In a bit under two weeks, we're heading back to Savannah, for the second year of vacation there. Somehow, probably divine providence, the hotel deals and the proximity to both a beach and Cleveland were unparalleled when we looked at our vacation desires and options.
You may remember some discussion last year about how much I loved our time in Savannah. I can't wait to get back this year.
But I'm also looking forward to getting away for awhile.
It has been a good, but very full summer. I have learned a lot about law, about being a lawyer, about the world, about Cleveland, about myself.
Clerking at Sherwin-Williams is a good job, a very good summer law job, an excellent, unique experience, and quite the mark on a resume. I am definitely glad for it, but it will be nice to have a bit of time to relax before diving back into law school again August 19th.
Likewise, it will be nice not to be in Cleveland for a week or so.
I make it no secret that I love Cleveland and would not pick a different place to live the bulk of my life for anything. But loving Cleveland is a full time job in its own right. Though there are plenty of great things to do in Cleveland, it's not those things that make me love Cleveland. Those are certainly things to love about Cleveland, but New York, Chicago, and Columbus all have great restaurants, museums, concerts, and sports teams too-- more and better, to some degree. Loving the "good things" about Cleveland is not, in its own right, loving Cleveland. Loving that Cleveland has all of those things and wanting to be here because of it comes closer. But there is so much more to it than that.
Because restaurants, malls, and sports teams come and go, to a certain extent. Love, to be love, must be more than that. Inasmuch as it's possible to love a city in a way that mirrors love for another person, there's got to be something more. That's the difference between liking someone you have a crush on because of the way the sunlight plays upon her hair, and loving her despite her insecurities and obsessive tendencies.
Love is complicated, and I'm far from an expert- but what I do know is that, at its core, it is a choice and commitment beyond the face-value traits- in so many ways, its an indescribable rhythm that fits together between two individuals, and remains, no matter the trappings otherwise.
Despite that eternal rhythm, love is not always easy. Loving Cleveland, for all the ways it feels like the place I belong, the place I fit, and the ways I fit into it, with all of its intricacies, tensions, and spirit, is a non-stop chore that can weigh so heavily on me, all of the time. Riding the train downtown everyday, I see all of Cleveland- the fortress-shaped down town consuming the streams of people coming to work, right alongside the people on the train with nowhere particular to go- because their last job was a long time ago, and their next job might not exist.
Cleveland is the most interesting place I have ever been, but that does not imply that its all good. It is poverty and determination, amazing food at world-class restaurants and wide-spread hunger. It is small art-deco skyscrapers built by millionaires, now vacant and derelict. It is east and west- the strongly divided rich east-side suburbs against the poor east-side itself, and the urban-appalachian poverty of the west-side mixed with hipsters of the highest order.
And I love it. I love all of it, and I love the people here. I love that they are here, for one, even if they want to leave. And I love that Cleveland is on the rebound, the renaissance, the rebirth.
But it is such a long road. And I love being a part of it.
It is so rarely easy though, and it is time to take a reprieve. It is right and good, I know it is, that so much of my life- from my career path to my grocery-shopping choices attempt to orient themselves for the good of Cleveland.
But I have to get out sometimes, to recharge and to remember. Savannah is largely the antithesis of Cleveland, at least for me. Though I love being in Savannah, and I may casually say "I love Savannah," its far from the same.
I cannot wait for vacation, I cannot wait to refuel and recharge. But I also can't wait for that feeling I invariably get, every time I come back to Cleveland after awhile away, the feeling of home and rightness, that I've returned to the place I know I am supposed to be, that I belong here-- that somehow, my own life is tied to the fate of this city, for better or worse. Nowhere else is like that- getting to live here is a blessing with an ubiquitous responsibility. I would not have it any other way.
But for the time I am in Savannah, it will be nice to put it on pause.
-Zack
"Strange how this journey's hurting
In ways we accept as part of fate's decree"
-Vienna Teng
