Neem mij mee: Conclusion & Control - Utrecht (Weeks 5 & 6)
This morning I am listening to the rain make contact with everything outside - the tall trees that line our street, the bricks in formation and the sand and growth that occupy the space between, the canal and the tarps that cover the boats that line it. The surface of the Stadsbuitengracht shimmers, like a thousand little fish are flipping their tails right below, but when I stare at it for longer, my brain tires and I see the blips as many pixels out of a place on a screen. It’s almost noon and I’m just pulling on socks, pouring coffee. The early bird in me is appalled, but there is not much to do today except grocery shop and some work on the computer.
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As a jeweler’s assistant, I did the final steps in the process - oxidizing the silver, polishing it, assembling with jump rings, packaging and sticking on shipping labels. I loved it. I once expressed that I felt I had the best steps of the whole process, where as our fearless leader - the jeweler in which I was assisting - said that she felt she had the best steps - the creation, working with the wax, playing with the freshly casted silver, whatever other magic I am naive to that is involved in the beginning steps of creating jewelry. I have always felt the instant gratification of finishing a thing. I felt that I had the best job because I got to hold the finished products. I got to ship off the earrings and rings and necklaces to their next lives. I was there for the end of their first lives. Maybe it’s a sort of God complex.
But it’s not. It’s about feeling in control. I often bring up in jest how a poetry professor in college said I had an “obsession with closure.” He meant it in regards to my poems and their endings. I like to tie my poems up in neat bows, never letting them fall into shambles, non-sequiturs, meaninglessness, or implosion. I put a lot of emotional weight on my endings. This is because I often write poems to figure things out, whereas I write fiction in hopes to share something I’ve observed. You never come across an ending, never pick it up off the street, it’s not in the “FREE” bin at the neighborhood yard sale. You write yourself into one. You polish away the oxidation until the thing shines the way you want it to.
Moving to a new place is never having the ending you hoped for. That’s not because it won’t come but because the ending comes when the event is over, usually many years down the line. My favorite definition of the word “ending,” comes from the Cambridge English Dictionary: “the last part of a process, esp. the way in which something stops existing.” So having your ending means something leaving from your life. This is no good for me; as in, it is not an easy thing for me to contend with - me, loving endings, twirling my (metaphorical) pen on the paper thinking of the best way out of a confusing, fearful, or hurtful time. (For those who read my adolescent poetry, you maybe can now understand why so much of it was confessional, about heartbreak, about needing to persevere.)
I want the house with the cozy rugs, the worn woods in lots of shades that they emulate a fairytale forest, the ceramic mugs in every glaze, the cat curled up on insanely mundane surfaces - the rattan chair, the windowsill, the book I left flipped open on the bed. I want the adventure of going on a trip and the feeling of sanctuary when you get back, the truthful lore you tell your friends about your “time in Europe” and how it changed you, how it propelled you to the more mature, thoughtful, and successful person you have become. Time and money are the big material factors here, I know this, and one usually comes with the other. From myself, I’ve needed patience. But I’ve also needed to recognize that the feeling of conclusion I always seek won’t come in the way I will it to. I’ve needed to remind myself that the story is occurring now and it may not have an end. But how can I ever do this? How can I find satisfaction amidst the occurring? When I’ve always been someone to need the satisfaction of conclusion? (And in somewhat shameful honesty,) I’ve always loved the story printed out in neat font over the editing of the story, the concept of the movie over actually sitting down and watching it, the wrapping of the gift over the picking out, the decision over the deciding, the solution over the brainstorming. Sort of like how you love the rollercoaster ride only after it’s over - part of you experiencing sheer admiration for the fact that you are still alive, you didn’t puke, you opened your eyes once or twice during the descent.
Yesterday, I went on the hunt for more homey items, bought a €3 mirror - we have one in our bathroom that I have to stand on my tiptoes to use because, I guess, Dutch people are really all that tall - and on the walk back, passed a mirror with a note that read: Neem mij mee :) Quick use of my Google Translate app, and it told me it meant: “Take me with you.” It’s the prepositional phrase that gets me. Take me with you. Maybe in Dutch the setup of the sentence is commonly used. In Philly, a note would just say, “Take me” or “Free.” I enjoy how direct this is. It’s like it’s attempting to be romantic. And even though the mirror surface was small, the frame was punched tin and rusted, and the whole thing might be ugly, I took it with me.
I have already done it. I have found an ending even when a thing has not ended and might (probably) never end. It’s with an aspect of life that is also considered one of the hardest to control. It’s with another person. This is how my adolescent poetry beginnings progress - except I don’t have to write a message into an ending, to tie a messy experience up into something that resembles closure. Being with a person who you’ve made your partner in life feels like an ending though it’s not - You’re here. You’ve arrived. It gives me the satisfaction and conclusion I am always craving but also the space, opportunity, and need for constant change and growth. Now go forward. Neem mij mee. And if I’ve done this kind of journey once, I can do it again. May the Stadsbuitengracht stand as witness. :)
Photos from our day trip to Amsterdam.