Terra Incognita // English Class

My English class recently read an excerpt from Rebecca Solnit's book "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" and we were asked to respond. In her piece, Solnit's explores the concept of getting lost by offering examples and commentary of various manifestations of "being lost." She opens her piece by offering an anecdote about her first time getting drunk on Elijah's wine, then dives into being lost by reflecting on the Jewish tradition of opening the door to the unknown once a year at the Passover feast. She continues on to offer more theories on getting lost not only in the physical sense. She addresses Meno and Aristotle's questions about searching for the unknown and accepting it, as well as artists' tendencies to do the same.

Her discussion of negative capability, calculating the unforeseen and humans desire for transformation continue in the philosophical aspects of being lost. Solnit borrows various examples from other writers, for example Virginia Woolf, and philosophers to argue that getting lost is an innate need for humans if they are to truly find themselves. She ventures into physical loss as well to reinforce this idea, giving the example of being truly lost in a city as the best way to be present in said city. Solnit then uses the getting lost in the wilderness to offer the idea that acceptance of being lost generally ends better than resisting, seeing as humans naturally don't pay attention while confident and end up missing something important. She offers the etymology of the word "lost" to explain the idea of being lost as another way to express comfort and surrender with the unknown - and reinforces the strength that comes with that acceptance. She reminds readers that to rest in comfort too often equates to falling by the wayside in life , borrowing yet again from another author. In yet another approach to the same question, she suggests that losing oneself is different from losing an object because self-loss only truly comes when you find yourself in a situation greater than your understanding and requiring learning or transformation to overcome. I interpreted the piece as  a hearty endorsement of losing oneself on purpose, with the intent of truly finding oneself.

Terra incognita is where we find ourselves.

I've always been in love with the idea of adventures and getting nearly-lost , so Solnit's piece felt very real. While discussing it, I remembered this past summer where most of my best memories begin with the suggestion "Let's go adventuring." Whether with my best friend or my little sister, this phrase usually loosely translated to getting lost. I'd recently gotten the right to drive - combined with free time and an entire city to explore - and adventures became a regular occurrence. In the space of a few months I discovered an intense love for the city I'd been apathetic towards since my birth there. I realized how close I was with my little sister - and I am sure that had we not laughed our way through wrong turns into sketchy parts of town on the way to discover pie shops, our relationship would not be the same. Similarly, heading out with close friends to find food at bizarre hours and ending up somewhere completely different forged an entire new type of friendship. We all felt lost and uncertain sitting on the pavement that one night, while the cop lights flashed, but waking up the next morning and puzzling over the absurdity of being written up for walking a dog past curfew...that's when we found out what our friendship really could be.

My biggest example of "unknown" could easily be summed up in one word - France. I'd been essentially born into in, had talked to people, read books and prepare quite a bit before setting off ... but nonetheless I felt as though I was walking straight out of a door into some grand unknown as I walked through the metal detector in the Boston airport. Looking back, the speech from the director at the pre-departure meeting could not have been more correct - she said that this was the first year of our lives, not because of a birthday or an age, but due to one of our first immense choices. We were choosing to embark on our own journey, by ourselves - it wasn't anyone else choosing for us anymore, we were living for ourselves now. So, despite the immense unknown all seventy of us headed into we simultaneously took one of our first steps towards voluntary discomfort - the price we were (perhaps unknowingly) willing to pay to discover ourselves. More than halfway into the experience, I can look back and say all of this with confidence. It wasn't possible to create the truest version of me until I left my family, my friends, my streets, my candy bars and all of the other things - big and small - that I knew. I don't mean to say that I've lost the things that I left behind, quite the contrary. I have come to realize however that transplanting myself into an entire new environment has given me the opportunity to learn to be comfortably and confidently  uncomfortable , to prioritize my own life according to me , to realize who I am without the influences that had shaped me from birth until this past September. In the midst of some of the biggest transformation of my life, this piece has done nothing but remind me of the value and importance of seeking out uncertainty and learning to value being lost as an integral part of an adventure. I am quite literally currently finding myself in a terra incognita - France - and hope to be able to find other ways of getting lost no matter where I am in life and the best way to do so constantly is to become comfortable with the unknown. Truly, I agree with Solnit - you can only find yourself, be truly aware, when you are uncertain of your surroundings. Lost.

Travel's Gifts to Me // English Class

  Few people are lucky enough to have flown thousands of miles in before their first birthday but I was born into a charmed existence and became a worldwide traveler even before I was born. Ever since then, I've been lucky enough to spend at least a month each year away from home but I've only recently realized how much I've taken my adventures for granted. Most of the time I revisit the same places and at this point they've I've become far too passive - even a place with the familiarity of a second home is worth keeping my eyes open for but I'm only now realizing this. 

I am almost three months into my year abroad - my greatest adventure yet - and I worry that I'll allow myself to fall into the same trap again. It took me some time and a very odd situation to even acknowledge this possibility : I've never been fond of surprises and I think I'm not alone when I say I hate making mistakes but I've found that my new home is full of opportunities for both. My most rewarding experience so far was a combination of the two - missing the bus and then realizing the sensation wasn't all that unpleasant.

An odd sort of entrapment occurred when you miss your bus. You can't go anywhere but at the same time you have nothing to do because you were all prepared and planning to do something else. I found myself sitting on a bench for fifteen minutes with nothing to do other than think about my new life, family and friends. Certainly not the most comfortable, of experiences but certainly enriching. I thought about the characters in my daily life and the strength and speed of the bonds I have already formed surprised me yet again and then made me think about how much I'm missing out on in my former life. But for me, the most bizarre part of the experience were the minutes I spent thinking about myself. Self centered, I know, but as I tried to compare current me to pre-travel me I realized some surprising things about myself.

I've always been intrigued by how other people would describe me, simply out of curiosity, but I've come to accept that I'll probably never know. I do however know how they interact with me directly. My empty time at the bus stop gave me time to compare my friendships in the US to those here and it made me realize where I've changed and where I've stayed the same. Some things are superficial, like my new found ability to wear something other than pajamas when I get dressed in the morning, but others scared me a bit. I realized that elements of my character - me, myself and I - had changed. Leaving "home" caused the changes and then gave me the perception to see them. In all honesty, it was a bit frightening.

Transcontinental Communication

My first major linguistic mistake happened before I even boarded the plane to France. Certain words appear similar in French and English but the translations differ greatly, sometimes catastrophically. My French teacher calls them "false friends" and despite multiple  revisions I managed to use one of the most common in the first line of my host family letter.

Thankfully, even after reading that "I was so aroused to being headed to France!" my family agreed to keep me. I showed my mistake to my brother after arriving in French and made sure he knew I meant excited and happy. He cracked a knowing, mocking half-smile. My mistake was common enough to be understood but my year wasn't off to the best start. 

My French language struggles did not cease upon arriving in the Charles de Gaulle airport, despite all my wishing. Standing at the front on a long line while a barista impatiently demands you place an order became my definition of true fear. No amount of classroom French could have prepared me for the reality of life in Rennes. Three weeks into the whole experience I finally ordered breakfast fearlessly but I still ended up with a bitter espresso  that morning, after failing to communicate my preference for candy flavored coffee. Another time, I meant to ask for no whipped cream but ended up instead with an extra, separate serving of whipped cream and a bit of judgement towards my "gourmand" tastes. My progress seemed slow, to say the least. 

Crew practice really put the language barrier into perspective. I knew I wanted to continue practicing my sport so with some help I found the local team. Sure, ordering food was exciting but when I walked into the boathouse I entered a whole new realm of French. My sport requires an assortment of arcane words, like coxswain and wayenough, for daily practice. In Rennes, the sport is exactly the same. The vocabulary, not so much. The first day of practice I listened so intently, just trying to understand, that one of my future teammates assumed I didn't speak French. Only when she began bad mouthing me to her friend, who gently pointed out I could probably understand, did I know what the conversation was about. Learning <<tribord>> for "starboard" and <<équilibre>> for "set" in the boat made me realize that even just combining my teammates scant English combined with my basic French somehow kept us from completely crashing the boat. Hand motions and round about explanations played a huge role, and though far from eloquent by the end of practice the whole boat seemed to be working as a team, despite the language barrier. Though a very small accomplishment, being able to communicate by the end of the hour long practice gave me great hope. 

I would have liked to think none of these mistakes were my fault, that the airplane sucked fifty points from my IQ or maybe I just wasn't speaking loudly enough. Of course, none of this was the case. I know that every misunderstanding directly correlated to a mistake on my part. Any laughs I might have cause my host brothers were far from intentional, being instead usually derived from accidental inappropriate questions or statements that seem to be a part of being a teenager abroad. Silence  seemed preferable - until  my host brothers began asking if the cat had taken my tongue. Communication is far from easy.