Self-Serious Reflections on Baltimore

Whilst in the middle of (nearly) finishing my book this morning, it occurred to me where I was this time last year--I had finished my internship at the Senate and was leaving D.C. on a jaunt back up to Wellesley. I just checked the notebook I was keeping at the time, it looks as though I was in Baltimore a year ago today. How strange a thought that is; I feel simultaneously and paradoxically as though it was only last week, and yet as though I'm almost an entirely different person today. I guess that both of those feelings can be true, can quietly and peacefully coexist in my head.

While on the train to up to B'More, I sat next to a sixty-year-old woman named Valerie who explained the Bronie subculture to me (I recall her telling me that her daughter and son-in-law were rather enamored of My Little Pony). And while we talked about a lot of fairly benign and inconsequential topics, I remember our train ride ending with her realization that we were two women respectively bookending a very significant and eventful period of life, with her impending retirement and my return to a second year of minimal-responsibility and extremely-sheltered college. She had all of the usual caring wisdom to share with me, like that I should write and travel if it's what I love and that I should always be careful and to not stay out too late alone, especially not if I was planning on descending the hill from Mount Vernon and going into the "less reputable" areas of town.* And though there wasn't anything particularly lasting about our encounter, I took a small comfort in knowing that, as scary and cruel as the world can be, that people are still basically good and caring, especially when they're around people in whom they choose to tenderly see aspects of themselves.

Maybe I'm choosing childish naivete over weary cynicism, but I think I'd rather experience life with optimism than bitterness.

Anyhow, I remember having a lot of fun in Baltimore. I met a Wellesley alum at the Farmers' Market, climbed Federal Hill and looked out at the city, ate a crabcake, and walked all over the city dragging my ragged, faded suitcase with the crazy wheel. It's maybe the most liberated and independent and free I've felt in the past year. I take immense joy in exploring, and (selfishly) being alone with my thoughts and observations, and I think more than anything the experience helped me realize how individualistic I never knew I was, how desperate I am to see things and explore and observe. And that kind of epiphany, though not always simple or easily-realized, is priceless as a sort of personal compass, even a year later as I pack up my bags once again and prepare to return to Boston for another season of challenge and learning and growing. And I cannot wait to see what that time brings.

*I'd just like to point out that in the minimal urban wandering I've done alone, mostly in the eastern-U.S., I've felt safe in almost all my experiences, probably in part because I've been careful and aware and prepared and informed about my surroundings, and haven't done anything stupid like let's say wandering around particularly violent neighborhoods at two a.m., although I completely understand and appreciate why my parents and elders always worry about me when I travel alone.

Creepy, no?

Mount Vernon

The Inner Harbor from the top of Federal Hill