16 May I may have been lost, but hope wasn’t
*I tried posting my blog the other day, so I’m going to try again…
“Joe, you fuckin’ dumb Pollock, of course you got lost in Italy, by yourself,” I said to my reflection in the map at the train station we were all supposed to arrive at.
I have a terrible habit of making what should be interior thoughts, spoken. I also have a terrible habit of getting lost. Especially in Rome. I got lost three times within two days during our stay in the city. Most of the time I get lost on purpose, but every now and again, it happens by accident. Without fail, no matter where I go, I inevitably lose my bearings and expose myself as the dumbass I truly am.
“Expect the unexpected,” I repeated to myself under my breath.
The mantra of Improv Club has come in handy in more situations than one would expect. Embracing the chaotic and going with the flow has helped me grow as a person tremendously, and it certainly was a chaotic moment when I realized I had taken the earlier train than the rest of my group.
It could always be worse. Yeah. I could be kidnapped, or in math class, I think to myself. Getting lost was how Polish people became a people in the first place. We were just the directionally-challenged Germans and Russians who decided to settle for frozen farm land instead of familiar territory.
Keeping calm is the number one thing to do in situations like the one I found myself in, and I tried to do just that. There was no reason to get anxious or upset, that would’ve solved nothing. I ran to the street the exit lead to, to see if perhaps my friends were there waiting for me, but I had no success.
I ran back down to the station and approached the exiting passengers of the newly arriving train. Unfortunately, no one I knew emerged. My options were simple: stay and wait, or try to find the destination, the University of Rome. Figuring I’d probably cause more problems by staying put, I decided finding the university on my own would be a fun exercise in responsibility. Plus, I couldn’t really get any more lost than I already was.
My Italian was worse than my sense of direction, so I opted for studying the map once more. There was some sort of academia situated on a large plot of land that I assumed could only be the university. So with a vague idea of how to reach it, I set off on my journey. No one, as far as I could see, had backpacks on, so trailing students to the university was out of the question. I was bound to find it eventually, so I continued to walk, making turns whenever I felt I needed to.
Rome, away from all of the tourist traps and hustle and bustle of the major parts of the city, was quite serene and peaceful. The residential area the university called home didn’t possess the artificiality that many streets surrounding places like the Trevi Fountain did.
Aromas from the surrounding bars and eateries invigorated me, while simultaneously making me hungry. Common sense may have been heard for me to listen to, but my stomach wasn’t; it has never been. The smells wafted so deep down my nostrils that it seemed like they were teasing me. I wanted to ensure that I could eat again sometime in the near future, and that depended on finding the group and not causing any sort of panic.
I thought a similar clusterfuck was unfolding just like when I took a 3.5-hour walk in Erie without telling anyone, and they thought I had drowned. But, oddly enough, being dead to people is quite nice. Being dead enables one to live outside oneself, to divorce oneself from any sort of typical preoccupation. It was just me, my thoughts, and the brick pavement that reminded me of back home.
When I came upon the academy I had spotted on the map earlier, I was terribly disappointed to discover that it belonged to Germans. Although giving up hope seemed like the appropriate thing to do at that moment, I decided I should wallow in my misery with something in my stomach. I spied an orange tree not to far away. As I approached, I saw a group grow larger and larger, coming closer and closer to me.
Phil’s spiked hair was the first thing I noticed. Then Phil noticed me. I couldn’t help but smile as I approached my friends, who were probably ready to kill me.
