Vienna, Gilt

Dear Friend,

At Summer’s apogee I travelled, alone, to the city of Vienna. I remember my travels as a series of impressionist vignettes. Memories paint vivid streaks that melt into harmony. Feelings gild empty space in Byzantine motifs. Faces bloom as roses frozen in Winter blush. It is a beautiful painting, caught somewhere between Monet’s lilies, Klimt’s gilded works, and Sargent's portraits, but I, cursed to have my mind’s eye sewn forever shut, may not conceive of it. I know, however, that it has left great impact on my psyche. After all, the most profound changes in our lives often register somatically, well before they do intellectually.

Two months later, I continue to wrestle with its significance.

The Summer nights grow long as we now hurtle into Autumn. The leaves, once the shade of jade distilled, are now fringed in gold. The dissolution of the seasons is subtle in its transmutations, and I have a tendency to romanticize this time of waning. If Summer has a pronounced dilatory effect on our perception of time, Autumn instead demands our uncompromising attention to experience its beauty. You can feel it too, week by week, in the language of your senses. The slight chill in the air, the way the west wind blows, the gold leaf that crumbles beneath your feet.

It is plain hypocrisy, then, how suffocating the constant feels to me when remarkably little remains consistent in truth. It will be just several months until I leave my current job, and yet I am unable to practice what I preach: joyful observation of life in motion. It is, after all, a lovely routine I bear. My reverse commute to Williamsburg. My Kijitora coffees and Juice Generation smoothies and nightly dinners with my work children. Perhaps I may fool you into believing that I live a state of perfect self-reflection, but I cannot fool myself, and therein lies the comedy.

I think of Vienna, of a Spritz by the Albertina, of the Schönbrunn from the Gloriette, of radiant Klimt at the Belvedere. Of wonder palpable in every beat, at every corner, of moments where the world felt young and free and brimming with possibility. Vienna, I think of thee.

Upon my return in early August, I decided to shed the structure I had imposed upon myself over six months in the City. I left my evenings unscheduled, my weekends unplanned. I saw an empty calendar not as a failure of design but as the design itself. It is a radical departure from the neurotic socialite I embodied for my first half year in the City, but it was precisely what I needed. I scheduled, rescheduled each weeknight on the fly. Weekends took on a quantum form.

I understand, now. This is how the city is meant to be experienced. In flux, with serendipity. Taking form, only when observed, and for but a moment. After six months, I have finally achieved that critical mass where reaction becomes chain reaction, where each Partiful cascades into two, three others. As I write this, my evenings remain packed. Dinners and escapades. Plans made hours in advance. When you relinquish your duty to seek, you achieve the privilege to choose.

I remember a starry-eyed researcher at the Austria Center with his camera in hand, who shared his aspirations to capture the world as life made art. I remember a young nomad atop St. Stephen's Cathedral, who shared his dream to travel the States. I remember a scholar lost at the Donauinsel, who shared his love of the thousand shrines that home so sacred. I remember Frozan, her face gilt by the setting sun, as she shared stories of a country since past.

I remember, now, that there was a natural gravity that wove our fates together. A gravity we would do well to feel in our everyday.

I experienced, late last week, a brief feeling of anxiety. I peered upon my life as a stranger might, through stained lenses not quite my own. I reckoned with the path I must take. That in several months, I will be adrift once more, living out my suitcase in pursuit of new hopes, freshly sprouted. That I am deliberately uprooting, cutting short this life that once was a dream. That in spite of it all, the heart feels at ease, though the mind has much cause for worry. I learned, in that moment, that I lead with my heart. It feels to be the right decision, and that's enough for me. The heart knows best.

It brings to mind a recent scribble:

Live, with grand machinations in mind. Great constructions that serve as the pillars of your world. But they will inevitably, invariably come apart, and when they fall, may you find peace in it all.

These visions, these aspirations, they are beautiful. But they are deciduous. Perhaps they will fall with the Autumn leaves. In months, weeks. But in these words, may they live forever.

Of Vienna, my old dress shoes click-clacking on her cobblestone streets, storefronts lit the shade of gold made cream, the cathedral spire reaching towards the moon. Of Budapest, as I raced through her old city and her new, pausing just long enough to capture vignettes that shall last a lifetime, each crowned with her gothic glory rising from the Danube. Of Bratislava, as I followed in the footsteps of the Empress, each star along the path casting its radiant light, praying to be seen.

May you find yourselves in the falling leaves.

Forevermore, Eden