; friendly), I found myself on some kind of childhood ghost tour. Each sandwich shop and corner park called up a host of people I've lost touch with, as well as my own awkwardness standing at the fringe of their circles. I was walking, pacing the city as I used to, seemingly in the same gray light. For an hour or two it seemed possible that in fact I am the same self-conscious teenager I was when I left five years ago. I took myself to the movies at one of the Ritz cinemas, curled up on the plush seats and relished my manufactured loneliness as I watched Philip Seymour Hoffman ace the role of the selfish and troubled Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood. Nothing like the 'tortured artist' cliche to help a writer lick her wounds.
It was all terribly self-indulgent, in short, but probably a necessary part of my preparations to board yet another plane in several days and whisk myself off to a life I've planned vaguely, at best. I suppose that's what I crave, the indeterminate: that's the difference between what I used to know, and am learning to know again here in my hometown, and what I can imagine poorly and invent as I find it. At lunch today with a friend (at a place I'd never been before, incidentally, a falafel shop on 20th), I felt the temptation to 'make it new', find new ways to connect with my old self. But all this context, this history -- it makes me awkward, and uncertain. I'd rather be the sure center of a changing landscape, not just another bundled ghost-chaser wandering the brick walkways around Independence Mall.
posted by HB at 11:22 AM
1 Comments:
Beautiful. The idea of being a ghost chaser, or otherwise being haunted by the past when walking past places you used to haunt, is aching. I feel that way every day I'm in Pittsburgh. Places remind me of friends and acquaintances long gone. New structures are fogged in by the memories of the structures that stood before it.
Such overwrought brooding and heart-clenching memory is a large part of why I want to leave Pittsburgh. When you're in one place too long, it becomes like that article of clothing you've worn to threads yet feel guilty parting with because you did and saw so many amazing things in it. But, eventually, and you know it, that article is going to give way and that will be that. And when it does, it's not like your relationship with it is over. You'll feel the phantom snugness of that scarf, or just how cold your neck can be in the winter, when that scarf finally bites the dust. And you'll still remember the good times with it. Now, though, you can move on with your life. Put that old scarf in its place, buy a new one, and begin making new memories.
So it goes with cities of residence. Pittsburgh is my over-worn scarf, and I'm ready to part with it. Another city, New York perhaps, won't be quite so cozy or easy-going, but it won't hold the pains of the personal past that Pittsburgh does.
I envy you embarking on yet another life-altering journey.
I was at a gala ball last night, and the band struck up their rendition of "Walking in Memphis." Instantly, I thought of you and how we were supposed to go to Memphis after we graduated. And how we hadn't. And how I wish I hadn't left my phone in my coat at the coat check so I could call you and go crazy about hearing the song.
But what's interesting is how that song is so relevant to the situation you wrote about. Here's a character, haunted by his past, going to a new place, full of life and soul, and finds himself being saved. How prescient that we both latched onto that song over the course of out friendship.
I hope you keep the blog going while you're writing amazing things on the shores of the Pacific. And I hope everything works out for you there. I know it will.
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