Log: Lucidity

The white "tablecloth", fluffy and wispy, has draped itself over the grey rocky peaks around which this city has carved its roads, villas, shacks, churches and mosques. The sun shines down on the thick frondy palms that peek above the white walls of Dutch-style colonial structures and Art Deco-inspired apartment blocks. Greens, reds, and whites are what I can see from the window I have borrowed.

How have I made it here? So far from home, to such a beautifully rugged place which, just like home, is bursting at the seams with life and death, cruelty and kindness, opportunity and injustice.

Effervescent have been the first three weeks I have spent on the African continent. Cape Town is everything Marc has described to me over the years, yearning to return. To the sea, the mountains, the trees, the languages, the cultures, the art. It is like being a child again. The bird is not quite a bird as I have known it. It sings songs up to now unknown to me as the day rises and the call to prayer rings from a nearby mosque.

I am grateful, but do not know what to thank beyond those who have cared for me up to now. Am I deserving, worthy of being fortunate? It is a pathetic question, isn't it? In Cape Town, like in Bogotá, the face of the mountain itself appears stained by the pervasive shadow of violence and inequity. Cities like ours demand you pay attention. You are not allowed to avert your gaze.

Earlier this summer-winter, when I was in New York City, a friend told me she wanted to stop feeling guilty for living. To live. I have wanted so much to be able to live without fear. To move freely through this Earth. To learn everything I possible can. To protect my family. To take care of other living beings. Have I traded fear for guilt? And what good does guilt do?

- Andrea

The past four weeks have taken me from Bath to London to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—leaving me with just enough time to catch my breath. Among the hustle and bustle, I had a few parting thoughts that have stuck with me about a small day trip we did in England, thoughts which are broadly pertinent to travel and living generally.

Shortly before leaving the UK, we went to Stonehenge and it brought me back to a younger self who was just beginning to discover the world. Up to the very day we went, I had doubts about whether to make the trip over. It is a busy time as we approached the end of our visit to Bath. Lots of travel awaited, and as travel accumulates in my past and future, I begin to enjoy static moments more and more.

Nonetheless, the clutter of logistics, work, and everyday tasks can also cloud vision. In the end, how could I not go? The site was less than two hours away and there are no guarantees I will ever have the chance to see it again. The awareness of a present both fleeting and latent with possibility is something that has always characterized my outlook on life. And yet, there are so many forces in our every day that increasingly try to obscure the value of experiencing, living, contemplating. Deciding to go to Stonehenge was a reassertion that each day and each minute is not to be taken for granted.

Beyond the inertia of banality, there is also cynicism: why go? Isn't it just an overhyped commercialized sort of place? These are the whispers and judgements that try to chip away at the value of something because it is too popular, too well-known. I know that my younger self was nearly deaf to this type of cynicism. After being denied mobility and possibility for so long, the inherent of value of discovering and exploring and learning and experiencing seemed too obvious. It is this instinct that has driven me to go rogue on trip itineraries, like that time I refused to leave Istanbul without visiting the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. Today, I am proud that at sixteen I had the foresight to do that; I haven't been back to Istanbul since.

In Walker Percy's "Loss of Creature", the author reflects on how modern everyday institutions, such as school or mass tourism, and the expectations we develop as a result of being embedded in them, alienate us from that which we wish to encounter and access. Percy toys with ideas on how to reclaim experience, eluding cliché, disappointment, and cynicism. Growing up, the inherent value of these special experiences revealed itself to me as an obvious contrast to the relative scarcity, constraint, and struggle I had had to live through. As my access to the world has swelled, have I lost sight of this?

The special feeling that still springs within, whether at the foot of Stonehenge or on the crisscrossing streets of Manhattan, makes me think not. I still feel like the luckiest person in the world, just like when I saw the rising domes of the mosques in Istanbul or the black sand volcanic beaches of Guadeloupe—and even if I have to make a greater effort to tear down some of the societal pressures and expectations that adult life has brought with it.

- Andrea

On days like these, when the caprice of a handful of men threatens to extinguish all life and all joy, I can only hope for lucid, human encounters like the one I had today, in a corner of an art gallery, with a print from Francisco Goya's series Los desastres de la guerra [The Disasters of War].

A reminder that we have no need for more Napoleons in this world, a desperate wail etched into metal and paper, an admonotion for all the lives needlessly lost to "caprichos enfáticos" ["emphatic caprices"], as Goya called it, and a testament to a shared sense of horror in the face of a relentless unleashing of war and violence that spans centuries. Goya's prints are as necessary and vital now as they were when he first crafted them as a witness.

- Andrea

P.S. The gallery's description of this piece mentions the deadly famine that Goya depicted in this print. However, it fails to mention that the famine was the result of the French army's siege on Madrid.

Lucidity. A concept Camus explored in a few of his essays, and that in many ways echoes a kind of personal philosophy that Andrea and I have been developing. To us, lucidity means to see the world for what it is, instead of ascribing grand narratives or superstition to it as a way to console ourselves for the perceived "meaninglessness" of existence.

In The Stranger, Camus writes about a man named Meursault and describes his complete indifference to the world. Meursault is meant to be unrelatable. Someone who seems almost inhumane, and so, who would not be able to relate or empathize with us either. Through his actions and attitudes, Meursault reveals what Camus calls "the absurd," which has to do with the perceived absence of meaning in life. However, Camus also introduces symbolism to reveal that as humans, we can rebel against the absurd.

In the very first scene of the book, when Meursault finds out his mom died, his apathetic response is difficult to stomach, as it is later on, when he encounters the titular stranger. In both scenes, Meursault focuses on a light that flickers or the sun that blinds him. His fixation on light during moments in which more "important" things occur, like the death of his mother, increases the distance between Meursault and the reader.

The light and the sun to me represents two things in this book. On some level, the distance we feel between ourselves and Meursault serves as a reminder of our innate urge to care, even when the world appears to be meaningless. An urge to care that Meursault does not seem to experience.

But the depiction of light also serves as another reminder, that when we feel the weight of the absurd the most, the shining light can set a path forward. The light shines on our skin and makes us see, and so it reminds us to be present. When we are present and experience the world for what it is, lucidly, we can revolt against the absurd.

This idea of lucidity and Camus' articulation of this concept was eloquently spelled out in a recent episode of Philosophize This on The Stranger, and I felt myself just nodding along in agreement.

- Marc

There are now more birds in Paramytha than when we first arrived. They sing from a scenery that is now greener due to the rains that have arrived with them and with the end of summer. The days are still warm, but the nights are fresh—now populated by new scents, awakened by the humidity that has set in.

When it rains, it pours, and that’s exactly what has happened in Limassol. During a recent, sudden thunderstorm, a tornado was spotted near the city. All the while, the air has been heavy with dust and particles swept up from the Sahara. Coughing, cold, soaked, it has been hard to not feel like Cyprus is testing me. Every time I try to crawl out of sickness, weariness, stress, there is a new challenge to face.

But this post is not really about that. Not directly. It is about the day after the storm, when I headed out to the local taverna for a Halloumi wrap. Milos Taverna was a bit emptier than usual, the lights dimmer. The two men who seem to run the place were hard at work in back room. Something seemed off.

It turned out that the thunderstorm and wind had produced leaks, flooding parts of the taverna and shutting them down for the day. But even so, they insisted on making me something. There was a bit of dry charcoal leftover, after all!

That small act of kindness, despite the big headache they were dealing with, really touched me. I felt guilty too, after all, running a business is tough. I didn’t want to put them through more trouble, and I wondered how I could tip them as a thank you. But when it came time to pay, the owner handed me the pita and told me it was on the house.

It seems like these past few days after the rain, I notice glints and glimmers of this sort of kindness all around. A kind word from an old professor, genuine curiosity about my work from a stranger, a joke from the barista at the usual café.

In spite of winds, dust storms, viruses, and the weight of a day like today, glimmers of kindness persist and remind me of the things that are worth nurturing and protecting.

- Andrea