In a State of Hiraeth: Running to the Rock of Memories

There are places that bring you back in time. 

Not just hometowns, but much smaller spaces can do this. Even spots no more than twenty feet in diameter. They’re vantage points that let you realize that the view hasn’t changed, but the viewer has. You grasp the space differently, maybe more morosely, maybe more optimistically. But more importantly, you no longer can see things the same way that you once did. 

And when you’re in that pinpoint of space, you feel the pricks of time collide on the same plane. Four years ago, you discovered this place. Two and a half years ago, you brought a lover there. One year ago, you found solace there when nothing else helped. And now, you visit and it feels like ten years have past. Or the memories are happening all at once, and you're the outsider now.

I didn’t intend to find myself at such a place that Thursday night. I finished the work day late and missed another parkour meeting, so I thought the weeknight would be more book-filled and TV-ridden like usual.  

I did attempt that, but then I got restless. I wanted to run but run without knowing where I would end up.

At first, I tried exhausting myself on the run by jumping over the square islands on the sidewalks, untouched by cement where small trees or shrubs can grow. I jumped across dozens of them, partly to obliterate any linear path.

Soon I was in Berkeley, on College Avenue. Another two miles and I made it on campus. The impulse to jump and create zig-zag paths kept me all the way around campus just about, jumping on top of the pillars around North Gate, twisting through the metal art structures in the grass somewhat close to Mulford Hall, and jumping up the walls just outside the East Asian library. These were my feeble attempts at parkour.

But I couldn't stop running. From north side, I bumped into an old trail I’ve taken more times than it’s worth counting. With every familiar step, every sidewalk crevice and street intersection, it felt like greeting an old friend. I knew it that well. In the distance, I finally saw Indian Rock, appearing as a monolithic silhouette in the moonlight. I climbed up and had a familiar moment of breathlessness. San Francisco—the bridge, the city lights—all glimmered and reflected in the bay’s rippling shadows, faintly moving. The lights were the blood cells to a city’s non-stop bloodstream of traffic, of day, of night life. Beautiful. 

As I stared out, I realized that, hey, I’m still here. I’m still in the bay area after college. But I felt like a ghost treading paths once taken by a guy who already had felt like a ghost in his senior year, spending many, many nights and weekends on a thesis that took more time per week than a part-time job. And in the last three weeks before graduation, that was with a part-time job too. (Well, paid internship.)

Graduation has come and gone. May 18^th is a beautiful memory. Now college is my synonym for “hiraeth.” The Welsh word cannot be translated directly into English but it comes down to mean homesickness for a place that cannot be returned to. And even the first time I stepped on campus after I graduated, it was different. This may sound sad but the first thought was: This place is no longer directly relevant to my life.

I spent four years within these walls forgetting about life afterwards, giving myself time to forget time was passing. A black hole stared at me whenever I had thought about life after graduating. It was never relevant. That is, until job searches began last January.

Now I’ve arrived on the other side of the black hole. But there hasn’t been any arrival. I’m in my second job, I’m living in Oakland, life is good, but there’s a plague of emotional residue whenever I think of college. Maybe I ran at night to Indian Rock, with its view of the bridge and city lights, to wonder why I see the lights but still cannot accept them as any Gatsby green light, any symbolic hope or epitome of the American dream. Restlessness is all.

           

Cal Running Club
(Photo Courtesy of Alex Wang)

Seeing the Space Shuttle

It’s funny how I feel anchored to memories more than dreams these days, especially when sitting on this rock that's been the place of running club rest stops and old romances and adventures. I watched the Endeavor Space Shuttle return from orbit from this rock in September 2012. I heard one of the most beautiful instruments from this rock—a halo, appropriately named. Cal Running Club members, myself included, were randomly interviewed once by two high school girls about why we—the running club—came to this rock. And when I needed to run away, just for a little while, it was—quite literally—the rock I could relie upon. It was as much a part of my Berkeley life as my overstuffed notebooks, the goofy and beautiful memories, and the diploma were. 

I guess I still have my eye on the back window of my life, watching closely as time moves me away from the life I knew as a student. I watch things drift farther away. It's harder than it ever was to keep my eyes on the road in front, in North Oakland, but my eyes keep lingering back to Berkeley. Oh, retrospection makes authors of us all, it's just how many times we reread our unwritten stories to ourselves that determines how much the past affects us. 

Strangely, after leaving the rock, taking the BART night train back, and letting the last edges of hiraeth ebb away, I fell asleep almost instantly at 11pm—my earliest bedtime in months.