Traveling by yourself allows you to shape the narrative as it’s happening. You look around with wider eyes, because you’re already thinking of how you’ll tell it, how it’ll fit into the grander story. Which details will stand out? How will you frame your mood? What meaning will emerge from the experience? Traveling alone is the act of storytelling. Before, you enter with an outline, during, you sort through and organize information, and after, you edit it all together into a cohesive narrative. But there is a franticness to it. Like a child who is away from their mother for the first time, you collect the disconnected moments and weave them together so you can proudly present it to her the moment she returns. There is nothing like navigating a new city alone. A fresh, intricate puzzle lays at my feet, ready for me to unpack, rearrange, and put together. A new city means new problems to solve, new stories to tell, new ways to portray myself as powerful and independent. Although, not all of it is for the sake of the story. There is a joy to moving through a city without a plan, letting the sign for a bookstore guide your path.
The city is divided into distinct neighborhoods with distinct geographical features. One section is defined by its steep hills, and I revel in the physical exertion of strolling on an incline. The gentle use of my muscles, the leg ones pulling at abdominal ones, give a sensation of easy productivity. Each intersection allows me to revel in the power of the random. I enjoy the symbolism of it, choosing on a whim and knowing that each choice will lead me somewhere interesting, each will give me something new, each will lead me on a collision course with another’s path. And after, I can gasp in awe at how reality is created through chaos. The moments solidify, and only by standing still can you feel regret.
I’m here right now, at the top of the neighborhood, sitting on a cold wall of brick. Below me, I see the dead end I was stuck at 10 minutes ago. The January coldness in the bricks seep in through my legs numbs my lower half. The expansive view before me floods in and numbs my upper half. I stay like this, a statue on a ledge, the numbness meeting in the middle, until the sensation is almost unbearable. Then I breathe in as deeply as my chest will allow, and watch the fog rush out. I repeat the process a few times. Warmth spreads back into my fingers and toes and brain. I take one last look from my perch on the wall at the city unfolded before me, and then I nod firmly. The moment has ended, and it is time to move on.
Later, I encounter another wall, but this time I am trying to breach it. There is a castle at the highest point in the city, the seat of the greatest sunset, a structure of stone and 7th century history, a wonder from which to see one of the seven wonders. But it is closed. Circling the battlement, I see a chink in the armor. Before the plan has fully formed, I execute it.
For a second, while scrambling up the steep, dusty section of jagged stone in jeans and sneakers, I consider the possibility of falling. Another second later, I shake it off. I’m invincible. Towards the end of the climb, there is a second, the briefest of moments, when none of my limbs are firmly affixed, and I rely on sheer momentum to lunge and grab ahold of any stable object. One that will fit my hand, one that I can grip, one that won’t move despite the accelerated weight. It works. My adrenaline spikes, not just from the success, but also from the exhilaration of not knowing. The instant when it could have gone either way, I had felt fully present in my body. Down to the ends of my toes, I was there. Nothing in the world had existed but my loud breathing and the stretch between the ground and the top of the castle defenses.
The intimacy I feel for this patch of wall is overwhelming, and I feel my face split into a grin. The sunset is as beautiful as you would expect, but the sensation of sand and stone beneath my fingers is what lifts me up. Another cold, deep breath solidifies the moment in my memory. There is nowhere I would rather be but here, trespassing on a beauty created by man in order to better see a beauty created by nature. There is only one problem.
I have no clue how I’m going to get down.
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