What NOT to read during your first weeks in a foreign land

“You can’t understand. How could you? – with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums – how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude – utter solitude without a policeman – by the way of silence – utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone, you must fall back on your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong – too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness.”
- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

I read that passage at breakfast last week and I all but rose out of my chair. That’s it! I thought, That’s what I’m feeling – the solitude, the silence that descends when everything I hear is unintelligible to me. I don’t, for a moment, see myself as traveling up-river into a dark and savage land – I am not playing at being Marlow here – but the rush of recognition I felt was strong. And how could you understand?

At home, I seek out solitude – the chance to be alone with my thoughts, or without thought, for an hour or two; to be spared the interruption of co-workers with small questions and sordid gossip; to find refuge from the noise of children and too many electronic gadgets in too small a house.

But here, even on a crowded street, I am alone. If I wish to be heard (seen?), I must make a conscious effort, exercising my brain and my courage to address someone in French. And even then, I do not experience connection or an abiding presence of another – we interact only so long as we each concentrate on overcoming our lack of a common language. Should one of us lose interest or patience, the thing is lost, and we are alone together once more.

The other side of the same coin – the ingredients of a “life”
Sitting at dinner the other night, I reflected on the depth and breadth of my “community” in Seattle and in the US.

I was dining in a restaurant I’ve been to on a few occasions – often enough, and conspicuously enough that the manager and head waitress come over to greet me now when I wander in. And I take such delight in their handshakes!... in the words they say, and which I parrot back to them (understanding only the intention and context, but not the specific meaning). So this got me to thinking about just how many people I know at home – how many places I can appear and be welcomed. There being too many friends and family to list individually, I instead catalogued the various circles, groups, communities and cliques to which Ceil and I belong – so many people, so many ties.

And yet, in the summer of 1989, I arrived in Seattle with only a phone number – Rachel Bravmann’s parents. I knew Rachel from Hamilton College and she assured me her parents would welcome me in – and so I showed up, was welcomed, and began to build a life. And seventeen years later, it’s a full, rich, huge thing! How did that happen? What effort, what energy, what ingredients did I add? And how to do it now, in this new setting?

By the end of the first glass of wine, the answer occurred to me: show up.

Every friendship, every connection Ceil and I enjoy began with one of us showing up. Nineteen-ninety: Ceil’s friend Lisa asks if I’d be interested in playing softball with her husband’s team. I show up to practice – and sixteen years later, Richard, Rick, and Phil and their families are amongst my closest friends.

And it’s not always easy – there’s that hesitation – not shyness per se, but sloth or hesitancy to take the risk, to make the effort associated with small-talk or finding topics of common interest. It’s a matter of showing up and showing up again.

That same year: Wendy Tyer invites us out with some guys she met – "they’re from Albany, really funny. C'mon out." Although I don’t recall our first meeting with Matt, Nell, Michael and Todd, I’m pretty sure I had to be talked into it… why not stay home and order a pizza. No doubt Ceil dragged me… and again the next weekend… and then to some party… but by then it’s done: a new web has been woven, and we meet Bruce, Katie, Betsy, Tony, Heather, etc., etc.; we hear about a school called Assumption St.-Bridget – and then there’s more “showing up” to be done, but before long we have the DelValle’s, Scherger’s, Gavins, MacVicars, Dangla’s, Riordin’s et al.

So that’s the watchword for me here in France. Show up and show up again.

Remind me of that, gently, should I forget.