Drowning in Symbols
I find myself in Ireland, a place I've always dreamt of, but never conceptualized in a concrete way. This is odd, because I never expected that the day would come when I would have to separate myth from reality.
Being abroad, for me, has consisted in exposing the myths we construct: about other places, other people, and especially ourselves. I never knew that there would come a day when English would feel like a strange language to me. As I walk through the suburban streets of Don Laoghaire, my mother tongue floods my thoughts and senses, albeit spoken with inflections that feel foreign. But the strangest bit of all is that people are speaking English. After two months living in France during low tourist season, this is a novelty unto itself.
I came to Ireland to find a little piece of myself. The introspective part. That aspect that remains hidden beneath the surface, sublimated into witty banter and a deep capacity for empathy. Yet I'm finding that these components work in fits and starts. You cannot cleanly divide the self. Just as Ireland does not exhibit, at all moments, the bubbling exuberance of a good fiddle tune, or the quiet mysticism of a stone castle, neither can I transform myself into pure introspection. These are symbols, but symbols cannot form a whole. They hint at an essence that does not exist.
Travel can mean disparate things at the same time. The feeling of nostalgia for a place you’ve never before experienced. What the Portuguese call saudade. Deep companionship in a one-night stand. Watching an angry couple fight their way through a rainy day at the Atlantic Ocean. The wistful sense that you can do nothing to put this quarrel in perspective.
Although I always dream of more places, more people, more wisdom – I accept that a traveler’s life is turbulent. It means nights spent in transit, mornings without food, and above all, the guarantee of the unexpected. But it also means possibility – an active living of life that I’ve come to value beyond anything else.
I think the most important thing I’ve realized through all these months of wandering is this: symbols do not reflect reality. India is not the Taj Mahal. Spain is not just the Prado. It’s the Prado, but it’s also the old men who spend all morning in cafes, dipping pan tostado into their café con leche. It’s the way the streets in the center of Madrid smell like olive oil and salt. It’s the North African immigrants working to make a new life. It’s the Shakira song booming from a gay bar in Chueca.
Dublin is a small city by European standards; miniscule in comparison to places like Cairo and Beijing. Discovering its urbanity was a shock to my system. The River Liffey is muddy and grey. The rainy days – collectively referred to as the damp – are less romantic than they seem. Nonetheless, I came here and I found a part of myself. The part that felt left out when the Italian exchange students planned a dinner party, complete with ricotta and fresh basil, without me. The part that watched a little boy who sat in the DART, the Dublin light rail, with his dad. Two popular boys from the neighborhood boarded the train and ignored him. After they had left, his dad asked, “Do they go to your school?”
“Yeah,” he said, “but we’re not friends.”
I was lonely in Ireland. It was cold and heartbreakingly beautiful and I thought about my failed relationships more than ever. The way my ex-boyfriend looked when he told me he was seeing someone else. How my dad was so bad at hiding his disappointment in me – that I wouldn’t become a pediatrician or even a political scientist. About my brother, how we hadn’t spoken in over a year and whether or not that was intentional.
On my last day in Ireland, I took buses all around Dublin. Trying to lose myself to that pure introspection. Finally, tired of getting lost and paying too much money for milky tea, I found the closest DART station. The teenage girls on the platform were laughing; they were young and seemed happily unsure of their futures but decidedly clear about the moment and its importance. I thought about my high school friends. The best girls I’ve ever known, we used to sneak out of our suburban homes and take the metro into D.C. Always running away from rules, “the way things ought to be.” Toward freedom – some boy not yet kissed, some band not yet heard.
We waited for 12 minutes, the laughing girls and I, and then boarded the DART headed toward the suburbs. The train left the city center, and when we reached the first beach town I knew I was close to home. Close to my rainy walk along the Atlantic to the boisterous hostel. A few stops away from Don Laoghaire, I noticed a boy.
He was 18, part of the group of Italian exchange students living in the floor below me. The ones with lavish dinner parties who spoke little English despite their best intentions. He always seemed so standoffish, ignoring me while I spoke Spanish to his female friends. We passed the beach towns in silence. I wondered if I should say hello. No, I thought, I’m tired of putting myself out there. As we approached the stop before Don Laoghaire, he stood up. The doors opened. The boy turned and looked at me. Bye, he said in English and, with a hint of a smile, left.
