Gemini Nature and Heraclitus

I pack up my bags and prepare to move on. Checking and double checking the cabinets and wardrobe, I think: So quickly has my month in Liverpool sped by. Who would have thought I’d love it here so much? 

“What’s there to do in Liverpool for a month?” I’ve been asked more than once, and by Liverpoolians themselves even.

Well, actually, surprisingly, a lot. There’s more than Beatles’ sites and waterfront walks. There is also the unexpected and charming. I look for it. Though sometimes unconsciously, I do. Didn’t Heraclitus say, “If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it”?

To to be sure, here I’ve found unexpected Neolithic stones, impressive bells, thought-provoking artwork, and peaceful walks. But, while here, I’ve also simply lived. Here, I’ve been as much myself as ever. Like the things I pack, I carry myself around with me everywhere I go. It’d be hard not to without some dissociative personality or a sort of fantastical occurrence. What I mean is, though, this is my life for now; work, fun, excursions, rest, reflections.

What is there to do in Liverpool for a month? The answer is to live.

I pause from my preparations to stand in front of the window and gaze down at the street at the part of this warm and friendly city that I can see. This city of fantastic clouds, of purple hued sunsets, and half-day showers that clear up proudly to present a cheerful sun as if they’d created it themselves in their wetness, in their cloudy folds. This city of people who call me, “luv” and tell me that I have a 

lovely accent; a compliment that makes me feel absurdly pleased.

 

From the moment I’d arrived, I’d delighted in the comfort of the room I’d live in—a room of my own to harken back to Virginia Woolf’s words—with its warm mustard colored walls, the infestation of ladybugs, the writing desk, the chair, the kitchenette, the bed, and the window from which I gaze out like a prying, busybodied neighbor. While it had taken me roughly a week to familiarize myself with the streets and the distances and the bus time tables, once I had, I’d felt at home both inside and out.

Maybe not home enough to stay forever, but at least enough to make me a touch melancholic as I ready myself to leave. That doesn’t happen everywhere I go.

Waxing philosophical, I ponder the paradox of feeling two contradictory things simultaneously. “I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” as Samuel Beckett wrote in The Unnamable and which quote I first heard in a show I’ve been watching while relaxing of an evening in my cozy room. It fits my mood. I want to stay and I want to be in my next place.

That must be my Gemini nature (not a dissociative one).

When the rain clears up, I go for a walk in the park located only two blocks away from my place with its grand trees, sunny daffodils, and the lake with its ducks and geese. I eavesdrop on passing conversations, listening for the turns of phrases I’ve become familiar with, rolling them silently in my mind when I hear them spoken.

“Come on, lad, good lad,” a girl says to her dog as they prance by.

I turn and watch them disappear down the lane. It’s okay to feel a little sad, I tell myself, hands tucked in my pockets and scarf secure at my neck. I know that once I start moving, once I’ve moved again, this feeling will pass for I’m nothing if not a perfect example of an inert object as talked about in Newton’s First Law of Motion. The Law that says, “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force.”

It’s not rocket science to know that it takes effort to change course or speed especially when comfortable. It’s human nature to want to be safe and secure and settled. On the other hand, it’s also not rocket science or even simple physics to understand the principles of stagnation: leave a thing to sit too long and it becomes unpleasant, smelly, and dead. To avoid that, even more than the unsettledness of change, I act as my own unbalanced force—moving myself when I’ve been still too long. Given the choice, I’d rather move.   

I know as stated again by Heraclitus, that old philosophical Greek dude (or bloke as they’d say here) that, “There’s nothing more constant than change.” So why avoid it? Why despise it? There’s no need for that. I smile up at the sky. I know the glorious joy that comes with change. I know that firsthand. It’s like the sunshine after a rainfall. It’s like rain after days of sun. It’s the upturned faces of a field of daffodils.

It’s knowing that:

No matter where I am, there’s always something to miss.

No matter where I am, there’s always something to love.

It’s knowing (Heraclitus yet again) that I “cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon [me].” That constant newness is the miracle of life. Here I am now and I’ll never be here exactly the same way again. And why would I want to be?

This is enough.

Leaving the park, I head back to the house and take the stairs up to my room. I pack my philosophical nonsense next to my clothes and zip up the bag. That’s done, then. I stand, contentedly, once again at the window.

Soon enough, bidding Liverpool a fond farewell, I’ll go on.

*If you're enjoying my travels here at the blog, you might like the additional travel and writing stuff on my Patreon site. Check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/amandawhite/posts