Amerikai vagyok. That’s, “I’m American”, in Hungarian. I’m an American in Hungary.
Budapest. In Budapest to be exact.
Had to learn how to say who I am. It’s better than I’m sorry, better in some cases. Don’t know what to say? Misunderstood a question? Better to explain your self than ask for forgiveness or say sorry when you’re not and they aren’t insulted. Just as likely to gain their understanding anyway. Can start a conversation in the process too.
Amerikai vagyok. That’s not all I’ve learned. I knew I’d be here for a few months — here for a year, planned it a few months ago. Owe some Hungarian to whoever I meet, even if they don’t expect it. I’ll learn more as the days go by. Lots of new words to pick up, things to take in from this great city.
It was time for something new. Time for a change, an adventure. It was time. New York. The city. I'd seen enough of that for a time. Friends all around, things to do but you need to look out for puddles of pee to get wherever you’re going. Dirty streets and schizophrenic drug addicts we call “the homeless” floating on firm ground, untethered to reality.
Still good things about The City, though.
Good times. Plenty of good times despite the crazy and crazies. Time for new times, though. Time for new great times if they can be made. They can be made.
Budapest is a change of scenery, in that sense it’s new, new though I've been before. New or not, it's a city and in some ways all cities are cities, that’s true, but this one is special. You can find images online, can search for a video. It’s obvious this one is special. For a year it will be mine and I its. Jung said ideas have people, not the other way around. Hamsun’s starving writer in Hunger (i.e. himself) saw fit to stay in Christiania (Oslo) until it had used him up, though nothing forced him to remain. Maybe cities have people in the same way ideas do. Budapest has me for now.
Hard to say what a year away will be like. Odysseus spent 20 from home and still had a chance to return and make things right. I’ve nothing to make right, not leaving on a bad note. No odyssey awaits, none that I’m aware of…
Nothing bad I’m escaping but you don’t up and leave without things being left. No, things can’t all come. The people, the moments you make with them. The moments you make count. The things that turn moments into more than time passed. You can’t bring the people with whom time is sublimated. Can’t make those same moments in the same way.
Different, yes, but things will be the same in a way. Cities are cities, days are days, and I’ve got work to do with each I’m granted. Even lost in the wilderness this would be true.
Budapest is far from the wilderness. Big city. 1.7 million plus call it home. It’s no place for a wilderness period. No, but a place for a change. A change of pace, a change of daily views. A new place to sit at a cafe and watch people come in and out who look different than the ones I’ve seen at home.
For a year, this will be my home. At some point it will feel that way, feel that way in some sense. One day those passing faces will look familiar. One day the cafe staff will know my order. Just like in Vienna. Großer Brauner mit Milch extra. However you say it in Hungarian, I’ll find out. With enough repetition it’ll feel just as natural as the German became. They’ll come to expect it from me too. It’ll be home, the same only different.
This sort of sameness can’t be avoided but it can be modified, adjusted, made new in spite of its old ways. Sometimes you can do this by switching your routines, sometimes you’ve got to move far away. Sometimes you have to spring far enough that sameness struggles for a bit to catch up. Once it reclaims its position, it’s welcome, a worthy companion.
For now, though, for now I like the change. I like to walk through Budapest’s fifth district and pass the Parliament along the Danube, to feel the wind off the river, not just view it through YouTube and artwork. I like to walk to it in minutes, not plan a trip. Someday its spires and awesome size might cease to captivate. Someday it may meld into each day’s routine sameness just like the Chrysler Building, Grand Central, and everything else that became local. If it does it’ll become a different sort of sameness though. If it does, it won’t hurt. Some things will be the same just as they were at home.
Sun rises, sun sets, it happens wherever you go. These markers of the day and night, they can’t be avoided. In Budapest, though, they conduct a new rhythm from a new ensemble for a new time.
Enough sunrises and sunsets, then life might fall into the same rhythms it once beat to. The same frustrations, the same struggle against boredom, the battle against predictability might creep back into view. I’d like to delay that for now. See how long I can outrun what the falling shadow of the setting sun and the pull of its quickening rising entail. For now, I’ll push back at reality, not to try to reform it but to adjust its position in my perspective.
It’s time for something new. Amerikai Vagyok. “I’m American”, in Hungarian. I’m an American in Hungary and that’s enough for me to feel new for now.
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