Renewal, Reassurance, and Places
"Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely." - Deborah Levy
In this edition:
Renewal and Reassurance
notes on a walking-friendly historical city center in Satu Mare, Romania
This Week’s Curation
Franz von Stuck, Janet Donohoe, Rebecca Solnit, Paul Valery
I recently spent a week in a little Romanian town where my parents live: Satu Mare. I went home to grieve the very recent loss of my grandfather and to spend time with my family.
As strange as it might sound, this week gave me so much peace and much-desired stillness. Grief and loss change our sense of urgency; they bypass our chaotic ways of paying attention to the world.
One afternoon, after enjoying a nice lunch with my mother, we went for a short walk in the historical city centre of Satu Mare. The park has been recently rebuilt, trees and flowers have been planted, the buildings were rehabilitated, repainted, and the whole area completely closed to cars. People were walking slowly in the park, unperturbed by cars, eating together on the recently installed outdoor tables. There was so much space to roam, to be, to enjoy. While mom and I were walking, I started crying. And for the first time, in many years, I felt this absolutely intoxicating feeling of optimism related to self-renewal and places.
It’s one thing to know that change is possible, but it’s another thing entirely to fully experience meaningful change - sensorially, viscerally, in flesh and bones. The latter feels like a burst of overwhelming optimism that the places we deeply care about can and will change for the better.
So, that got me thinking. I believe that some of us, when we travel, do it because we are in search of novelty and something that we cannot yet define. I also believe that some of us travel to seek a feeling of reassurance; reassurance that the future can and will be good.
Strangely, upon visiting the uneventful town in which I was born and raised, I got that reassurance - a stirring certainty that we are capable of building things for the common good, even in the places we least expect. For many years, I associated Satu Mare with stasis, with scarcity, with nothing ever changing. Well, I was definitely wrong about that.
This Week’s Curation
Art
Franz Ritter von Stuck (February 23, 1863 – August 30, 1928), born Franz Stuck, was a German painter, sculptor, printmaker, and architect. Stuck was best known for his paintings of ancient mythology, receiving substantial critical acclaim with The Sin in 1892.1
Events
19th of April, 6 PM CET
Hosting Conversations and Forging New Connections, online, Interintellect
I will be hosting this event on Friday, the 19th of April, with the purpose of sharing my experience of hosting online and offline salons for Interintellect since October 2020. I will be focusing mainly on building deep connections and keeping in touch with the people we love having a conversation with.
The weekend of 24th - 26th of May, exact date still to be decided
Places and Identity, an in-person gathering in Paris at the end of May
Jenni Dawes from The Paris Chapter and I will be hosting a gathering in which we will explore the fascinating topic of “Places and Identity”. More information hopefully in the upcoming newsletter. I shared the event for now for those who will be in Paris around those dates in May - would love to meet you!
Books
Infinite Cities: A Trilogy of Atlases - San Francisco, New Orleans, New York by Rebecca Solnit, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
“In the past decade, Rebecca Solnit—aided by local writers, artists, historians, urbanists, ethnographers, and cartographers—has compiled three stunning atlases that have radically changed the way we think about place. Each atlas provides a vivid, complex look at the multi-faceted nature of a city as experienced by its different inhabitants, replete with the celebrations and contradictions that make up urban life.”2
Remembering Places: A Phenomenological Study of the Relationship between Memory and Place by Janet Donohoe
“We usually think of memory in terms of time. We think of it as consumed with the past. Memory is the revitalization of some moment or moments of the past, collecting those moments into the present again. But in so closely associating memory with the past and temporality, we frequently overlook the equally fundamental connection between memory and place. It is not a far stretch to understand that memory is always implaced. A simple thought experiment will point out that it is impossible to remember an event from one’s own past without realizing that the event happened in a place however hazy the memory of that place might be. Experience is implaced; memory likewise is implaced. As embodied beings we do not have the advantage of a view from nowhere or a view from anywhere or everywhere. But exactly how place informs our experience is perhaps less clear.” - Janet Donohoe
Poem
It depends on those who pass
Whether I am a tomb or treasure
Whether I speak or am silent
The choice is yours alone.
Friend, do not enter without desire.
Verse by Paul Valery on the wall of a library & archives in Paris.
Question
What places give you reassurance?
Thank you for reading. It means a lot! As always, you can book an intro call with me here.
Wikipedia
University of California Press
reading you now made me think of this book i enjoyed a little while ago, it's literally poetry on cities: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59334639-imagine-a-city
I resonate with your words a lot because I, too, found a renewed sense of self upon discovering belonging in a place completely foreign to me, and yet, so oddly familiar. I believe that while travelling cannot solve our problems, it does offer us yet-to-be-defined spaces, which can create a resonance within us, opening us to change.
And, as you write, “Grief and loss change our sense of urgency; they bypass our chaotic ways of paying attention to the world.” I believe that, too, plays a big role here. When we become more attuned to ourselves and the world, we finally enable ourselves to see what we’ve been looking for all along.
Therefore, perhaps, sometimes the most adventurous journey is the one we take within, day by day, regardless of what land our feet stand upon.