35mm

I’ve found that a kiss on the cheek is a really sweet way to say goodbye. 

It was Isa who gave me one. It was like this full body warmth that enveloped me when she did it. It reminded me of being tucked into bed as a child, when the stick-on stars on the ceiling feel as vast as the milkway, and you lay beneath it all, just a mere fraction size of the blanket. It felt like being handed a mug of something sweet and warm after recovering indoors from a brutal chill, with clumps of ice still hanging onto the wool of your socks. It was such a platonic display of affection, but it captures this message of love so fiercely. It was a pleasant way to feel a farewell.

 I should start kissing more cheeks goodbye.

I said plenty of goodbyes, see you laters, what have you when leaving Spain. Ones that involved kisses, others hugs, and some just a wave while parting ways. I can’t say I cried too hard leaving.

Well okay there was this one time.

I stupidly welled up during the crescendo of a jazz performance on my last few nights. we were in this little cafe bar tucked away in the city center in what felt like the sweatiest corner on the northern iberian peninsula. I had to laugh when my eyes dampened right then and there, because any emotion seemed to have flooded me at the “wrong” time. Sweaty, tired, standing hip to hip amongst strangers, feet achy from holding myself perched on the bar for the entirety of the sax and bass solo. It certainly wasn’t the ideal of atmospheres to sniffle and shed a tear.

But Santander is certainly worthy of a good mourning. Being that she is a quaint little city that holds both the ocean and mountain range together by one smush of the horizon, suffice to say it really does have all you need. There is art, there is sand, and there held my closest friends this past year. Of course these things become more apparent and all the more clear once you’ve left, but at least the memories still float around sweetly in mind.

Truthfully the city was a bit utopian with the rain kept at bay. When the sun was out, you'd find humans of all ages strolling about the park, duly accessorized with Regma ice cream in hand. They’d waltz down the promenade slowly with a partner or companion, a blue backdrop of the sea and sky behind them framing it all. Some enjoyed their scoops peacefully. Others with more haste, cocking their head sideways to lick bits of the cone up before the fluffy cloud of cream and sugar dripped down between the sockets of their fingers, streaming down the back of their hands.

Moments like these reminded me of the children's book illustrations of those perfect communities, with a post office or bakery on the corner of the town. With colorful signs and nearly every inhabitant out and about, waving at one another with a smile. It was the peak representation of adulthood you were presented with when younger. Sensationalized, sure, but at times I really felt it existed here.

So that’s encouraging.

But just head a half mile from this aforementioned park to the train station and you'll find some seedy happenings.  Once I saw a man that had a cage strapped to the front of his bike handlebars. In that cage scurried a squeaky black rat with a fleshy tail, seemingly in a manic state, with its pink paws clinging to the bars that held it inside. I stared for an inappropriate amount of time.

Maybe someone can find the beauty in that too. But I didn’t see that colorfully drawn in any of my children’s book illustrations as a kid.

I feel very privileged to have lived there. It’s bonkers to leave as soon as it gets so warm. But I’m not so sad. I’ve found it’s never one big emotional sweep anyways.

Goodbyes often slip in through the cracks, they typically aren’t one big movie montage. Some goodbyes don’t even happen at all. Some happen twice by accident (I hate that). Some happen like the drops from a faucet that collect on the bottom of a porcelain tub after a steamy bath. Farewells become the droplets of water that gather together at the basin and slowly slither towards the drain. Or maybe the goodbyes fade out as quickly as you can drive away. The figure of a friend, teacher, acquaintance, getting smaller inside the frame of the window with each bit you distance. 

Therein lies the brutal cost of adventure, not being able to keep all the best things in the same place at once.

But now I sit nestled in a place of peace, in a little Dutch village outside the big city. A place that used to be new a few summers ago is now likened to familiar and cozy. My 11-year-old best friend and I bike to the ijssalon and then she helps me decorate my letters to friends. At night I’m warm in my perfect corner, in a full size bed, playing the songs recommended to me by a friend back home. I have so many homes.

So many homes.

In my new stillness I have sought, I itch for a minute and wonder…

It's okay if I am not a spout of creativity, right?

I’m okay to have a few months of nothingness? After having felt so much?

Is it ever really nothingness?

I don’t want to mistake my peace for lack of ambition, lack of creation, withering motivation. But in my soul I wish for nothing but stillness, and here I have it. All I have asked for is peace, and here it swallows me. I like to consider this stillness good.

It’s just that now, I don’t feel so much a compulsion to do, see, meet, make.

Well, I always have a little bit of an itch to make something. But the fire does not seize me as before. It is a gentler, candle-lit flame that beckons instead.

I’m beginning to take a liking to film photography. It isn’t too boastful and I admire the principle: art centered around a pause. It was Anna who reminded me about this passive, quiet, fixed outlet of creativity. She has this really nice 35mm film camera her boyfriend gifted her, a Carl Zeiss lens. It captures these moments inside the most brilliant vignette. It helps that she has quite the artistic eye herself, of course.

With film, it takes but a second to create the most brilliant memento. Pausing moments underneath a gritty and saturated light, where memories of people seem fixed. Where laughter seems to echo into infinity. Where skinny dipping is for eternity. She somehow seems to pluck these soul moving pieces of life from reality and tuck them away safely. 

Oh I want to do it too. Humbly. Modestly.

I have fawned over her recent development for days now, and I am in awe that the stillness of these photos can still hold so much energy. So much character. So much to say amid silence.

So I know that in these photos, pulled from movement and into stillness , something beautiful remains. 

All I ask is that the same happens to me.

**cover photo brought to you by (you guessed it) Anna’s film camera