Copenhagen: A Love Letter

Dear Copenhagen,
      You and I have been strangers for most of our lives. I heard about you in songs, maybe a passing reference in a book I was reading. I scrolled past you on Instagram. Until a couple of weeks ago, I never thought we would become acquainted, but somehow, at 5:30 am last Saturday I found myself on a train to Rome to catch a plane to visit you.

The way this trip came about is fraught with turmoil and lots of stumbling. My friend Ela does a great job of recounting it in a recent blog post, but here's the short version: We were looking for a place to go to for a weekend, and we wanted to go out of the country. After looking at Malta, Sicily, Croatia and more we settled on Brussels, Belgium. The catch? As it turns out Brussels is under a high level terrorist watch and travelers are being discouraged from going there. Cue a frantic scramble to find an interesting place that we could exchange our tickets for. That's where you came in, Copengagen, with your palaces and your gardens and the prospect of exploring the same city that Hans Christian Anderson grew up in.

You certainly stole my heart. I love your broad boulevards and your colorful buildings. Your beautiful people with their flawless style and welcoming smiles. The candles on the tables, in the windows of cafes. The glow of warm light onto a cold, dark sidewalk. I love that in the basement of the Christianborg palace, next to the ruins of the fortress walls, is a room for children with crowns and swords and costumes to play dress-up in. My friends and I were kids again in that room.  I love your gardens. The huge greenhouse with the spiral staircases that we arrived at ten minutes after it closed (my only regret). The green statuary, the hedges, the forlorn beauty of it all on a cloudy day. I love that swans are not an uncommon sight. I love that Rosenborg castle still has a moat. You will always be the place where I learned that travel is not for the faint of heart, but also worth all of the stress that comes along with it.

So thank you. Thank you for the laughs and the beauty and the best chicken salad I've ever had. Thank you for the joy of admiring a small but famous statue with 20-some-odd strangers. Thank you for the mall food and the chai latte (the first one I've had since December!), and most of all, for that moment when we first climbed the stairs out of the underground platform and into the heart of the city. Nothing can top the feeling of being in a new place for the first time and the mixture of giddy excitement it inspires. I'll be back someday.

Love,
Laura

Photo by Rachel Lynne Witzig

The First Snowfall

Last night we had the first snowfall of the year here in Iowa. According to my Minnesota friends, getting more than a dusting of snow during the first snowfall is pretty rare. But there you have it. Last night is snowed for several hours, and this morning I woke up to one of my favorite sights, a sparkling, pristine blanket of white against a bright blue sky.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not a winter person. My favorite season is unabashedly summer. This year, though, the coming of snow has filled me with unexpected joy. Today, on the cold, slippery walk to my favorite coffee shop, I marveled at the way the sinking sun (it was only 3:30, and it already had that golden tint of late evening) makes the white snow glow with a warm brilliance. But there was one moment that absolutely took my breath away.

The snow around the base of a tree was completely covered in bright yellow leaves. It was as if the tree had been startled by the coming of winter, tossed its branches up in defeat, and dropped all of its leaves at once. There was a sense of abandon, a shock of color, a gift to the landscape. I was struck by both the randomness and the beauty of it all.

It only took a moment to appreciate it. I stopped. I marveled. I took a few pictures. And then I continued my trudge to the coffee shop. (It was cold). But I have a feeling that the image will stay with my for a long time. Not just because I have pictures of it. That helps, of course, but those photos will slip into the backlog of my photo feed just as easily as the pictures I took of last year's snowfall. There's something metaphorical about it, all of that color against the blank snow, and I haven't quite figured out what it is yet. You could say that I'm just looking for meaning where there is none, but you could say that about anything. I believe that there are pockets of wonder everywhere, and they are different for different people. I might find reverence in a startled tree; someone else might find it on a bustling city street.

I suppose I could impose some sort of meaning onto it. Maybe it struck me because it makes me think of the change I so desperately crave. Maybe it signifies rebirth or death, redemption even. Maybe we are too quick to assign meaning to things. Our reaction to beauty, nature, art, tragedy, doesn't need any modifiers. We don't have to tease out the reason behind feeling something. We just have to feel it.

I wrote this with the intention of understanding my reaction to this moment- why I find it funny and sad all at the same time. Why, when I think about it, I get that ache in my chest that happens whenever I see something beautiful. But then again, beauty doesn't need an explanation, and feelings don't need modifiers. The best we can do is cling to those moments, pull them out again when we need to be reminded that there are still some things we can't explain, and to find some strange comfort in the chaos.

Vignettes from the Recent Past, Pictures from Today

I. 

More often than not, Cedar Rapids feels like one big strip mall. Most of the green spaces are hemmed in by concrete. The city smells different depending on what flavor of cereal the Quaker Oats factory is churning out, and on sunny Saturdays the streets fill with motorcycles. Sometimes, though, I find things I never expect. Across the river from downtown there is an amphitheater that plays the sounds of Canada Geese over loud speakers every fifteen minutes. Nearby is a sculpture made out of recycled glass that creates a fun-house mirror effect when you stand underneath it. Every time I feel like everything has become homogenous, I find a random stretch of road made out bricks or a charming, vine covered building. While I occasionally wish I'd gone to school in place closer to nature (usually while scrolling through Instagram), Cedar Rapids is teaching me that everything can be interesting, if you let it. 

II.

After a long winter, sunny days are a shock to the system. Yesterday, our first official day of summer, my friends and I laid in the grass and took selfies. Somehow we had gone the whole year without getting a single picture of the four of us together. The moment was both sublime and melancholy: one of my friends is transferring to another school, and another is going to be abroad next semester. As I watch the graduation tents go up on the quad, I can't help feeling that quintessential stirring that accompanies every step into the unknown. In just a few days time I'll be on a plane headed for Paris. I'm both excited and stressed, and meanwhile summer has me intoxicated with heady feelings of freedom. Every day for the past few days, the clouds roll in around 4pm. The wind picks up. The temperature drops. The rain falls at an angle, with a force that stings bare skin. Everything is motion. Summer is here, and the world is all a-flutter. 

III.

Every day I see pictures of places I want to live someday. The impossibly green pastures of Ireland. The deep, dark conifers of the Northwest. Blue sky stretching above West Texas like a drum. It makes me want to speed up time, run faster, do more. What's lost in the gap between here and there? Every day I face the delusion that I should be somewhere else, when really this is the only place I can be, and the only place I am. I am reminded of this every time I see a familiar face, or double over laughing at something a friend has said. I am reminded on late night pancake runs and Sunday morning conversations with my roommates. Every time the wanderlust catches hold, it's the people that keep me grounded. This is my little place in this big, messy world. I'm not going to waste my time wishing it was somewhere else.

Quote of the Day: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Over winter break I got a chance to see the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Besides confirming my dream of one day traveling to Iceland, it was also a beautiful movie to watch, and it was superbly acted by all those involved. This film is full of memorable quotes, from the funny ("You know who looks good in a beard? Dumbledore. Not you.") to the profound ("Beautiful things don't ask for attention."), and of course it's hard to overlook the "motto" of the film (And of Life Magazine): "To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the meaning of life."But the quote that struck me the most was something said in a conversation between Walter Mitty and the photographer Sean O'Connell.

They are on a mountaintop, watching a snow leopard that Sean is trying to photograph.

Walter Mitty: Are you going to take it?
Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty: Stay in it?
Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.

Those few lines of dialogue hit me right in the stomach. There, sitting in the dark movie theatre, I thought of my phone nestled in my purse. I hadn't turned it off; it was still on vibrate. I could feel every e-mail, every text message I received. The same was probably true for everyone in the theatre.

I come from a family of photographers. We record everything, from Christmas and birthdays to visits to our favorite coffee shop. We once spent a good chunk of a family dinner showing my Uncle how to use Instagram. Don't get me wrong. I love taking pictures. I love documenting little moments, enhancing them with filters, and the thrill of sending them out into the world. I love film photography, too. The smell of chemicals, the feel of developer on your fingers. I love that the stakes are higher, and that it forces you to be thoughtful at every stage in the process. As a writer, I am a recordist by nature. Every moment is trapped, filtered, and congealed on the page, but words still pale in comparison to the actual experience.

That little moment in Walter Mitty made me reevaluate the way I was living my life. It reminded me that not all moments have to be recorded in order for them to be meaningful. The most powerful memories can only happen when you are fully present. Sure, I'm glad I have so many instagram photos, but there's a certain kind of comfort that comes with knowing I wasn't distracted during the experiences that meant the most to me. Things like standing on the stage at Carnegie hall, or having Thanksgiving dinner in Ireland with my family in the 7th grade. Things like that don't need to be validated by a photograph or even a poem or a short story. They just are.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is full of messages like this one. It's a movie about going into the unknown and facing your fears. It's about living life to the fullest and not letting yourself fall into the trap of dreaming but never doing. In a world where everything is vying for our attention, I think we could all learn to be a little bit more choosy about what we let ourselves get distracted by, and inevitably, what we're missing.

Afterthoughts: I don't want anyone to think that after seeing this film I suddenly gave up instagram (or facebook or youtube or one of myriad other distractions). Sean O'Connell's words (or, really, his character's words) simply inspired me to think (and write) about this subject. My goal is to find a balance between capturing moments and experiencing them.

I hope you found this post interesting, and if you have thoughts on Walter Mitty, photography, or anything discussed above, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. This post is part of a sporadic series that I started a while back, where I take a closer look at the quotes that resonate with me. You can read the first of this series, here. As always, thanks for reading!