As with anything, the changes of time are subtle at first, become visible only in the cascade of days. Photographs that individually convey a landscape, a home, a face, in succession pile up until time becomes discernible amidst the change. Old habits fade with the weather, until one day, windy and chill, riding past a bar on Anting Lu the summer suddenly re-appears in memories of gin & tonics and sunshine.
The leaves recede in Shanghai’s fall, showing buildings long concealed that used to house friends, hosts of poker nights years before. Law school graduates now, those opponents, in far off states like Michigan. The city we inhabit shifts as much with our companions as with our actions. We are infectious, and with each spring depart in waves, eager for fresh air and clean spaces. Jobs end, friends arive, visit, depart, and the city changes in their wake.
“About” is the reason of a story, it’s impetus, first push downhill. Habits are the tiny things that make each and every place part of where we want to be rather than where we are. This story, then, has no single push, no reason. It is built out of train rides that slip by slowly, daily bicycle trips, long walks with no aim, short walks with the hurried rush of a train to catch, an appointment to keep. These stories inhabit a city, a series of cities. Some I know well, some only vaguely.
An earlier version of this page mentioned one truth, that there is a version of me, a person, for each place I have managed to live. This is not the story of a boy, though it appears so often. This is the story of the places we are part of, and the parts of people that build places.
-Wil, December 2008
There is a person for each place I have managed to live. Somewhere in the leafy streets of Somerville, outside a coffee shop that still sells perfect lemonade, is a boy I once knew. He is slightly older, slightly sadder, much more tired than another, who sits on an island’s rocks above the water. The moon rises over it, the sun sets, some times in one order, sometimes in the other. He reads old poetry as new at fires burned by friends who still live there too.
In a large attic room four blocks from the beach the same cd plays on repeat for much of a summer, it’s listener in various poses of confusion, desire, and exhaustion.
Many of the people I remember are so tired so much of the time.
In a sweaty summer a friend lies on a sofa, his skin sticking to the leather in the New York heat. But this is not an American story.
A boy leans on his balcony rail in Saitama, head tilted to the left while he considers Mt. Fuji in the evening’s slow burn through orange to black. He steps inside to the smell of tatami, to the sound of roommates joking. But this is not the story of a boy.
A young man strolls a crowded park, pausing to watch dancers spin each other in a ballroom as large as the sky and as wide as their steps will allow. The music lifts their arms, and old men with no one to partner lead those of memory with their eyes closed.
This is a story of the places we are part of, and the parts of people that build places.
-Wil, June 2006
All content © Wil Turner IV 2009 save where noted.
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