Brussels

I’ve heard of Brussels being compared to DC, with DC being the capital of a large nation, and Brussels—if you’d allow me some generosity—the capital of a continent. A weekday, commuting population, overrun with tourists at the main sights on weekends but dead otherwise. It’s a fair assessment in some ways, but Brussels to me was much more interesting. It’s a thoroughly multicutural city, not only as a whole, but in its individuals, born in the crossroads of nations and languages. It is neither rooted in, nor revels in its past, yet it remains conscious of the histories that built its streets, as though all moments of its existence are lived at all times. It is distinctly unremarkable; a city of cities, a world of worlds, and deeply itself.

September Scotland

If there is one thought from this time in Scotland, it is that Scotland is kind—unexpectedly, and almost overwhelmingly so, as though we are aliens, still in tact, swallowed by the earth beneath, and beneficiaries of a graciousness that needs no words. Its landscape was quite different from my expectations; less sheer cliffs and jagged rock, and more rolling hills and soft, smooth waters. The colours are gentle, the rain gentle, the sheep gentle. The people, too, and more so than anything else. There is a notion that the weather here is a ravaging monster with a soul of its own. Perhaps that is true—September says nothing of extremes—but even in the rains, without cover and up into the heights of the Fairy Pools, the heavens still feel to be a caressing hand upon this land, and I can’t see that to be otherwise. And so it is with these places so dear to the earth. It is not only a ruggedness borne out in such environments; it is an understanding, an acknowledgement of our place here, and what it means to be a part of this world. And that, too, is what it means to be gentle.

Nice, Monaco, Corsica

Of Oran, the city of his childhood, Albert Camus had said, “these are lands of innocence.” It was these words that I could not escape through my days in the South of France and on Corsica; Nice and France are, an ocean away, much different from Oran and Algeria, and Camus’s notion of such innocence, pantheistic and near-primal, doesn’t apply quite so well to these places, but the resonance of lands built by the coast of the Mediterranean, under uninterrupted days of sun, rang persistent. To us in a different age, this may perhaps be as close as we can get to his innocence. I felt that some in Nice, both at a villa set upon the mountains with a clear view down to the undulating city and still, matte ocean, and in a converted worker’s flat, un-air conditioned and but a few dusty steps away from the pier, in that slow, unhurried pace and smell of warmth that permeates the air, the chattering of pebbles and feet that walk upon them, ship horns and the glint of numerous rays and salt on the back of the hand and in the hair. It was there, less, but there still in Monaco, down quiet streets beneath old looming city walls, among buildings of all styles and identities, against the dolosse enabling the safe havens of wealth and extravagance, and concrete constructions made of sands from many miles away. But this innocence was most present, of course, in Corsica. We, as the only foreigners, inundated by the native language of Camus, undeserving recipients of a kindness present only far away, driving around Cap Corse, its villages, harbours, beaches. At the vantage point at Moulin Mattei, too, from where one looks upon the east and the west, there too the glimmer of the sun off the ocean is soft, gentle, lulling you into a breathless trance, eyes transfixed upon mirrored gradients, with but imperfect ships marring a dream-like surface. The colours are innocent; not of man, not capable of man, and gone by the time you reach the water’s edge, replaced by reflections and buoys and laughter. Yet even they are innocent, and you can’t help but hold your breath, to listen close to the life around. And that is the innocence of our age—not what is far from the civilised man, but that what we do not know and do not understand.

Taipei, a City of Rain

Living in London now, the first reaction I get from most people when I say I moved from California is one of shock. California, to what seems like just about everyone, is a paradise in which the sun is ever unobscured and you drive your convertible, hood down, through radiant streets, and lie beside the sea on equally golden sands, day after day. Why would someone ever come here? There’s a rather pernicious belief underlying these reactions, held by both locals and anyone who knows anything about this city—that London is dreary, grey and rainy all the time. I wonder what it is that has made such a lie so pervasive; as someone who has spent a few years in Pittsburgh, I’m a bit offended when people think the weather here is unpleasant to the point of being the first thing someone thinks about when they hear the name of this city.

It’s worth noting, then, that ‘dreary’ is not the first thing that comes to mind when people talk about Taipei. Despite its penchant for both unleashing torrential downpours at unsuspecting hours and steadily drizzling for days on end, I suspect people don’t recall Taipei as cloudy and wet. It’s a city with a climate determined not by what the weather does from one day to the next, but by an unconsciousness yet visceral perception of its identity.

A brilliant day in London brings out colours once present, as though a haze removed from our eyes, an entity fundamentally unchanged, and hence we dwell upon, blame the grey that obscures the beauty of this city of centuries. Less of London when overcast and raining, more of it when the moments are bright, but, more or less, still the same. For Taipei, a city of a latitude that has but a passing notion of seasons, the changing of the months that evoke the romantic perception of the turning of time have been replaced by a day to day immediacy of the wrestling between a city and its heavens, the product of which is a place that has as many faces as names for its precipitation.

In this manner, the city of Taipei is reflected in its rain: it is patchwork, with a mind of its own; it heeds no calls, and resists the telling of its fortunes; it is to be immersed within, to be upon the earth. It is not a violent city, where the waters are unceasing and the inhabitants resigned in the rivers that course through the city, nor is it a wild one, one in which extremities are magnified and blessings and curses flow abundantly.

Taipei is not an idea, or an attitude, or a photograph; no sights are proclaimed, and no emotions are invoked by its name. Of its imperfections, many are seen at first glance: in worn streets, concrete free of refuse but dotted with permanent stains and blooming with sprawling cracks and fissures and wild flowers, and on the myriad buildings missing wall tiles and decorated with dark streaks flowing from windowsills and gutters, covered by half-torn election campaign posters and bright red numbers you can dial to hang an advertisement in its place. But it is a city of seven million, where travelers are invited to eat the same foods and walk the same roads as its inhabitants. In short, Taipei is human—just like its rain, not to be known, but to be lived alongside of.

Brighton

It just occurred to me that I’ve never been to a beach with such a late sunset. It’s a shame, isn’t it? For the days to be long, in a place where there are no sands to sink your feet into. Yet to say so is a bit facetious; I am told there are some nice beaches somewhere in this country. Perhaps the shame is that such places are always further, rather than closer. On that note, I’ve heard people complain about this place. The beach is pebbly, the waters cold and murky, thoughts of the like. I wonder, what is it that informs our notion of the beauty of a place like this? Is it but a form that we have innate knowledge of? Are there colours we desire, ones that we would travel miles and days for? Or do we seek nothing but extremes, from the rugged solitude of cliffs beyond reach to an unimpeachable sense of do-nothingness invoked by warm summer haze and sands formed by the near-eternal coming and going of the tides? Is there beauty in the middling? Or—can there be beauty in the middling? If only your heart did not betray your answer.

I. There’s a couple making out on this beach. I wonder if it’s not uncomfortable; I suppose that is why they are fully clothed.
II. Two people are playing fetch here with their dogs. The catch is, well, the dogs never catch the thrown object—a pebble—and the object is never returned. Is it still a game of fetch if nothing is ever retrieved? I wonder too what the dogs think, but I imagine that they’d rather run than find.
III. Speaking of long summer days, would a beach at a place with endless summer days be enjoyable? Do we seek out beginnings and endings? Or is it more so that there is beauty at such an hour?