A Reminder

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I used to run with a boy in South Africa. I don’t have any photos of him.

And I take a lot of photos.

I guess it is a reminder that sometimes some of the fondest and most important memories are left for us in our heads, without documentation. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it doesn’t mean these memories aren’t as, or even possibly more, important.

Not having a photo of my former running partner, however, made me particularly sad this morning. This is a memory of someone I’d love to have a visual reminder of as well the story in my head.

Two months after finishing college, I moved to South Africa, to begin working at a local non-profit somewhere totally foreign to me. I had been before. Doing university sponsored research for independent projects. But this was a move. My first move away from home in Minnesota.

Five days after my 23rd birthday in September, 2002, I arrived in Cape Town alone. I spent two weeks in Plettenburg Bay training and getting to know my three other co-workers before we moved to the village of Hogsback, in the Amatola Mountains. We immediately started working there at an outdoor education camp for ‘disadvantanged children’.

(Weren’t most children in South Africa ‘disadvantaged’?)

I met John, my running buddy, a few days after arriving in Hogsback. He was the foster son of the couple that owned the camp. He and his brother were there, most weeks, participating in the classes, hikes, and other activities. They were originally from East London, a city about 140km away.

I was up at 6am daily, to run and have some outdoor time before our kid-filled days began. We were in the middle of nowhere. I loved running there. Stuck deep in a mountainous valley surrounded by rolling hills, forest and waterfalls. They say JRR Tolkien got his inspiration for The Lord of the Rings from this area. I believe it.

The closest thing resembling a village was over 30km away. I loved that, too.

John was up this early as well. He’d often be up playing around with his younger brother, whose name I can no longer remember. They’d see me, laugh and wave, and keep playing.

On the fifth or sixth day into my daily regimen, John walked up to me as I was tying my running shoes and asked, “If you run every day, can I run with you?”

I looked down at his feet. He was prepared with the right shoes. So I grinned and replied, “I’m not sure you can keep up. I’m pretty fast.”

He said, “Well, maybe I’m faster than you?”

He insisted he was a runner. I was already going to say yes but I strung out the answer a little bit longer and mentioned that unless I’m training, I often prefer running alone. To which he responded, “Well, let’s train then.”

I laughed, said he was clever. He grinned and said, “I read a lot of books.”

Seriously, that line stood out. It is still one of my favorites.

I asked how old he was. He was 14. I asked how long he’d been running. He made clear he had been running “long enough.”

To that we laughed together and I joked back, “Okay then, if you think you can keep up, you can run with me. But I’m not going to slow down for you.”

His final words were “I don’t think you heard me correctly, for I said I was a runner. Let’s race.”

He was not slower than I was.

And shit, I’m not slow.

I couldn’t tell how much faster he was, however, because we just struck a good running pace and talked about the world.

He was Xhosa. He and his brother had been living in a foster home for years. Their biological parents were somewhere lost in a world township-related violence and alcohol abuse. John and his brother were lucky enough to be able to stick together in foster home after foster home until they found their somewhat longer-term residence with the aforementioned couple.

They loved it there. It was miles away from the chaos of East London. They laughed a lot.

John was right - if he wasn’t running, eating or playing with his little brother, he was reading. He always had a book in his hands. Anything he could get his head around, he read it. His curiosity was massive and he asked so many questions.

Our conversation topics were limitless. We’d chat about what he ‘wanted to be when he grew up’, the places he wanted to visit and live, what our favorite books were, what people thought of Thabo Mbeki (then president of South Africa), if I ever wanted to move back home, why I left, why he thought I would keep moving, etc.

(At that point, South Africa was the first foreign country where I moved. It’s as if he knew it would not be my last…because I’m now on my sixth).

He asked me once what I thought about his country’s history. I mentioned that exact subject was one of the reasons why I was there. To understand it better. To get my head around why so many people believed in punishment for the past whereas others believed in understanding, compromise and progress to move forward. While South Africa embodied all of these, together we believed in the last three. For me, pointing out that common thread was the highlight of all our conversations.

I’ve never had a brother (or any siblings). But for those 3-4 months, I felt like I did. Running and talking about a life I was super excited for him to continue to lead. And a life I wasn’t yet aware I should be so happy and lucky to have.

I haven’t seen or spoken to him in nearly nine years since I left Hogsback in March, 2003. I subsequently moved to Vietnam and Korea within weeks.

I am sure he’s doing well. But I’d still love a photo to remember him better.

I write this on a day I find out that two of my friends have recently moved back to Africa. This time, Sudan. And a third is back in Rwanda.

The craziest thing about life, wherever I am?

I’m still not afraid to leave but I’m finally not afraid to stay put. 

. 

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My Mom was a single mother. I am an only child. Eventually she met my Dad. He’s rad.

Throughout my pre-teen years, she was a waitress, bartender, stressed-out college student, and all around music-junkie. So you might imagine that in those first 12 years of just being on our own together, she played a lot of music for me. 

I mean, a lot. 

She first played this track for me when I was probably 10 or 11. As Peter Gabriel sang of nationalism, manipulation, symbolic games, and finally, freedom, she found a way to use various songs, including this one, to make clear to me what was tolerable and what wasn’t when it came to people, politics and progress. Schooling me at probably too young of an age to fully understand, she planted the seed of early thoughts on egalitarianism, human rights, and just generally, mutual respect.

Records, tapes, eventually CDs, and hours of my Mom saying things like, “Emily, did you hear that? He’s talking about cross-cultural communication, transparency, and conflict”.

Most of the time I was all, “Wait, huh? Can I go outside now and play?”. 

But thankfully, those endless hours are probably some of the early reasons I ended up becoming so obsessed with conflict and resolution in various fields and areas of life.

Music was and still is a way for her to passively protest and actively communicate. For me, this is also sometimes the case. She was the one who taught me to read into some songs, identify the symbolism, if it’s there, and when you want, apply it to your own life. Or just learn from it.

Years later, still, nearly every morning a song pops into my head that I have to put on the player. 

This is today’s selection.

Oh, the games kids still play these days. 

It’s a knockout.
If looks could kill, they probably will.
In games without frontiers, war without tears.
Games without frontiers, war without tears.

Jeux sans frontieres.

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According to last.fm, my most scrobbled track in the past five years is Radiohead’s 4 Minute Warning. 

I know for a fact this information is wrong. It says I’ve listened to it 191 times. No way. That’s at least 191 times. But most importantly, I’ve listened to other tracks many more times. Unfortunately, last.fm hasn’t scrobbled everything I’ve tossed in my ears (though I desperately wish it had just for the fun of data and nostalgia).

That said, there is a story, of course, behind all of those 4 Minute Warning scrobbles. And it’s all about adjustment, building, and moving to / leaving New York City (or any city, for that matter).

In March 2009, I was on my first real vacation from work in three years. Three years - WTF!

I missed my graduate school friends from years earlier, who, by then, were living and working for the EU in Brussels. They had planned a reunion. I flew over and made a longer vacation out of it. Few days’ trip solo to Köln to see Pantha du Prince before our weekend together and quite a bit of time in London and Oxford afterward. 

In the middle of the trip, I received the blunt notification from my boss that I would be moving to NYC four days after my arrival back to San Francisco, where I was currently living and working. Mentally, I had been preparing to move for a bit - work mentioned they’d eventually require it - but not like this. Not this last minute uprooting.

I had lived in San Francisco for three years. Longer than any other place outside Minnesota. I wasn’t prepared to stay there for life. In fact, I was ready to move on. But I wasn’t prepared for a move I didn’t know was going to be so painful.

I arrived back to SF from London and nine hours later, the movers were at my apartment door. Ten hours after that, my life was in boxes. A somewhat familiar feeling but again, this time, too last minute. A control that was out of my hands.

I arrived in NYC four days later. Luckily I already found an apartment while trolling Craigslist in Brussels and Oxford two weeks prior. I stayed in corporate housing for the first three weeks while my stuff was traveling across the United States. 

I plunged myself back into working too much. Refusing to accept how difficult it was to desperately try hard not to resent and blame both New York City and my friends for my low feelings and homesickness.

Work got crazier. I worked more. I went out a lot. But I often left early and roamed the streets of Manhattan by myself. Often so embarrassed or frustrated by how emotional I was. I wanted it to stop but I also cuddled up to the cozy blanket of sadness. After all, I knew that it would lead to happiness later.

Early on, a coworker told me it was the rainiest spring New York ever had when I moved over. But I didn’t mind at all. I didn’t want it to be sunny until I was ready.

Being ready took more than three months.

In that time, I had a few tracks on heavy rotation. Over and over and over, I walked from my Gramercy Park apartment to the gym, ran for miles. Took it back to the streets, walking over to the west side for work, then back to the pavement again. Same tracks. Same feelings. 

The track I had on the most was 4 Minute Warning. 

I had controlled every move up until this moment. Six countries, many cities, and my own independent choice as to when and why I’d move. Not this time. So my resentment for NYC was deep. Too much happened before the move. Too much was happening after.

I was of this mindset:

Don’t tell me to cheer up since I have ‘so many friends’ in NYC. Who are these people, really? Don’t suggest all of the new friends I should hang out with. What bars to go to. What the shortcut is from my apartment to my gym. What pizza place has the best thin crust. What subway line is the most direct from Chelsea to Park Slope, Brooklyn. I didn’t want to hear about your own move and how easy it was. Oh, and that because I’ve traveled and moved a lot, this move should be easy? No. It never is. Let me figure this out.

Defensive for the first three months. I was just adjusting.

But of course I wanted to hear all of those suggestions and easing thoughts to cheer me up. I just needed to wait and be ready for them to sync in. And they did. 

I moved to NYC at the end of March, 2009. By the end of June, I started to come around. I ended up loving my time in NYC so much that when I left in April 2010 for Berlin, all of my friends were completely shocked. 

But they knew why. And they knew I wasn’t running. I was just trying.

And so it goes. When too much happens at once, difficult relationships end, a job becomes what you don’t want anymore, and a city of stress doesn’t forgive you because it has 8 million other people to deal with, perhaps then, you feel it’s time to leave and start anew. Afterall, if you loved a city so much, and it’s not going anywhere, even if you don’t want it ever again, it will still be there for you, if just only for a visit.

And so will this track. Which I had back on heavy rotation when I arrived in Berlin. An independent move but still a massive adjustment. It got easier. A bit faster. Because it was my choice and I processed it my way. But it was still painful.

They all are.

“I don’t wanna hear it,
I don’t wanna know.
I just wanna run and hide.

This is just a nightmare.
But soon I’m gonna wake up.
Someone’s gonna bring me ’round.

This is a warning. 4 minute warning.”

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A track I’ve had on repeat the days leading up to my trip to NYC and still on heavy rotation now that I’m here. Walking around. Doing my thing.

I had been thinking about social, online connectivity all week before I left Berlin. The pros. The cons.

I decided after I landed here in NYC that I’d take a bit of a break from the social networking “usual suspects” of Facebook and Twitter and focus on spending time catching up with the friends here I haven’t seen in awhile and also clear my head. I think that like so many other people, I get lost into thinking that the photos and virtual updates of various friends in my life are a way to really connect or understand what’s going on in their lives no matter how geographically near or far. And vice-versa, that my updates or online habits and quick virtual actions are a way to know what’s really happening with me.

But of course, it is all rarely the case.

Beyond sharing a link or an article, it is sometimes a lazy and numbing way to make assumptions about the awesome and honest happenings of actual life and forget to really connect. Even when we are at home. You know, like IRL. :)

So now I’m gonna take my social networking break a bit further and extend it to every other service and site while I’m here and see how it feels to just think and walk and write and listen and catch up. Maybe this will become a longer-term trend. Easing back a bit in general, who knows. Sounds easy but for someone who is fairly social and loves to share, I bet it will be a challenge, hence this post. :P

Maybe it took the NYC streets and good hip-hop in the ears to remind me how rad is it to just think and be present. I mean, I figured this out a long time ago - I have spent and continue to spend plenty of time alone, just existing and wandering around - but somehow, I so easily forget…and sometimes I also feel judged.

So I leave it with this track. So good! Bob your head and take a walk and look up:

“Brooklyn you crazy. Look how you made me, razor blades in my mouth walk around behaving all demented.

Black hoodies and timberlanded. Always scheming, ‘You see the gleam on that n*ggas pendent?’

Hello Brooklyn, you bad influence look what you had me doing but I ain’t mad at you.

Look at my attitude. It says my life’s too real. Check out my ice grill. Baby I’m cold as ice like I’m from Brownsville.”