Baggage -- not all bad

This morning I remembered why I'm here: to write. Also, to take stock. No longer willing to make concrete plans, since my life is evidence of the ole best-laid-plans saw, but definitely wanting to nudge the direction of my life into areas that light my fire, I needed time away in another city to kick me out of my routine ways of thinking and being. Berlin is my new city of nudging in the way Montreal was once that city. When I arrived in both places, I knew practically no one, but both cities have such a strong, warm vibe that even if I'm not actively seeking out new friends, or attending cultural events, I feel surrounded by people I would probably like a lot (I just don't know them quite yet), and the culture seeps into me by virtue of my walking down a street and looking in a window, or people watching at cafés. What I like about unfamiliar cities is what I love about airports and road trips: they are transitional spaces that induce transitory mind states open to potential, to possibilities, to becoming. I always have moments of new seeing in these spaces.

For instance, standing at the baggage claim when I arrived, I marveled at how each person could so easily identify his or her luggage since many of the bags looked identical -- generic black with wheels. Then it occurred to me that we were all like new parents identifying our babies as we press our faces against the glass window that divides us from our babies on the maternity ward. Of course, this image shows just how little I know about being a new parent. Do those rooms even exist anymore? Did they ever? I am clearly not a parent. And, in real life too, standing there at the baggage claim, I watched my own bag go around the carousel no less than 50 times before I thought to check the name tag. Sure enough, it was mine. I had not recognize my own baby.

And in that moment, instead of feeling frustration because I had stood there for so long, I laughed. I laughed because the waiting had already happened so there was no getting that time back. My fire in Montreal happened and there is no getting my stuff back. Relationships have ended and there is no getting that love back. But I still get to walk out of the airport into a new city where my heart and mind are free to think about time and love in any way I wish.

And then, sometime down the road, after becoming familiar with this city and learning to recognize the landmarks and cultural cues that once eluded me, I get to come home again and see my old world as new again.