A million years ago, in a life I no longer recognize as mine, I knew a boy who was obsessed with frontiers. We would talk, sprawled out on the floor, about dreams and futures. Like me, he was terrified of commitment and we clung to a shared ideal of smashing walls and chasing the sunset.
Morocco was once my frontier. Deciding one day to just uproot myself, replant in a strange place, across the Atlantic, with only one number in my phone felt exciting, it felt right. Staring out of my fifth floor apartment at the cracking sky, I felt the world’s vastness for the very first time; I could see it spread out in front of me. There were borders to cross, frontiers to chase. On the local level, closer to reality, there were restaurants to discover, shops to explore, boulevards to traverse. Two years later, and it all begins to look the same.
At times, it feels as if there isn’t a city big enough to contain my desires, to fulfill my needs. I stare out bus windows at night at the skyline, no longer impressed by the height of the buildings, the vastness of city sprawl. Boston, New York, it doesn’t matter. Eventually they can all be conquered. Eventually there is nothing left to find.
One reply on “On Frontiers”
Of course you’re right, places do get like that. But what is always left to find are the people who are the “Jewels” that make travelling an every varied experience.