March 24, 2015 – Well, I would say that yesterday afternoon,
I more or less returned to being myself.
Since last I wrote, I had been continuing my sort of random
peregrinations, trying to start “enjoying myself” while here in this incredibly
beautiful place, in the middle of Europe, and surrounded by friends. You wouldn’t
think it would be so hard. But I was still in a pretty dark mood.
As you can imagine, by this time I’ve concluded that coming
back from a job like the one I was doing in Sierra Leone is just harder than I
would have thought. Although, in fact, I had an intimation of it.
How do you think? Ever since at least the time I was in
college, one of the ways I think is that images or ideas will arise unbidden
into my mind, and – if I manage to pay attention to them, which is not always
the case – I will later find that they were a kind of intelligent
crystallization of something I somehow knew, without being conscious of it. In
other words, they are a conclusion – a thought – that I haven’t actually
“thought.” I first noticed it in connection with a couple of my major college
girlfriends. Before I even realized I was attracted to them I had images in my
head of doing things with them – and then, shortly thereafter, we were
involved! I don’t know whether to be more irritated that my thought processes
are often independent of my consciousness (why should I remain so “stupid,”
consciously?), or more amazed and grateful at my whole being’s ability to see
and integrate important information, even if I’m not conscious of it. (Mostly
the latter.) Anyway, at some point while still in Sierra Leone I had an image
of myself at my friend Gundula’s house, staying in and spending time mostly
alone; resting. In fact, the recovery phase lasted longer than it did in this
image – but, in it’s basic message of “you will need some time,” it was on the
nose.
So – I was kind of wandering around, feeling grumpy and
down. I did go to some lovely places, like the vineyards over Lac Leman outside
of Lausanne;
or like Neuchatel, a small city built largely of this gorgeous
yellow stone that smiles and stretches with warmth when touched by the sun;
or
like Fribourg, an energetic French/German university town built above and
inside a river gorge.
I was very aware, without going into it here, that I do have
some legitimate reasons for feeling down even in my “real” life – things I’ve
done that I should have stopped doing years ago; lessons staring me in the face
that I have kept failing to learn. So I was thinking that maybe I had just, to
crib from Freud, begun to transform neurotic Sierra Leonean misery into
ordinary New York unhappiness, and maybe that would be it.
But – on Sunday I made a decision (like pulling teeth, in
that depressed-deciding way, but nevertheless I made it) to stop wandering around (I had been thinking of
running up to Strasbourg for a couple of days) and instead just focus in and be in Geneva. I looked up what was going on in all
the museums; I made plans to see a movie with some friends; I thought
about stuff I’d wanted to do here in the past but never got around to doing; I
arranged to meet a colleague’s wife who is here temporarily doing public health
work; I made plans to do things like just washing my clothes. And, Monday
morning, I dove in.
Aside from the laundry (remarkably satisfying just to do
your laundry sometimes, isn’t it?), I went out to CERN for the very first time
to see their visitor center.
In a wonderfully Swiss way, this is housed in a
space-age looking spherical building that is nevertheless “sustainably” built
out of, of all things, wood. Inside there is a very well-done introduction to the main
problems being investigated there, from the (now discovered) Higgs boson, to
the problem of the superabundance of matter over antimatter, to the puzzle of
dark matter and energy, to the (I gather even greater?) puzzle of the “missing
void energy,” to the question of what the primordial soup of quarks in the
first millionth of a second after the big bang might have looked like. It
reminded me just of the pleasure of wondering, asking, looking.
And then, as I was leaving, I got a message from some
people I’d emailed in the morning – the paragliding school on “Le Saleve.” This is a 3500-foot ridge just south of Geneva that is one of the most beautiful
places I’ve ever been. It’s location and height mean that, when you are up
there on a clear day (and up there, miraculously, there is nothing but pastures
and a few little old towns), on one side you see the entire valley of Lac Leman
with the Jura mountains in the distance, and on the other you see the enormous
white teeth of the high Alps, all the way down to Annecy in France and Mt.
Blanc over toward Italy.
There is a paragliding center up there that I’ve known
about since I lived here, and always told myself I would take advantage of
(they offer tandem glides, so you don’t have to know what you’re doing), but had
never made the time for. Yesterday (a gorgeous, clear one) they had
availability at 4:30 in the afternoon, so I went on over.
What pleasure. What pure pleasure. In the movie “Wings of
Desire,” we are listening to the thoughts of the woman who eventually falls in
love with the angel, and she thinks a line (even more perfect in it’s clunky
translation from German) that I’ve always loved: “Absence of pleasure – that’s
what makes me so clumsy.” Isn’t it like that sometimes? And don’t you see it in
other people, too? When your life is a sort of dry well, so that even if you
have wheels that could move, you can’t lubricate them, and even they are stuck?
Maybe that’s what I needed then – the lubrication of some delight.
It’s not even necessarily something I’m dying to do again.
It was just – for that half hour – it was like having my senses reset to childhood.
To see the cliffs from in front of
them. To feel myself slowly, slowly, approaching a cliff, seeing it gradually
pull itself into focus and detail. To just cruise through the air, with nothing
particularly dramatic, just fields, below me, but with the wind passing
smoothly by. It didn’t mean anything. It just felt wonderful to be there.
I went out to the movie afterwards, “Electroboy,” a
documentary about a strangely charismatic Swiss model/internet pioneer/party
organizer and his tragic family, highly recommended although I’m afraid it might
not make it to the States - with a friend and two friends of his. And afterwards
we just had a lovely time. Chatting, teasing, eating, laughing. Joy made a
reappearance – first time in many weeks.
So maybe I’m back on the map I more commonly inhabit, whose
coordinates I recognize. In any case, I’m looking forward to my days more, and
the dread of each social contact has lifted. Tomorrow, I’m going to make a
final dinner for my friends (roast chicken; root vegetables; salad; cake), and
the day after I head off for a few days of walking in France. After that, some
time in Sicily with my brother. Back in the States on April 9. I expect to
enjoy the next two weeks, but I do think I’m ready to be back in the familiar
and the normal.
This will be my last post for now. If either a) my last few
“in country” posts from Sierra Leone are ever approved, or b) things worth
talking about happen in connection with my sick colleague, my friends still in
isolation, and/or the Ebola situation in Sierra Leone, I will write again. If
so, I’ll make sure to alert you to it on Facebook.
Thanks for reading, everyone!