tales of one city
There are two ways I could tell the story of my trip to Heidelberg for work.
One story starts with an unexpected sixteen hours of being intensely ill with a highlight somewhere between the seatbelts-locked descent of a flight through Manchester and some distant point on the other side of a long line to be grilled by German customs and immigration at Frankfurt Airport. I could detail the day of frustration and panic spent chasing late trains on changed platforms; dragging my luggage behind me lost in the rain in Heidelberg on a Sunday after every shop selling umbrellas, hats, or food was closed; the long week of mostly irrelevant lectures and political posturing and older academics who will never respect the contributions of my differently-educated generation of interdisciplinary scientists; and about poisoning by food allergy and my own poor translation skills. I could despair at my own talk being poorly presented and generally pointless, sandwiched as it was between redundantly similar high-level talks and performed while shaky and sleep deprived and sugar-crashing and still poisoned. I could whine about the downside of being mistaken for local and thus considered stupid and rude rather than forgiveably American as when out and about with colleagues, and about the additional surreality of being repeatedly confused for local in a country one's own ancestors only escaped alive by feeding that assumption on purpose.
The other story is about revisiting a rare fond memory of my grandfather and moving past it, proudly navigating southern Germany myself with little of a plan; about a beautiful foggy historic town where it just feels fitting and right to be quietly lonely; about the mental silence and opportunity for reflection one finds when all of the surrounding chatter is in a language one barely recognises. I could talk about an unplanned long walk full of much-needed conversation with someone I am ever surprised and proud to call a friend, hiking up miles of cobblestone and stairs to explore a castle and its gardens, overlooking the town at sunset with ancient cathedral bells echoing up to us through the hills and valleys. I could share beer-hall pictures of colleagues building internationally collaborative competing coaster castles, revel in reconnecting with the best of our decade-long project whose interconnecting technologies are finally coming together into usefulness for a field of science that makes my heart sing. I could celebrate Alsatian wine and the fine wheat beers of Baden-Württemberg and the influx of felafel and pasta and vegan-friendliness in a busy and multicultural university town. I could wax eloquent on street fashion and the prevalence of everyday people making an effort to be stylish, and the silver lining of the constant rain being interesting-looking folks in fabulous knee-high boots everywhere.
Both of these stories are true. A lot of feel-good postmodern self-help pep talk encourages one to discount one's own stories like the first. Buddhist advice encourages moving through stories, especially like the first, and letting them go. But they're both true, and important to me, and not even terribly separable. I can look through the output of my cameras and post-processing and not always be able to tell which story a picture belongs to. With judicious use of colour filtering, I can actively decide which story some of them go with. I know that I am blessed to have the sort of mind that latches on to the latter story as time passes, but never quite forgets the first; I have many friends and family and loves whose minds tend work against them the other way around. But somewhere in the middle is the messy truth of things my chosen art form is (quite unfairly) most believed to capture, and I'm desperately trying to catch up with the backlog of it before the emotional intensity fades and my schedule brings me elsewhere. Somewhere in the middle, there's this.
(this photo, very big)
(whole set, still in progress)
One story starts with an unexpected sixteen hours of being intensely ill with a highlight somewhere between the seatbelts-locked descent of a flight through Manchester and some distant point on the other side of a long line to be grilled by German customs and immigration at Frankfurt Airport. I could detail the day of frustration and panic spent chasing late trains on changed platforms; dragging my luggage behind me lost in the rain in Heidelberg on a Sunday after every shop selling umbrellas, hats, or food was closed; the long week of mostly irrelevant lectures and political posturing and older academics who will never respect the contributions of my differently-educated generation of interdisciplinary scientists; and about poisoning by food allergy and my own poor translation skills. I could despair at my own talk being poorly presented and generally pointless, sandwiched as it was between redundantly similar high-level talks and performed while shaky and sleep deprived and sugar-crashing and still poisoned. I could whine about the downside of being mistaken for local and thus considered stupid and rude rather than forgiveably American as when out and about with colleagues, and about the additional surreality of being repeatedly confused for local in a country one's own ancestors only escaped alive by feeding that assumption on purpose.
The other story is about revisiting a rare fond memory of my grandfather and moving past it, proudly navigating southern Germany myself with little of a plan; about a beautiful foggy historic town where it just feels fitting and right to be quietly lonely; about the mental silence and opportunity for reflection one finds when all of the surrounding chatter is in a language one barely recognises. I could talk about an unplanned long walk full of much-needed conversation with someone I am ever surprised and proud to call a friend, hiking up miles of cobblestone and stairs to explore a castle and its gardens, overlooking the town at sunset with ancient cathedral bells echoing up to us through the hills and valleys. I could share beer-hall pictures of colleagues building internationally collaborative competing coaster castles, revel in reconnecting with the best of our decade-long project whose interconnecting technologies are finally coming together into usefulness for a field of science that makes my heart sing. I could celebrate Alsatian wine and the fine wheat beers of Baden-Württemberg and the influx of felafel and pasta and vegan-friendliness in a busy and multicultural university town. I could wax eloquent on street fashion and the prevalence of everyday people making an effort to be stylish, and the silver lining of the constant rain being interesting-looking folks in fabulous knee-high boots everywhere.
Both of these stories are true. A lot of feel-good postmodern self-help pep talk encourages one to discount one's own stories like the first. Buddhist advice encourages moving through stories, especially like the first, and letting them go. But they're both true, and important to me, and not even terribly separable. I can look through the output of my cameras and post-processing and not always be able to tell which story a picture belongs to. With judicious use of colour filtering, I can actively decide which story some of them go with. I know that I am blessed to have the sort of mind that latches on to the latter story as time passes, but never quite forgets the first; I have many friends and family and loves whose minds tend work against them the other way around. But somewhere in the middle is the messy truth of things my chosen art form is (quite unfairly) most believed to capture, and I'm desperately trying to catch up with the backlog of it before the emotional intensity fades and my schedule brings me elsewhere. Somewhere in the middle, there's this.
(this photo, very big)
(whole set, still in progress)