Cinematic Memories

Hey folks, a reflection here given my down time - I've been thinking about these places I've seen and how I think about them now.  I realized that I am thinking about places very differently depending on how I saw them.  So this will another reflective entry, but I'll throw in some placating photos of Stockholm in January.

Snow-person!  With hat and scarf

Photo of a church steeple through the fog

From our bus stop, this is the sun at 11:30.  No lie.  11:30.  

The water before we visited the photo museum in Stockholm

The moonrise afterwards (4:30PM)

So here we go - I was sending an email to Nick (who is thinking about making a trip over here!  so should you!) and giving some advise about how to think about time and had a realization about site-seeing.  I hit Morocco at about a thousand miles an hour, planning to 'slow down' by spending two or three days per city.  This was not totally insane - the places in Morocco can be 'seen' in two or three days.  But to travel through them at that pace only really allows for seeing the city; I spent all of my time walking around looking at stuff.  I absolutely saw some amazing things, but thinking back on my time spent looking at things, and my time spent sitting and reading, or chatting with a friend, or having tea in a cafe - they seem almost opposed to each other, as if a different person experienced those things.  More accurately, that I experienced the sitting, reading and chatting, and I watched myself experience the sites.  My memories of the Moroccan medinas, the Tunisian streets, the Egyptian temples and statues, the many sites of Turkey, are cinematic, and these memories become blurred with the photos I took, other images or stories, or movies where they were featured (Petra particularly).  The places that have stuck with me were those accompanied by conversation, Corinne, or some difficulty I was experiencing (Aswan!), and then these almost overshadow the place itself.

It feels like a simple matter of being present, in the moment, as I might try to do during any other time in my life.  I am realizing now that it has been incredibly difficult to be present at these sites, as often the whole point is to revel in the architectural and artistic mastery, or the historical significance of a place.  The Pyramids and Fez are from another time, and the excitement of being there is imagining that time (indeed it can be difficult not to, though the touts at Giza tried).  Petra, particularly the Siq, is literally straight out of one of the most famous movies of all time - hard to walk down that and think of Kevin Lally in December of 2010.

Radiolab has an interesting piece on memory - that we basically construct memory each time we 'remember,' that memory is created with each remembrance.  I know that memories I have from different periods of my life feel different, seemingly dependent on who I was at the time - how I saw the world then.  It seems like when I was thinking of these places as 'other worldly,' I was remembering them as such - or conflating the places with what I thought of them, what I think of them now, with photographs and expectations.  I took photos of these places - though many do not have me in them, which fits with how I remember them.

Where my memories become imprinted with me - I was there, I was there with the breeze on my face - is when I am relaxed, not seeing but looking.  I felt present in Perge, a site I visited with Corinne in Southern Turkey.  She and I had seen two other sites that day with the strange non-couple who acted like a couple.  The ruins were just starting to blend together, and she and I were a bit sleepy.  We treated the site like a sculpture garden, like a park we could casually walk through.  We indulged in conversation about the non-couple, about the bus rides we had been on, what we might want for dinner.  It felt almost devious to stroll through ancient streets, among ruins, without giving them much thought - but I was much more myself while not attempting to appreciate the overwhelming history.

It seems like reminding myself that I am in a strange new world does less to cement the place in my mind than setting up shop in a cafe and working through a game of backgammon or one of the Nine Stories.  I've earned this knowledge, like everything else, by trial and much error; days passed without reflection or insight.  But I hope it might also be one of those life lessons that helps keep my time well spent.  Thanks for reading!