Visiting

She watched as her friend picked the vegetables out of the Chinese takeout container, leaving the rice like some bird scattering the less desired seeds to the ground in search of the best sunflower kernels. Eating together felt less like an act of communion and more like accidentally opening the door while someone is peeing -- an awkward encounter of an intimate moment not intended to be shared. She wondered when the closeness had been lost.

They used to write each other letters every week, share their darkest thoughts and most ambitious dreams, but after her friend dropped out of school in the middle of the semester, the letters stopped. When they started up again, they were longer than ever but with vacant, endless descriptions of the landscape that read like a Thomas Hardy novel, with a tragic subtext lying under the surface, just out of sight.

Their conversation that evening was no different, and she had to force a smile as she said goodbye. Closing the door behind her for the last time, she walked down to her car alone.

Wasps

Look, it's like this, he said. Andy Warhol never did anything important. In fact, he was responsible for the deterioration of the entire art world into a soulless commodity market for the elite.

I could give a shit about Andy Warhol, she retorted. What is bugging me is those wasps you've been neglecting outside our front door. When are you gonna deal with that?

It was true that he hadn't dealt with the wasps, but neglect wasn't the right word. Truth be told, he liked to let them build for awhile, getting up their hopes that this time they'd really be able to make something happen, then dash their dreams in one fell swoop of pressurized poison. There was something really satisfying about the destruction of weeks worth of nest-building, the carefully constructed paper tubes filled with larvae that would never experience the freedom of flight.

Years of writing scathing indictments of the artists and galleries in Chicago had brought out a sadistic streak in him. As he rummaged around in the garage for his can of Raid, he felt sorry for the wasps for the first time. Still, he couldn't be dodging wasps every time he left his house. He found the can, and with a sigh of resignation, went out to face the enemy.

Jupiter

Driving home from work that evening, the news of the day described the scientific discovery that billions of enormous planets are circulating our galaxy in the vast empty spaces between stars. Not wanting to lose the magnificence of that thought, she switched to the classical station, coincidentally catching the opening bars of Gustav Holst's Jupiter. It's majestic cadences rose in a crescendo as she sailed over the flyway, the stark geometry of the city skyline outlined in the distance.

The miracle of engineering combined with the miracle of astronomy in her thoughts, and everything fell into place. War, natural disaster and the frozen lasagne thawing on her counter at home all took their rightful proportions in the vastness of the universe, each inherently both infinitely important and infinitesimally trivial.

Tipping point

He was standing in the shower one morning when that scene of the writer occurred to him: the writer, sitting at a desk in czarist Russia, opining that it was impossible to write well unless one were truly hungry. And he realized, standing in the shower, that every time he had gotten to that critical point as an artist, that pivotal point between hobby and livelihood, a little voice in the back of his head had recalled that scene and sent a message through his subconscious: you'll never be any good because you are too well-fed. He didn't know which was more maddening, that his whole adult life hung on the thread of a scene from a Dostoevsky novel, or that, as it now dawned on him, all these years he may have taken the use of hunger too literally.

Whatever. It was too late now. He buried the thought as he hurried through the rest of his morning, shuffling the kids out the door and tucking his Wall Street Journal under his arm as he raced to catch his train.

Honeymoon

The older couple who greeted them at the welcome center had been cordial enough, but when they warned him about the fairies, he had guffawed into his coat sleeve at the quaintness of it all. He wondered to himself why on earth he had agreed to come here for his honeymoon.

That evening at dinner they quarreled over how much tip to leave, both of them exhausted from meticulously retracing their hike three times in the dense fog searching for his lost wedding ring. The couple at the welcome center had irritated him further with their suggestion that not only had he brought the loss upon himself, but that there was no chance of recovering the ring. The fairies have surely made off with it. The thought of their earnest sincerity made his blood boil.

Two years later, as he signed the divorce papers, that miserable day flashed into his mind, and regret seized him by the throat. Choking back tears, he finally understood how a million small choices define a life.

Walking and falling

It all happened so fast there was no way to stop it. One moment he was skipping and singing and the next he was face-down on the rock-strewn pavement, red blood streaming from a gash across his eyebrow. The mother rushed over and simultaneously comforted her child while she tried to make her own assessment of the severity of the situation, examining his eyes for signs of concussion and dabbing around the wound with some borrowed kleenex.

Ten minutes later, the child had fully recovered himself and was begging to stay and play some more. But the mother carried the incident around with her for weeks, the knot in her stomach, the flood of anxiety, the feeling of vulnerability replayed again and again, as though the gash on his eyebrow were a wound in the center of her heart.

Saint Patrick's Day

By the time her husband caught up with her, she had reached the point of no return. She had enlisted the support of two American students, who, unlike the locals, had been oblivious to where the revelry was headed, and were now stuck standing awkwardly on the table with her, while she directed a stream of obscenities at an Englishman in the corner. He was at least twice her size in both height and girth and was watching her with a look of mild amusement on his face, as though taking in a second-rate comedienne, and he was just opening his mouth to heckle her when her husband stepped between them.

Let her alone Tom, you know it'll only encourage her, he admonished. Turning to his wife, he tried to talk her down off the table, but she turned her fire on him. Finally the bartender, another Englishman, came over and threatened to physically remove her from the pub. She gave him swift punch in the nose, eliciting uproarious laughter from the crowd before crumpling into a sobbing heap.

Her husband shot a sympathetic glance at the bartender. She's only homesick, you know, he said.

No hard feelings, the man replied. We'll see you on Saturday for the match, then?

He nodded as he led his wife out into the cold sunlight.

Invitation

Although they had not spoken in five years, she had decided she wanted to invite her sister to the wedding. Now, standing there with the unopened reply in her hand, she paused with nervous anticipation, going over in her head the words she had written apologizing for her own thoughtlessness and anger, and explaining how honored she would be to have her at the celebration.

Her sister's initial response had been pleasant, even cordial, and she had been surprised at how deep was her sense of relief at reestablishing contact with the only remaining member of her immediate family. As she looked down at the smooth grey-toned envelope, its plane broken only by the return address label bearing her sister's name, her heart leapt at the thought of seeing her in person.

She opened the envelope, pulled out the response card and stared hard at the X marking her sister's regrets that she could not attend. Her thoughts flew over the landscape of memories of times with her sister, a beautiful montage of moments together, marred by the enormous black cloud of their final confrontation, an event which seemed to drain the other memories of their power. Her longing to resolve this conflict burned hotter than ever as she looked again at the reponse, and she realized that most significantly, she had never forgiven herself for what she had done.

Farewell to the blues

Everything went as planned right up to the very end, at which point his carefully constructed exit began to fall apart. After six years of hosting this radio show with order and professionalism, he lost control of his timing as he delivered his farewell. His voice cracking with emotion, the words spilled out in a mess of sentiment. By the time he pulled himself together, he was at the end of his hour, and his carefully selected final song was cut off in the transition, leaving no time for the legally-required station identification he was supposed to play.

What a way to start to the first day of the rest of my life, he thought to himself. But as his father patted him on the back, he noticed the cheerful grin. He shrugged off his disappointment and turned his mind to breakfast tacos.

Driving west

Driving west through the middle latitudes of the country, she found, was much like watching a scene from an old black-and-white movie, in which the set is a continuous circular strip revolving to give the illusion of linear travel. After a time you began to notice that you were seeing the same landscape go by you again and again. And again.

In this endless stream of gentle hills and waving grasses, however, there is a moment when the mountains appear in front of you. At first they are obscured by the haze of accumulated atmosphere, so far in the distance that even if the sky is clear, the jutting peaks appear as if in a fog. So at first she wasn't entirely sure, after staring so long at an unchanging horizon, whether she was hallucinating.

As they drew nearer and the majestic outlines resolved out of their ghostly forms, her heart began to quicken its pace, and she felt a sense of belonging to the mountains, as though they were a part of her that she had lost long ago and was now finally recovering. At that moment, everything came into focus. At that moment, she knew she was in love.

Stone fences

Hiking as they were, over this countryside which had inspired the likes of Wordsworth, one could sense the history of the place. Pockets of wooded areas peppered the land, a gentle contrast to the stretches of what once had been a continuous patchwork of pasture and garden, green, grassy and bordered on all sides by the ubiquitous stone fences.

The stones emerged each year out of the hillside as though the earth were trying to purge itself of an irritation. Farmers of yore had spent the first part of each spring clearing their fields of the rubble, and one wondered, hiking as they were, whether the walls were constructed to contain the fields, or simply as the most convenient place to store the never-ending stream of rocky sediment.

There were also boulders, smooth from centuries of being washed by the frequent rain showers of the region, and useful as landmarks. They had identified two of these, carefully matching the dots in the distant landscape to those on the map, and had been picking their way across the ridge and down the grassy slope toward their target, when they paused, noticing the movement, and realizing all in an instant that their supposed landmarks were in fact two dozing sheep. Lost in the English countryside, they folded the errant map and sat down on the stone fence, wondering if they would discover their location before the next rain shower overtook them.

Hidden potential

She noticed the lamppost towards the end of their stay in the city, so the black-and-white photograph that she made of it wasn't developed until after they were long gone from the place. It had been a clear day and the starkness of the scrollwork stood out against the foliage of the surrounding park, defining the trapezoidal space from which light originates.

Contemplating the photograph, the mundanity of it seemed its most remarkable feature. Yet there was something about the potential inherent in it that spoke to her, as though the sculptural qualities, framed in this snapshot, were just an empty framework waiting for the coming night, when its presence would be eclipsed by the glowing illumination emanating from within.

Secret life

He hadn't even known that she played an instrument, yet here she was entirely in her element with a borrowed fiddle and a collection of old friends. They hadn't planned on meeting anyone at the pub, but a little while after they arrived, the band had rolled in, composed of half a dozen local musicians -- all of whom she knew but had not seen in years.

At first they had all chatted pleasantly together, and he joined in politely, though there was not much for him to add to a conversation about the current fate of her former classmates. When they invited her to play with them, however, he retired in shock to a corner of the pub, drinking his beer in large but infrequent quaffs while he stewed over her deception. It seemed a bitter blow to discover that these strangers should know something so fundamental about his wife -- something that she had never shared with him.

Still, as the evening wore on, the beer and the music lulled him. He emerged from his resentment and, as she rejoined him at the table, he noticed how her eyes were sparkling. She smiled and squeezed his hand, and he wondered what other mysteries would be revealed as their life together unfurled.

Redirection

That morning, after a million small defeats, she gathered her courage and pulled out some baking supplies. An hour later, oats, flour and shredded coconut littered the counter and floor, and the two chairs that had crowded the kitchen for the duration of the inter-generational collaboration had been repositioned at the table.

The quiet eating of muffins filled the house and a wave of accomplishment swept over her. 

Common Dream

They stood together in the field, connected not by proximity but rather by the dense fog that embraced them like the breath of the infinite. It was enough that they knew one another's hearts.

They stood together there, that morning, unaware of the wedge of silence and miscommunication that would slowly drive them apart in the coming years, the frustration and resentment that would poison their blood until, rather than attempting reparations, they would agree that demolition was a more prudent option.

In later years, after all was long ago said and done, they would look back at that moment, each alone, and wonder if it could have been salvaged. They would wonder, each alone, if it were possible to reconstruct that moment when they understood that they shared a common dream.

Earthbound

In retrospect, it seemed insane that no one had put a guardrail up there. You could stand on the edge of the cliff, with dozens of people milling about, and stare a good 10 stories worth of height straight down into the Atlantic Ocean. She wanted to do just that, to stand with her toes on the edge and look into the swirling mass of waves breaking against the rock, but the precariousness of the situation pulled her back towards safety.

Instead, she got up at 6 am and hiked back up the well-worn path to the top of the precipice. Now, all alone, she dared to lie on her belly and peer down the sheer verticality, which plunged perpendicular into the plane of the sea. Her pulse quickened and the tips of her fingers tingled with the vertigo. It was exhilarating but also maddening. At a certain level, it was always a disappointment to be reminded that she could not fly.

Leaving Budapest

There is a certain sense that one has of the fleeting nature of things. As she boarded the train, destined to the west with its clean streets and clockwork busses, she had just that fluttering in her heart. Thirty seconds after the train pulled out of the station, she already felt nostalgia for the Villamos and the Turkish coffee and the cramped apartment she had shared with her roommate, stocked with a collection of glasses for every occasion -- tea, wine, Unicum, coffee -- none of them holding more than 0.2 liter.


At that moment, she realized that she was sitting in a rear-facing seat, a direction that always left her feeling slightly nauseous. Pushing her bag across the floor of the compartment to an empty seat, she thought to herself, I'm never going back to that Budapest. That Budapest is gone.