A Tale of Many Cities: Thoughts on the Balance of Leaving and Returning Simultaneously
- T. Donohue
- Jan 29, 2020
- 8 min read
It has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. I learned everything is temporary. Moments. Feelings. People. Flowers. I learned love is about giving. Everything. And letting it hurt. I learned vulnerability is always the right choice, because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft. I learned all things come in twos. Life and death. Pain and joy. Salt and sugar. Me and you. It is the balance of the universe. It has been the year of hurting so bad but living so good. Making friends out of strangers. Making strangers out of friends. Learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about everything. And for the pains it can’t, there will always be my mother’s arms. We must learn to focus on warm energy. Always. Soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world. For if we can’t learn to be kinder to each other, how will we ever learn to be kinder to the most desperate parts of ourselves.
rupi kaur
Today the grey clouds broke for the first time in what seems like weeks. How long have I been here? Where am I? The grey falls over Hà Nôi like a blanket, but without the warmth. The low sixty-degree weather feels like winter for me; apparently already well-accustomed to the Tanzanian climate. The sky reminds me of the color of coming snow. The other day I wore two pairs of pants. Yet, strangely I feel more on vacation here in this grey and cold city than I did while swimming in the crystal-clear waters of south Thailand. Perhaps it’s because this city reminds me so very much of Paris. It reminds me of the types of places I have found myself before. I feel the urgency to enjoy here, the need to do anything. Rather, just walking around the streets, sitting at cafes, is enough. It feels familiar like places I’ve only been, but never lived.
Things You Don’t Expect While Traveling
In the northern town of Chiang Mai, Thailand, it seemed as if every single store, café, restaurant, even the parking garages played slow jazz. There was a calming effect, grounding. The smooth jazz brought about a sense of steadiness, in an otherwise unsteady moment. Like after a long journey, checking into a fabulous hotel and the feel of smooth marble floors and sense of someone else being in charge. The smooth jazz made me feel at ease, when nothing felt easy.
Everywhere you look in Hà Nôi, Viêt Nam, no matter the time of day, people are busy eating sunflower seeds. At the cafes in the morning or the beer corner at night. The ground is littered with the shells of sunflower seeds. There’s a social aspect to this, I suppose. Women, men, young people, old people sit around for hours on end eating sunflower seeds, drinking green tea, and chatting about their days. Or at least I assume that’s what they’re doing. I like to think over sunflower seeds there’s some sort of shared humanity.
The streets of Hà Nôi are a never-ending stream of motorbikes. Living in Tanzania where motorcycles are a major part of life and the economy, this feels familiar. I have seen some absolutely ridiculous things on motorcycles in Tanzania. I’ve come to believe the things people carry on their motorbikes tells a story of the place. Yesterday, there was the man carrying a birdcage filled with bright yellow and green birds chirping. The man balancing a tray of pho and rice noodles. The made with a dog riding on the back, perfectly balancing as he swept around the turn.
Communist Chic is Apparently a Decorating Style
I am sitting in Công Cà Phê, on the third floor overlooking the city square. Saint Joseph’s Cathedral looms over the square, its architecture echoing that of Notre Dame. Hà Nôi is a bustling and metropolitan city. On seemingly every corner sits a café, people drinking espresso and egg coffee and coconut coffee and smoking cigarettes. The air filled with smoke and the sound of spoons against cups and people laughing in many languages. The grey sky and flow of traffic, thousands of motorbikes, people sitting along the streets drinking green tea, smoking thuoc lao – Vietnamese tobacco – from pipes. This city has echoes of Paris down every ally; which shouldn’t come as a surprise, after all Vietnam was colonized by the French for sixty years.
The Công Cà Phê pitches itself as “communist-chic,” which is a style I’ve never heard of, but sitting in this café I totally get it. The walls are painted a military green. The waiters wear uniforms that resemble military fatigues. The wallpaper looks weathered and torn. The lightbulbs, hanging bare, look ancient and cast a dim light throughout the space. The walls are decorated with wartime photos, propaganda posters and antiques. Books by Lenin and Marx are easy to come by on the bookshelves. The air smells like cigars, coffee beans and books. The fact that smoking is still widely accepted indoors in Vietnam, adds to the ambiance, clouds of smoke filling the air. The café recalls the days of communist youth brigades and state ownership, which got the owners in a bit of hot water when they first opened their doors. The atheistic is provocative and alluring. The juxtaposition of communist-atheistic and modern-day self-indulgence is hard to miss, as I sit watching a group of young Vietnamese women meeting for a midday coffee. They receive their coffees and position them perfectly on the table, next to the deep pink roses. They take a number of selfies, stopping to readjust their hair or reposition the coconut coffee to show off the five-pointed star that serves as communist-themed latte art.
My dear friend is sitting across from me lost in her phone, as we are both wont to do from time to time. And who can blame us? We are on a slow journey back to America, trying to travel but also try to wrap our minds around reintegrating into America. And what’s more American than being addicted to our phones and the 24-hour news cycle? What with the 2020 election and coronavirus, she and I could sit on our phones all day reading the news. Instead, we spend our days exploring new cities and towns. Roaming through temples and laying on beaches. We are drinking ridiculous amounts of coffee and endlessly discussing what it will be like to be in America again. Although this isn’t much different than what we did in Tanzania; only the coffee is better now. The only difference is that I have a flight booked, seventeen days away, back to America. So, pending more coronavirus-induced flight cancelations or coronavirus-induced quarantine upon arrival in America, I will be stateside in less than a month.
The Beach: A Tale of Trying to Be on Vacation
The first week after leaving Tanzania was spent in Ao Nang, Thailand. We spent our days working out, drinking coffee, getting thai massages, drinking literal buckets of mai thai, and flirting with boys. We danced and drank and smoked and laughed. We swam in the middle of the ocean, under the stars and the moon, with bioluminescent phytoplankton. We walked down the street in our bikinis, barefoot. It was an alternative reality. This whole trip is an alternative reality than the one I expected to be my life at this moment. A much-needed escape from the reality that I had left Tanzania, I suppose. But each morning the reality came back to me, often times before the sun even rose. I spent sunrises at the beach, trying to sort through this reality. What the hell am I doing on a beach in Thailand? I found myself waking up unsettled, anxious and unsure of where I was. The amount of fun I’ve been having has been perfectly mirrored by an underlying fear of what is happening, both the leaving Tanzania and the returning to America. I don’t really know how to do either. But this entire year, this entire experience, for that matter this whole life, has been a lesson in learning I don’t know how to do anything. And in that is the freedom to try, to believe I can do everything. Maybe that’s all bravery is really about, the boldness to admit you will never know anything fully, and with that you give yourself permission to live in an endless state of discovery.
The Mountains: A Tale of Feeling No Where
The days in Chiang Mai felt confusing and ungrounded. I never felt like I arrived. Tanzania felt far away. America felt far away. I felt nowhere. It was like I was just moving through the motions of what someone on vacation is supposed to look and feel like. I could not seem to quiet my inner-critic. It was loud and obnoxious. It was waking me up in the middle of the night. It was screaming, angry and sad and feeling guilt and shame and pain. My inner-critic has been shoulding all over me. I should be writing. I should be working. I shouldn’t be spending money. I should be enjoying this trip more. I should be having more fun. Less cigarettes, less alcohol, more meditating, less sweets. It comes in ebbs and flows. I can easily get lost in the shoulds. On February 4th, Anna and I rented motorbikes and drove two hours into the mountains outside Chiang Mai. This day marked a year since our departure from America. The whole day I felt myself trying to run away from that thought. And yet, I found myself driving through mountain roads that perfectly resembled my mountain roads in Tanzania, only these were paved. We found ourselves in a little village that looked so much like Mvaa. I felt disconnected from everything.
On February 6th, I woke up before my inner-critic had a chance to disrupt my sleep. I drove again into the mountains, but this time to spend the morning feeding, hiking, and swimming with rescued elephants. This day marked one year since I had arrived in Tanzania. I felt it in my heart the entire day. But there is surely no better way to quiet your mind than to swim in freezing mountain water with a baby elephant. And I’m trying to enjoy this, every moment, every new places and experience. But the truth is, I don’t know how to not be in Tanzania. I don’t how to be on this “trip.” And I certainly don’t know how to go back to America.
The City: A Tale of Figuring It Out, Kind Of
Upon arriving in Hà Nôi, I immediately felt myself arrive. The grey skies felt familiar and comforting. The slightly dirty urban feel made me feel at home. Here, we have spent our days however we please. I am not trying to be on vacation. I am not trying to do what I’m “supposed” to do. In fact, right now I am hold up in my hostel, curtains drawn in my little bunk bed writing these words. I am not succumbing to the pressure that tells me I have to be on the move, going, doing, seeing, spending. This isn’t a vacation. This is a very long journey back to a place I once called home. Nowadays, I’m not sure what home looks like. But I am ready to find it, to make it. Until then, I will spend the next week traveling through Vietnam, eating pho and banh mi and drinking coconut coffees and resting and trying to figure out how to move through this moment with as much grace and love and warmth as I can muster.
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