Do the places we love and leave recognize us?
In my sixteenth year, I lived in a small village just outside Vienna. Everyday, I’d take the train into the city, where the rest of my day would be dictated by little more than:
1. How much money I was willing to spend
2. My school schedule (which was, admittedly, very lax)
And, 3. How far my feet would carry me.
The walkability of even the most urban euro-metropolises is one of the things I miss most. I remember the architecture seeming somehow both grand and quiet, the streets clean and its corners sweet. Summer would soon slip into fall, and I’d miss the days before they were even done.
//
There’s an odd sort of magic
that happens when we encounter past places—or people for that matter. We may return to these places, but it won’t be as the same person we were then.
Vienna, to me, was never just a city. It was a special place, a magical locale that brought about some of my most heavy and necessary growing pains. It is, to this day, a place where I had come to know myself in ways I hadn’t before. Upon arrival, Vienna was a strange and unfamiliar city - filled with the dubious promise of a remarkable year. Upon leaving, it was home.
A place where unfamiliar street corners, ominous train stations, and strange faces and tongues had been swapped—seemingly right under my nose—for warm, familiar things, and the once daunting corners became host to some of my most cherished memories.
I remember those first few nights, downstairs in the kitchen; at the dinner table, myself and my host dad sat surrounded by stacks and stacks of collectable Donald Duck cartoon magazines, naturally all in German. My eyes are pink and glossy as I read under the waning light. My throat is tight and my face hot. I’m having trouble saying the ‘tsz’ sound right, and he seems to get more upset. When we’ve finished, I run up the wooden stairs, up three flights, past the rooms belonging to the kids who were to be my siblings that year, and into a strange bedroom. I cry.
Homesick.
I remember those nights now with such strange fondness; open the fondness up and peel it apart to find it made up of feelings of lovesickness and gratitude—for that girl, that house, what was to come.
There’s an odd sort of magic that occurs when we encounter past places—or people for that matter. We may return to these places, but it won’t be as the same person we were then. It’s really a special thing, I think, almost like a weird spell befalls us when returning to a place that had such…impression on us. Though you recognize the place, can still make out the familiar outlines, it’s like looking at it through a film, now colored in nostalgic sweetness.
The place hasn’t changed of course—whilst certainly you have—and a piece of that change is owed to that very place. It makes me feel indescribably shy, returning to places as powerful as these. It’s silly and unwarranted, because the place, in many ways, knows me best.
But if I were to tell you the truth: I just have such piercing tenderness and gutting fondness for these places that I almost feel…embarrassed? Embarrassed that I’ve ever felt such love and appreciation for a physical location and shameful that I cannot and will not ever get over it.
For one, I hate being in debt, hate owing anything to anyone. And to these places I owe much, almost everything. And in their presence, I’m…what? Humble? Timid? Scared? If indeed I am scared, if I were to go on telling the truth, it lies with the fear of not being recognized, of too much time passed, making whatever I still carry with me trivial. Inconsequential. Null and void.
I don’t actually think this to be true, but even if I did, I’d bet I’d carry it all still.
Because more than I hate owing them, I love them, and what they gave me. And I always, no matter how much time has passed or how many new experiences or friends I’ve encountered — want the nostalgic sweet magic of the place to still be there for me whenever I choose to revisit it.
Do the places we love and leave recognize us when we return?
I hope they do.
I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late.
~Beryl Markham