"Swimming through the void … we lose ourselves but we find it all"

Tanya and I are sitting at the Woodstock Brewery at the foot of the White Mountains – exhausted, hungry, happy. We just completed a four-hour trek: up 1200 feet through a forest and a dried mountain riverbed, climbing over tree roots, crossing streams and cascades, jumping from boulderto boulder trying not to slip. And after a short break on shores of the Lonesome Lake, down across a similar but steeper terrain, trying not to kill ourselves tumbling down. It was only 6 miles, but these were some of the most technically difficult miles I have ever done. We were laughing afterwards that this hike snuck up on us unexpectedly. It was the last full day of our trip – both of us were flying out the next day – and up until then we mostly did urban explorations, driving, eating, swimming, and just walking around: the trip was shaping up to be mild and chill by our standards. In years past, our preferred mode of relaxation was mountain and desert hikes with occasional death drops and helicopter rides.

And so sitting at that pub, sipping some tasty beers, we were wondering what makes us want to push ourselves to the limit. And, by all standards, our limits are not that far – we are not even close to being hard-core. Hiking that day, we met people who were walking over 2K miles of the Appalachian Trail; my friend Paul walked all the way from San Diego to Berkeley; some of my and Tanya’s friends are alpinists who risk their lives almost every day trying to take in that next peak. We all have different limits, but somehow many of us like a challenge of testing these limits. It doesn’t always end well. Even the most experienced climbers fall or succumb to the elements. I lost my best friend to the mountains, and now I watch another friend of mine going through the same loss. Every time I come close to the edge and look down into the precipice, I think about how easy it is to end up on the bottom. One false move, one slip, one tumbling rock – the danger is real. And yet, we go for it.

Why?

I think that this, almost masochistic, asymptotic drive has a bit of an anxiolitic effect. Every challenge is a finite endeavor with definitive goals, structured ways of reaching that goal, and a huge reward once you get to the finish line. Physical exertion doesn’t allow for many extraneous thoughts – you can’t worry about your everyday problems when your body is hurting and you’re struggling not to go down. One step at a time, one thought at a time, “so close, no matter how far…” You’re focused on the here-and-now and “nothing else matters” . And you learn to trust yourself. In real life, you often doubt yourself, but, in fact, few tings are fully contingent on what you do or how you do it – most of the time, things seem to be, or are, out of our control. In an extreme situation, the only person you can truly trust is yourself (and, hopefully, your partner in crime). You learn your limits, your strengths and flaws, your breaking point. And if you’re lucky, you learn how to get past that breaking point. Things are simple, straightforward, and you feel in control.

If the journey itself is a meditation of sorts, reaching the goal is the actual high. Endorphins released during physical exertion added on top of dopamine release once you reach your goal – man, it’s not surprising that extreme sports are so addictive! You want to go back. You need to go back. This is where you feel happy. And fear? Fear is a funny thing, but this is a topic for another time. Now I’m going to go do me some hiking in Tilden!

Shakespeare in The Park

Personally, I don’t have strong feelings toward Shakespeare one way or another. I think he has an important place in history and undoubted influence on our cultural metaconsciousness; I like his plays when they’re translated by Pasternak, which probably speaks more to Pasternak’s linguistic abilities than Shakespeare’s; and I find him hard to digest in the original form – he is definitely beyond my level of enjoyable comprehension of English. As such, I put Shakespeare in the same category as Picasso – I can appreciate their art and its cultural significance, but I don’t aesthetically enjoy most of what they do. However, this trip revealed both of these artists in a new light for me, but I’ll stick to Shakespeare for now.

We wanted to see the famous Shakespeare in The Park that stages shows in New York’s Central Park every summer. This season they actually had Al Pacino as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice – my favorite original Shakespeare play. But no luck – they finished the season before we got to NYC. I looked around and found several alternatives, one of which was The Other Shakespeare in The Park by the Hudson Warehouse troupe. They were doing a month of Romeo and Juliet to close out the season, and the production got interesting reviews. It was free, it was in a park (Riverside, not Central, but who cares), and so we went.

The whole production was set on a small stage facing the back patio and steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, where the audience set on cushions provided by the theater. The actors changed right on the walkway path directly “off-stage,” so that you could always see what’s going on “behind the scenes”. There wasn't much for decorations and props, and the darkness had fallen way before the play was over, which means that the last hour or so was performed in the light of street lamps around the monument. Oh, and it’s noisy. There is a throughway just a few blocks to the west with some loud NY traffic, sirens and helicopters; and on top of that, the actors didn't have any means of projecting, aside from their own voices. This maked the whole enterprise even more, shell we say, interesting: there’s about 50% comprehension rate for the text on a good day, when you’re sitting at home with a book in one hand and a dictionary/wiki in the other, but now you’re essentially down to barely getting it. And that means that you must fill in the blanks with what you remember from your previous encounters with R&J and what the actors manage to emote on stage. So basically, everything was working against the play, and all you have to rely on is how good the actors are and how good what they have to work with is.

Now, Romeo and Juliet is probably one of the most done-to-death, reimagined-to-death, silly, and over-hyped Shakespearean plays I can think of. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the story (or at least its derivative) by heart, can recite some lines, if not whole verses, but probably fail to find much depth and novelty in any of it. At least, that’s my take on it. Or it has been until now…

This particular production was set in modern day Afghanistan, with Romeo and his posse dressed as American soldiers, and Juliet and the rest of the Capulet clan portrayed as a rich Afghan family.

The fact that it was modernized, set in present time and reflected current events wasn’t unique to this production – after all, if you want to see a “hip” modern-day interpretation of the play, just rent the one with Leo and Claire. What did set it apart for me was that the actors treated the play as something that could actually happen between a young soldier stationed in a foreign country and an even younger local girl who falls for him. I have to say, the acting of these two was impeccable – sincere, compelling, and appropriately emotional. I saw a boy dressed in fatigues and a wife-beater, chain-smoking, and telling his buddies that he saw this beautiful girl and that he’s in love. And his buddies were laughing at him and telling him that he’s an idiot.

I saw a girl infatuated with a good-looking, forward guy, saying things that were awkward and a tad foolish. The best moment that epitomized this naturalistic approach to the play came when Juliet tells Romeo “Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing” and Romeo mouths “What??” (not an actual line in the play) with an amused bewilderment. No pretence that each word must have a profound psychological or literary meaning, no attempt to act out every line – just a very down-to-earth reaction to something a silly girl might say that most likely has no real depth to it. I believed the actors. I believed their feelings, even if I didn’t hear, understand, or care for the words themselves.

And then there was the ending. I honestly don’t know how anyone can play that last scene of death with a straight face anymore. Seriously! They die. It’s stupid. Period. I could never buy the pathos and tragedy of that ending – there is no divine plan, there is no fate, just unbelievable and contrived results of miscommunications and missed opportunities. And this production wasn’t any more profound in its last breaths. Until the final couple of lines… I’ve read the play before. I’ve seen it staged and filmed before. I know how it ends. But I think I never got the main point of it. It didn’t stand out until I saw two groups of people – American soldiers and an Afghan family – grieving over the bodies of their own. It isn’t about the tragedy of young love. It’s about stupidity of their deaths brought about by a conflict between two feuding clans. I always thought that the animosity between Capulets and Montagues was there to create the fatal outcome for the tragic love story. During this performance, I realized that this animosity was the main point. The love and death of Romeo and Juliet were meant to emphasize the emptiness, pointlessness, and destructiveness of the conflict, war. Or at least, that’s how I choose to see it now.

Un Ugliness

New York is a big city, filled with people from all over the world and all walks of life. You see it everywhere: from the time you step through the gate of the International terminal at JFK to bumping into people on the streets of Manhattan. I haven’t seen that many different-looking people in any other place I’ve been to. There is usually some sense of sameness. For whatever reason (genetic, cultural, political), people are either born into or actively migrate towards similarity: in the way they dress and carry themselves, their interests and views. These groups of same-minded and same-looking people are like little islands of homogeneity, albeit dissimilar from one another. Individual features begin to fade away, and you no longer notice how different people are. Instead, you focus on what unifies them.

In New York, it’s all mixed in and tossed together. Looking at these people, you can’t help but notice all the features that make them different from one another: tall and short, fat and skinny, big boobs, skinny butts, dark, light, funny noses, crossed eyes, long necks, short legs, big heads, deformed arms – all the grotesqueness of human flesh is right there, staring you in the face. You can’t avoid it, and all you can do is marvel at the glory of people’s ugliness. There are no beautiful people. Everyone is funny looking in his own way. Put two beautiful but contrasting people side by side and all you’ll notice is how different they are and how bizarre this difference is. I never had this feeling before, but once I paid attention I couldn’t help but notice it all around me, or even in my own reflection in the mirror. People are like impressionistic paintings – every feature taken separately may seem ugly, but put together they create some fascinating-looking characters.

This point got taken to a new level for my by an accidental encounter in Boston with a book edited by Umberto Eco called On Ugliness. It’s a fascinating anthology of historical, literary, and artistic views on what people consider ugly and why. Of course, perceptions of ugliness (and beauty, for that matter) are subjective and change over time. What is ugly for one is beautiful to another, and what appears ugly at first may grow on us with more familiarity. But the fact that, as a society, we see ugliness everywhere and are mesmerized by it is quite peculiar. I recon that Eco’s volume will require more detailed studying from me to further explore and expand on this observation.

On Changing Seasons (from the New England trip, September 2010)

Growing up in Ukraine, I loved the seasons: the joy of the first snow; the hassle of getting around when it’s frigid cold, icy, or wet; the anticipation of spring and warmth; the smell of flowers and freshly cut grass at the turn of summer; weeks on a beech by the see; sadness of summer’s end; the marvel and vividness of the foliage; the melancholy of an autumn rain. The weather was always a factor in our day-to-day lives. It helped us remember events and their temporal relationships. It provided an emotional and mnemonic backbone, which stayed the same year after year, with all of the individual and subjective experiences anchored around it. You physically felt the presence and passing of time.

I miss that in California. The first 5 years I spent in the Bay Area, I felt that time had stopped. There were two, maybe three seasons (rainy; dry but foggy; and dry and mildly warm). But the main problem was that transitions between them were slow and gradual. Each season was not that much different from the others. And that made me feel suspended in time. Things were happening and changing, days passed by fast and inevitably, but the passage of time as a whole was not tangible. I wondered whether it was just because I was getting older and my time perception had slowed down over the years. But then I moved to New England, and things got back to normal – each year was clearly marked, remembered, and felt. Back in the Bay Area – and again, years are flying by without me noticing them (and trust me, this is not a pleasant feeling).

Being in New England once again and seeing the very beginning of the fall (the summer is still in full swing, but a few red leaves here and there, an occasional rain, a cold breeze, and the smell of wet leaves on the ground add up to the unmistaken sense of impending autumn) made me think about the importance of changing seasons in our emotional lives. I talked about it to Tanya, my perennial Ukrainian travel companion, and Josh, who grew up in New England, and they both agree with me that this marker of time plays an important role in how we structure our lives and how we perceive time.

But it also made me wonder whether my friends who grew up in California and were never exposed to real changes in seasons have the same sense of the passage of time. Or maybe they use different markers to annotate their perception of time: holidays, vacations, sport seasons? Do these markers have the same emotional significance to them as season changes to people who grew up in the north? If these markers are established early in life and our mental clock is calibrated to follow them, do any change to their periodicity and manifestation would feel strange and unsettling (e.g., would it feel weird for people if Thanksgiving was moved from November to, let’s say, March)? I don’t know. I need to remember to ask them about it one of those unremarkable days.

* * *

Addendum (January 2011): I've just spent a week in Lyon where temperatures were near freezing. I'm currently in New York, where it's -9 Celsius. And you know what?.. I hate to admit it, but I miss California weather. Apparently I've gone soft. Feeling like my face is about to freeze off is no longer in my repertoire of acceptable climatic variations.  "The times, they are a'changin"

Welcome to my humble writing abode

Alright, I think it's finally time!

It's time I start utilizing the Interwebs as an input medium instead of just passively absorbing information put out there by my friends and my favorite media/news outlets (and God only knows, I've been doing a LOT of absorption!).

The last several months brought about quite a few interesting trips, emotional goodbyes, and pondering thoughts - enough for me to start longing for a way to express my travel impressions and places-inspired musings. I gave it a try after my August/September trip to New England (a homecoming of sorts), which resulted in quite a long treatise (when in doubt, quantity is always a good substitution for quality). I didn't distribute it widely simply because it had too much personal stuff in there not suitable for general consumption.

I thought that those travel notes (aka, "the manifesto") would be a singular occurrence - after all, I'm not the one to write for pleasure or fun. But here I am, coming back from a week-long trip to France, and again, full of impressions, thoughts and emotions which, once again, I want to share with my friends. Since I don't have the time and energy to write another magnum opus (well, technically, I am writing one, but that's a whole different story), I'm thinking that a blog might just do the trick. I can write things in small installments and distribute them unobtrusively to people interested in reading it.

I am going to start by posting some of the notes from the New England trip (edited for the masses) just to put them out there in the spirit of making it a travel blog. After that is done, I'll start posting my new notes on the France trip. And hopefully I'll have enough self-discipline (or a nagging urge) to keep writing these things whenever an opportunity presents itself. We'll see. No promises, but I will give it a shot.