College Town

“What is Boston, to me?”

This question can be answered in many forms and shapes. One promising way to answer it is to take a piece of the city’s geographical and physical existence and inspect my relationship with it. This usually brings satisfying results. It reveals the bizarre, specific, and interesting ways that I connect with this place.

But relying only on this method would not be enough. It would completely overlook my relationship with the more abstract, non-physical, and non-geographical parts of the city.

This is what I thought about yesterday.

It was late at night, and I was walking home from my friend’s place. I was thinking about how, that evening, we had gone to all the same places we have been going to for the past three years. The same streets, the same apartments, the same venues, the same people.

But it was always a different night.

Different sequences of events. Different conversations. Different emotions. Different relationships.

The experience that the city offers is subjective, and one of the things it depends on is the people around us.

I cannot think of a Star Market without someone to eat with. I have been to the cinema by myself once or twice, but what made the Brattle special for me was not just seeing a really good movie. It was talking about the movie on the way back, on the 66 bus, with my dear friend Sinan. I did not mention this in last week’s entry, and the fact that I did not probably means something, but I was in a double kayak on the Charles last weekend.

I cannot talk about “What is Boston, to me?” without talking about the people around me.

Another important thing to note is that the feeling a place possesses changes depending on who I am with. A coffee shop might be the reading place when I am with one friend, and the conversation place when I am with another. The same table, the same chair, the same bad lighting, the same overpriced latte and somehow, a completely different place.

This theory of relativity of places must hold true for cities as well. One obvious example would be Vegas. What Vegas is changes dramatically depending on who you go with.

This relativity confuses me. It is beautiful, because it makes it possible to have unique experiences while doing the same things. The same places, the same tables, different people, different times, different lives. Growth, I suppose.

But at the same time, it also shows me what I cannot have.

The versatility of the city is beautiful, but it is nowhere near enough to mask the helplessness of my attempt to contain it. The truth is, the city contains me.

Yesterday evening, we were celebrating because a really close friend of mine is moving out of the city. Far away. To do good and exciting things. I was happy for him, of course, but at some point it hit me that this meant more than just a friend leaving. It also meant that certain parts of Boston, to me, were leaving too.

If a specific café was the conversation café with him, then it is no longer that café in the same way. It might still exist. I might still go there. The coffee might still taste the same. The table might still be there. But the place would have changed.

And then I thought about the near future.

I will graduate. My friends will leave. The apartments we lived in will be filled by newer students. The classrooms, the seats, the lecture halls, the streets, the bars, the grocery stores, the river paths, all of them will remain, but they will belong to other people. Everyone who fills my memories of the city will be long gone.

And I will be gone too.

Then maybe, one day, I will come back, and I will be by myself.

I wondered, on my walk yesterday, how it would feel to walk that same walk on that day.

How would it feel to go to Star Market?

How would it feel to go to the Brattle?

How would it feel to turn left onto the Dr. Paul Dudley White Bike Path?

How would it feel to rent a single kayak?

All these mental notes, diaries, photographs, and analyses, not only the products, but the deep unpacking of the city, the experiences, and the emotions, are attempts to capture something. To capture the city as it is for me now. To keep it this way forever. To convince myself that it is about me, and that I can keep it. That I do not have to let go.

But the truth is, Boston is my college town.

And the truth is, I am mostly doing what most other college students do. I go to class. I walk home late at night. I buy groceries. I sit in cafés. I go to the movies. I talk to friends. I cross the river. I leave places and return to them. None of this is original. None of this is permanent.

But maybe that does not make it meaningless.

Maybe nothing that I experienced here was meant to last forever.

I could accept that and move on.

Or I can burn it down instead.