reckless-optimism-blog

[reckless-optimism-blog]

Where The Sun Rises First: Part 1

Chaos is bound to ensue when you make the impulsive decision to fly 18,500 km across the globe two weeks prior to departure. I want to hike and camp, but most of the candidate destinations around the world are either fully booked (Patagonia), too unfamiliar (South Africa), or potentially crawling with the arachnids of my nightmares (Australia). Eventually I stumble upon a reasonably priced albeit 40-hour flight itinerary from Frankfurt to Auckland and set my sights on two of New Zealand’s Great Walks: the Tongariro Northern Circuit and Abel Tasman Coastal Track.

My first of many mishaps occurs at the check-in desk for departure where a distraught China Southern agent refuses to let me board without a travel visa and gives no fucks in response to my entitled “But I’m literally part of the Commonwealth how the fuck do I need a visa” pleas. My heart drops with the terrifying and precipitous acceleration of a free-falling elevator. She motions me towards a travel desk decorated, almost desperately, with the sketch kind of “last minute!!!!” print media advertising you’d expect from a middle schooler crafting WordArt. One hundred and fifty Euros, cash only, to magically conjure an “instant” visa and the promise of the New Zealand sun: what a scam. More about that sun later.

The banks of Queen Street in Auckland CBD are parallel until they intersect with the ocean, lined with street musicians, store awnings, and vogue cinemas. In a way, so is Pike Street in downtown Seattle from the other side of the Pacific, in a universe where all the Asians decide to flock south of Vancouver. All cities are somehow born from each other. My eyes widen at each mix-and-match sushi takeout I pass on the way to the hostel, but mostly I’m just happy to be a consumer in a world of big box retailers and twenty-four hour convenience stores again, minus the price tag on exorbitantly taxed cigarettes. At thirty dollars a pack, I think I’ll do without for a few weeks, even if the spaces between bars and moments between buses call for them, ever so devilishly.

At the hostel there is a British receptionist who provides me with the raw materials for making a hitchhiking sign and forgets to give back my passport. I joke that a Canadian one would fare him better these days. (More about that passport later.) A girl from New York introduces herself in the bathroom and asks me what I’m doing here. I wax philosophical with what is anyone doing, anywhere, ever? before glazing over hiking plans. “Me too!” she responds. The pretentious backpacker in me sneers from beneath the hood of the Arcteryx rain jacket I wear even when it’s not raining at the enthusiasm of girls who day-hike but, like, not even often enough to qualify it as a hobby on their Tinder profile. Bitches be amateur.

Taupo is south of Auckland, three hours by car or six hours by bus. This is the nature of all distances in New Zealand; hitchhiking starts as a means to an end before it becomes a pursuit of its own. Some drivers gawk, others shrug with their hands, most probably aren’t using their peripheral vision. It’s important to smile. Visualize windows rolling down from across the driver’s seat. Meditate on them until they stop. The relief that accompanies the sight of a decelerating car as it angles in your direction is exhilarating. The company is nice; it feels like a moment that could be shared with a glass of orange juice.

Between Auckland and Taupo there are stories about getting hitched, last minute in a makeshift church in Vegas or via the blessings of a monk in Vietnam. There are signs at junctions that I’m only able to articulate in one direction. Left for Hamilton or right for Ngauruhoet. The portrait of a man named Ngauruhoet forever having to spell out his name over the phone to customer service in an exasperated fashion makes me laugh. “NO, N as in Nancy. G as in Gary…”

Known as the Queenstown of the North, Taupo is adorned with a stunning lakefront centerpiece and a waterfall that flows into a hot spring. Streets are dotted with bachs (holiday homes in Kiwi speak), skate-surf shops with a little more personality than your average PacSun, and charming restaurant-bar hybrids serving craft beer and life on tap, buzzing with chatter until curfew strikes. The French girls in my room are aghast at being turned away so early in the night. Back at the hostel “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is blaring through shitty speakers as a very drunk American attempts courtship; the French girls are now occupied. I’m briefly entertained by his clumsy compliments to keep feelings of insecurity at bay. It’s too early to check my phone for Christmas texts: I’m 12 hours ahead of CET, 18 hours ahead of EST, and 21 hours ahead of PST. The East Cape of New Zealand bears witness to the world’s first sunrise each and every day. It feels lonely to live in the future. The skydiving instructor who I played cards with earlier offers his company and a small glass of vodka; I flirt back hoping to score free lessons. Cut to the AM, still in my porcelain blue summer dress but completely soaked, with a searing hangover and flash recollections of a waterfall and a hot spring. Every night feels like it has to be this way, either too much or not enough, binary. I tally up the ones like points to reassure me that I’m living my life to the fullest.

Further south, the village of Whakapapa sits at the edge of Tongariro National Park. Rainclouds ripple across the sky and wrap mountains like scarves. Every now and then, the sun peers through the veil and rouses a sleepy savanna from its dreams. A magnificent pulse of energy sweeps through the meadows and tips of tallgrass continue to dance to the beat of a phantom wind even after the music has faded. I tilt my head and soak my skin in the warm rays; I take a deep breath and rinse my lungs with the cool air. There is a square clearing among the grasses where I set up camp. Tonight, I am one of the early settlers, brimming with hope and awe for the land that surrounds me.

Everything feels beautiful.

[reckless-optimism-blog]

The Density Of Being Seen

The coldest water in the world lies beneath an ice shelf in the South Atlantic. The bluest water is here. The current daggers into my frame and shocks me out of my second natures. First my limbs, then my head, finally my lungs. I start to go numb; I’ve been here before. If you were reading this, you’d tell me that it’s the blood rushing to my heart, but I want to tell you that explaining things is never as interesting as wanting them, as feeling the entire world sublimate from the surface of your skin. As feeling a river delta surrender itself before an entire ocean. Letting it dismantle your every horizon, waiting to see what happens, wondering if you can learn to breathe here, even here, where the water is coldest and bluest.

I know: change is a form of addiction. Adaptation is a form of meditation. But I hope I never get used to a feeling like you. I hope you always feel treacherous and that even when you leave, the cold and the blue still leave me shaking. I bear the burden of rivers against the gradient of my back but you were some geologic uplift

You leave me feeling both less and more lonely. Strangers have this strange power over me. I am reminded of how impossible it is to replace anyone because everyone is made up of such tiny, beautiful details. It’s hard not to love. The way you pick up trash on the trail and blame it on poorly designed pockets, not the people who littered. Or how you offer help in at least four different ways to the couple with the injured dog. Where does this openness stems from? Or is it just how you cope with loneliness on the trail? Either way, I want to uproot you of some of it. The impending graduation of your son, the absence of your wife back in London and how she gave you permission to meet other people before the two of you even had a chance to have a real conversation about distance. I want to say something completely mundane like “you can always talk to me” but I know I can’t help you.

When I tell you three rules to living a life and ask for your feedback, you propose a fourth tenet: leave everything and everyone better than how you found them. I tell you things I’ve never told anyone, like the gravity that paralyzes me from getting out of bed in the morning, ghosts that leaves dishes unwashed and gaps in mental timelines. You ask: what else is difficult; what else feels impossible; what else did they promise you. And then something completely mundane like “it will get better” and it low key breaks me, before it pieces me back together. Being seen has nothing to do eye contact.

It isn’t until after you leave when suddenly I feel the hollow of your bones against mine, collapsed under the crossbeams of an entire attic of feeling. Raw, unsettled, and out of sync. The recollection of it flashes at first like lightning, and then like the sun cracking inside a part of me so far away I’m twenty by the time the sound reaches me. Twenty-eight when it finally hits me. Leaves me heaving with all of my heart and reeling from contractions that feel like I’m being born again, warm and cruel and like muscle memories I’m scared I’ll spend the rest of my life unlearning. This is the aftermath of a heaviness that cannot be explained, only disrupted. I wonder if my body can ever fully recover. If yours ever did.

Three years ago someone just like you came and went and these words are all I have left of him: “Listen: you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. One day you will truly understand this, with your heart of hearts. That will be the day you start to heal.”

Listen: every meeting is a chance to be with someone you might never see again Listen: there is someone out there and one day you will be ready for their riptide Listen: this is just your conditioning

I look out the window and look back at you; it feels like the opposite of déjà vu, more foreign than being born. For a split second it feels less cold and less blue. The undercurrent lifts leaving only the density of being seen, of inexplicable kindness. I cannot explain the effects of water against my skin let alone every nod, every smile, every touch.

Listen: The Columbia River gorge is just my beginning

[reckless-optimism-blog]

[reckless-optimism-blog]

Too Late To Miss You

(Rewriting “Bye Bye” by Gryffin, Ivy Adara. Listen here.)

[VERSE 1]

Speed of light / and I don't mind The silent drives / crossing bridges on my way to coastlines Not the first time / been far away Missing for days

[PRE-CHORUS]

Cause I don't know where to go / at a crossroad Closing my eyes and remember / the train rides Hikes in the alpines we don't need / no high rise Told me we were too good to be one night

[CHORUS]

Don't wanna see you / or hear from you / go somewhere new They don't get me like you do / there's no one like you Cities and high beams / can't compare to your heart beating Is it too late to miss you / there's no one like you, you

[VERSE 2]

Thought you were alright / nothing to fight for We've got time / and I wanted to explore Disappear in / to thin air Didn't want to care

[PRE-CHORUS]

Cause I don't know where to go / at a crossroad Closing my eyes and remember / the train rides Hikes in the alpines we don't need / no high rise Told me we were too good to be one night

[CHORUS]

Don't wanna see you / or hear from you / go somewhere new They don't get me like you do / there's no one like you Cities and high beams / can't compare to your heart beating Is it too late to miss you / there's no one like you, you

[reckless-optimism-blog]

Overdose

(Rewriting “Starving” by Zedd, Hailee Steinfeld, Grey. Listen here.)

[VERSE 1]

Drive along the I5, feels like something I could save for midnight. Sunrise on rooftops Pull up in Santa Cruz and turn up the bass Hey, we're not just a phase

We've got so much for us in the Bay

[CHORUS]

You start a fire in the desert that you can't put out It's hard to keep my heart extinct and still I have my doubts Stay away, stay away, don't want your love it's far too close Give me a taste baby but I don't want no overdose Stay away, stay away, don't want your love it's far too close Give me a taste baby but I don't want no overdose

[VERSE 2]

Hotel rooms we're halfway, parking lots in the Suburbs of LA. Back of the car seat Lost in the afternoon and caught in the haze Hey, you feel good like always

Take me back to highway yesterday

[CHORUS]

You start a fire in the desert that you can't put out It's hard to keep my heart extinct and still I have my doubts Stay away, stay away, don't want your love it's far too close Give me a taste baby but I don't want no overdose Stay away, stay away, don't want your love it's far too close Give me a taste baby but I don't want no overdose

[reckless-optimism-blog]

low key thoughts: i miss the united states.

let me start by saying that the most important rule in life to me is this: no regrets. and that definitely holds true about my decision to move to germany. it might seem like i came here on a whim but in fact i’ve thought about it for over three years, ever since experiencing some kind of magic dancing with strangers in the streets of berlin and wandering around the gardens of tempelhof aiport. organized, rational, efficient - a healthy dose of germany seemed like exactly what i needed. opposites attract, after all ;-)

but living in munich hasn’t been dancing in berlin. in fact, the first time i went out was a few weeks ago when i felt so isolated i went to a club by myself in the hopes of meeting someone, anyone. loneliness has never made sense to me as an emotion. there are seven billion in the world, after all - how should it make sense for anyone to feel alone, ever? i do not accept loneliness as an emotion, and i honestly don’t know if i ever can.

and so for the past few months i’ve trying to figure out this thing i’ve been feeling. i carry it with me, from the morning - touch of fingers against screens - to the evening - kiss of wine against aubergine. it presses play, lets the light in, wraps you round curtains, blankets you, then proceeds to suffocate you.

some weekends i try to get away. i’m lucky the alps are so close. i find myself in garmisch-partenkirchen every other weekend. it reminds me of someone who made me feel something i hadn’t felt in over a year. for a few weeks i was convinced i’d spend the next christmas, perhaps retire, in northern scotland. and then of course, it broke my heart. it always does.

i’m sleeping more on night buses than beds. last weekend i went to slovakia because i can’t be anywhere that seems close to anything i know anymore. i called my parents at 3am. they picked up. i told them i was sorry for everything. at the hostel there is this spanish dude who kisses me on the forehead when he sees me crying in the kitchen and randomly walks around proclaiming that “life! is beautiful.” it’s comforting, somehow.

it’s my 28th birthday 2 days from today and i don’t know how i feel about it. i don’t even know who has my german phone number and who doesn’t. i wonder about going back to the states and if i’ve missed any texts. or if there are none at all.

i look down at my feet and avoid eye contact with people in the office, i don’t know why but every day i feel like i’m back in eighth grade looking for a seat in the lunch room. it makes me feel like shit - not my co-workers but rather my inability to just be myself. everyone seems way too cool for me. luckily my colleague is awesome; we bond over our mutual dislike of lunch which is a distraction from work. except we are secretly hungry and end up snacking on free chocolate all day.

these nights, i mostly find myself in vietnamese restaurants. i’m not even vietnamese. there is the lady who speaks to me in broken chinese and gives me a fifty cent discount on summer rolls; it low key breaks my heart each time. there is the restaurant near theresienstraße that always packs me extra plum sauce. there are exchange students from shanghai who offer to help me with my luggage in hauptbahnhof as i move from my fourth to fifth airbnb.

i’ve never embraced the idea of having a home. always thought that home should be wherever your heart is, ever evolving, shape-shifting, never rooted, or god forbid: attached. but you know know? i fucking miss that shit. i miss target, i miss REI, i even miss like broadstone inifinity. what the fuck. i miss sitting around a fire, reciting cult lines from finding nemo, and burning our deepest darkest fears. i miss karaoke at rock box. i miss attempting to get high with people.

finally there is this music in the vienna train station on my way back to munich. there is a moment where i’m just completely overwhelmed by gratitude because i’m in vienna and someone’s playing piano. cause life’s weird, you know? but “life! is beautiful.”

[reckless-optimism-blog]

abc#: a trilogy in three measures

a. show me


as one chord steps into another violins rise and fall the way dynasties do, it’s magical how often we see the same things - the opening soundtrack of films about getting lost in new york city, quiet columns of light pressed against rivers in missisippi, i love all the weird things that we share, how they sound like a vessel of hearts sailing to the middle of nowhere, wonder what you look like from the windows of icelandair, from across the highway in-between speeding cars, wonder what the shores of jupiter look like
 from mars.

b. remind me

when you ask me how to listen to music i say you don’t listen to music - it beckons 
seduces, reduces, like a hand
 in the dar­­k. the melody: 
it makes promises.

the way your grandfather did
 from the front seat of his scooter 
with the flick of wrist and two syllables - yi ding. 
your therapist,
 your 20-year-old self. 
if you’re lucky the palm of it
 blankets you, traces circles round wrist bones and ice cream cones, still young and wild and free like rings of fire upon an open sea — here comes the ocean — igniting neurotransmitters, flooding cells: here comes the memory of first times, second chances, and the nostalgia for things that haven’t even happened yet leading you across wooden planks, 
through strobe lights, over
 freshly minted ice rinks in vancouver,
 bolivian salt flats, maybe planets with
 lakes of frozen dioxide, the melody: it fakes callouses.

brushes runaway strands against
 the crest of your ears, then whispers 
into the tunnel like a gust of wind 
from the south atlantic: 
“this is how it could have been.”

c#. teach me

everything i needed to know i learned from my piano teacher. about how the most important notes in music are the ones that wait until the sound has entered the ear before revealing their true nature, like a gust of wind they blow through the heart, knocking things over.

everything i needed to know i learned from max martin. about how every pop song consists of the same four chords but, when multiplied by the syllables of lyrics and raised to the power of each moment of every life, the permutations of what it can make you feel are uncountable.

everything i needed to know i learned in kindergarten. about how to dream, how this is just a note, so can you imagine a whole song. about how to survive, how this is just a song, so can you imagine a whole life…

[reckless-optimism-blog]

[reckless-optimism-blog]

it's hard to strike the balance between being alone and being with people. there's often this internal dialogue of either boredom, insecurity, or frustration, like a late night infomercial you can't turn off. but then you have these glorious mornings of uninterrupted silence and sunlight pouring into the living room. someone knocks on the door and invites you to the playground.

after lunch you sit together on the porch swing and exchange sips of iced tea in-between simple stories and concurrent laughter. it’s not even about the stranger, i guess - it’s about discovering all these tiny, irreplaceable details about someone. and it’s part of this precious, self-contained ecosystem of a single day that can't be captured or extended in any other form. like midnight conversations on foreign rooftops with a glass of wine and an old friend, but revealing itself over the course of an entire day, with less certainty and more curiosity.

some hours later you wake up and find the seat next to you empty. the stranger friend is gone, maybe for just a day, or a week, or 15 months. maybe they had to run home to grab something, or maybe they got bored. maybe you just made them up. sometimes it’s better to fall asleep and not find out. 

[reckless-optimism-blog]

[reckless-optimism-blog]

[reckless-optimism-blog]

[reckless-optimism-blog]

The Ghost Of Characters When You’re Not Writing About Them : i have a recurring dream of an imaginary street in Berlin - it’s just across the danube, at the intersection of old and new. i don’t know anyone living on this street, and yet i have so many memories of being there. sometimes it feels like everything i do is to get back to the feeling of walking down this street. like discovering a new connection with an old friend. picking up where you left off. like stepping on set to act out the opening scene of a sequel, a whole world of characters returning to life. like nothing has changed. but everything has changed.

[reckless-optimism-blog]

i don't know who the god of recall is, or what inspires him to press record, but when he does, it's a miracle. it's high definition. like the time in elementary school when i won the award for best short story, how my ears can still hear the crescendo of the drum-roll, and my feet can still feel the ripple of wooden stage beneath its steps. there's something uniquely gratifying, almost other-worldly, about hearing the syllables of your name emerge from the tongue of the announcer. it's why i love watching the oscars every year even when i don't know any of the movies, listening to the soundtrack motif that accompanies the walk towards the podium. people experiencing the happiest moments of their lives. a single phrase. remembering what your right hand felt like.

[reckless-optimism-blog]

having a vision and watching reality displace itself against that vision, that’s the best feeling. like someone coloring in-between the lines of your daydream. makes you want to do cartwheels, turn up the volume, and take up space in the landscape that was once a 2d map. trusting that no dream can ever you let down, if you take the time to understand where it's coming from. if you let it skip a beat and go wherever it wants to go.

[reckless-optimism-blog]

it’s the river, you know? this whole idea that we’re rafting down this river... the illusion that life is evolving, that we’re growing, spending days building the ark and nights crossing t’s, dotting i’s. patting ourselves on the back when we come up with witty new titles for the chapters of our lives. broadcasting the status of our giant fucking ark. scoping out the finest lovers and acquaintances to bring aboard and keep us company because the flood’s forecasted to be hella lonely. why do we need so many arks anyway? maybe what the ocean needs is less captains and more passengers. maybe what i need is not a marriage but a tinder date to elope with. heck, you could probably hitchhike from ark to ark. in fact, here - take all of my extra wood - i only need enough for a campfire. won’t you take a break from cutting trees and join me by the fire? i’ve got so many songs that need singing-along.

you see, it all comes back to this whole River idea. but the truth is staggering in the water one afternoon mid-august and realizing your entire life was just getting used to the temperature.

some of us are better at feeling that water than others. some of us try to not feel it. we stay in the arrivals terminal long past our welcome, text our parents that we’re just charging our phones when they notice our GPS location hasn’t budged. watch the conveyor belt rotate until the last piece of luggage has been claimed. opt for the 40 min bus ride home over the 5 dollar uber. make a detour to the grocery store and stand in the aisle feeling the weight of the bags in our hands instead. and it hit me that you can never run away - that after all these years, i’m still me. everything - all the quote unquote little triumphs, the arrivals, departures, connections - everything in-between was just multiplication and division, x’s and y’s doing gymnastics across the banks of the same equation. a dance foreboding the eventual dissolution into myself - the good, the bad, the shameful, and the downright ugly. letting the water colors saturate. letting it stain you, sustain you.

[reckless-optimism-blog]