Striking Insights of Everyday Proportions in Charleston

Rainbow Row.

[DISCLAIMER: This post contains some personal and possibly ridiculous inner musings on the meaning of life, self, etc. Don't read if you are prone to judge others on their ridiculous inner musings.]

I went sightseeing today in Charleston. It wasn’t the best day of my trip. (Obviously, that was the day of the Comedy Barn.) I’m not sure why, but I just wasn’t feeling it this morning. I drove into Charleston, which is another extremely chilled-out city, traffic wise, and started out with a free historical walking tour. (So free I gave a $20 tip.) The tour guide was great, I recommend the tour, but I just … wasn’t that into it. I wasn’t that impressed. Although this could have been the weather, which was cloudy and overcast all day, I began to wonder if the tour wasn’t grabbing me because I maybe have a higher threshold for “interesting” now. After coming from a place where when you’re at a historical site, you’re talking in terms of thousands of years, you come here and you’re talking about like, 150, 300 max, I don’t know, it all seems kind of silly. And I’ve never been much of a Civil War buff myself.

We saw some cool churches, the famous Rainbow Row, beautiful Southern houses, military installations, etc. Afterwards (it was two hours) I just felt tired and run down. I dragged myself to the Waterfront Park and plopped down on a bench to eat some snacks. I had had this whole day of sightseeing planned out for myself, but I just wasn’t feeling that motivated. I wondered why, obviously attempting to imbue the vague weariness with some larger psychological or emotional meaning, but after considering several factors and not seeing what I could do about any of them, I ate some Oreos and bucked myself up.

The Waterfront Park was cool, with a giant pineapple fountain (apparently pineapples symbolize hospitality, and they are very prominent in the local architecture) and lovely stretches of green, and when I walked out to the marina I caught a glimpse of some of the local dolphins, which perked me up. Then I walked to the City Market, a tourist-trappy-artisanal-craft-fair kind of thing which is very popular and pretty happening, even on a Sunday, when pretty much everything else was closed.

Hospitable Pineapple, Waterfront Park.

Of course I ended up dropping a lot of dough on souvenirs and gifts, though of course I also managed to feel ripped off and get pissed at myself for not shopping around more. The thing is, I always regret not buying the first thing I see, because even though I always expect to find something better, I never do, and by then the thing I almost bought is out of reach. So this time, I decided to just buy whatever caught my fancy then and there, though still hoping to fill out my collection in Savannah, even though I definitely can’t keep up this rate of spending.

I got spoiled - I spent so little money the first week that when I finally had to shell out, it hurt more. Last week, I spent two nights with a friend, and one nights at the Charleston Shabbos House - I only paid for lodging two nights, and they were both pretty cheap. And most of the attractions I visited were free. This week is starting out splendiferously spendy, paying for parking, for tours and admission fees, gifts and souvenirs, and significantly more expensive m/hotels.

Anyway, feeling disgruntled by some regrets over my purchases, I headed back towards the water to catch the 2:30 boat to Fort Sumter (with a $22 admission fee, of course). Though I had decided as a matter of course to take the tour, once I got on the boat I started wondering why I was going. Like I said, the Civil War just isn’t something that gets me excited, and as we neared the island I kind of regretted coming. The weather was just so gray, and it was pretty cold when we got to the fort, so the visuals on the harbor were eh.

Fort Sumter from sea.

The chirpy, jokey National Park Ranger who gave us our tour annoyed me. He had the kind of humor which tour groups find funny, if you know what I mean. But the fort was pretty cool. Interestingly, the best part, for me, was not the crumbling remains of the fort (usually I love ruins, but, again, compared to 4,000-year-old palaces, this is pretty basic), but the museum which elegantly told the somewhat convoluted story of Fort Sumter, which is where the first battle of the Civil War was fought.

You see, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, effectively setting off the chain reaction that led to the Civil War. So the Confederacy really prized what they believed would be a founding piece of their new nation’s history (idiots). But it turns out that actually, Fort Sumter was occupied by Federal troops when the war started, and the Confederates fired on their own home turf from neighboring islands.

That’s how the South refers to the Northern forces, by the way: the Federal army. I didn’t remember hearing that before. I think in our history books, written by the victors, we’re just called the Union army. (Fact check that.)

Anyway, eventually the Confederates starved out the Federals, and then took possession for a while, but near the end of the war, the ascendant Federals surrounded the fort on all sides, cut off supply lines, and took it back, by George!

A few days after the war ended, a ceremony was held to re-raise the exact same flag which the Federals had been forced to take down when they’d first surrendered to the Confederates (now located at the museum) and you know who they got to do it? The same guy who had taken it down, the Union commander of Fort Sumter. Isn’t that a nice, neat little circle? Ironically, the museum noted, Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed the same night.

What I meant to illustrate with that very unscientific and probably grossly oversimplified retelling of the tale is that the museum did a pretty good job of explaining who did what where. In other words, it was a quality museum. 10/10 would recommend to a friend.

But the fort itself didn’t impress me much until, after I had gone through the museum, I went to check out the cannons which had been uncovered in the National Park Service’s excavations of the fort. For some reason, seeing those monstrous, antiquated machines, still on their launching pads or whatever, still grooved into the tracks that swung the gun from one angle to another, I got the chills, and I felt like I had stepped back into time, watching ridiculously outfitted soldiers pulling and pushing things into position, yelling, explosions, rubble falling, aiming the guns, sweating, running… It was like I could hear someone screaming, “FIRE!”

Big weapon.

I’m not sure what that moment really meant to me, if I actually felt plugged in to that point in American history, or if somehow that square of space retains some memory of its former battles. I think it was the visual that caught me unaware - a dozen enormous cannons grimly lined up, and suddenly they didn’t seem like historical props, but took on some more solemn character, like they suddenly inhabited, for me, their actual use and purpose in their time. As if instead of seeing the artifact, I was seeing the thing itself.

It was a fascinating moment for me, because even though I love seeing ruins, I always find it hard to envision what they were like in life. I guess this is another part of my ongoing epic struggle to exist within a concept of wholeness, to meld those two disparate elements of ‘experiencing’ and ‘observing’ into just ‘being.’

Well, I guess I’ll just keep pondering that one.

After the ferry ride back, I walked straight to King Street Cookies, which is, as I mentioned the other day, the only kosher show in town. So I had three delicious cookies and a large cup of milk for dinner before heading back to my car (with a quick stop to gaze at the historic synagogue. Charleston has a pretty impressive Jewish history, at least according to the bronze plaques outside the shul).

Please enjoy these historical plaques free of charge.

And onwards to the Red Roof Inn.

By the way, I just looked up the difference between a hotel and a motel. It turns out there is no one agreed-upon definition, but the general consensus is that a motel - a motor hotel - has rooms facing outdoors, so you can drive up to your room, on exterior corridors, and hotels have enclosed rooms on interior hallways. I’ve discovered on this trip, as I’ve already mentioned, that I hate motels, but I’ve actually refined that knowledge down even further. What I really hate is being on an exterior corridor.

I know this because I am currently sleeping in such an establishment. It is not of the finest quality, though it is significantly better than the Bel Aire Motel, cursed be its name, but it is not nearly as nice as the Park Grove Inn. I chose the Red Roof Inn even though I didn’t like the motel-style construction because it had better reviews than the other contender, and, located in nearby Mt. Pleasant, it was closer to the center of Charleston. The pictures of the rooms looked fine (I carefully examine these now) and it is located on a lake, not in the middle of a seedy city. So, with some apprehension, I booked (at a rate $20 above what I paid in the Gatlinburg area).

Checked in. The room was okay. But the bathroom had a patch of moldy water damage near the floor, and it majorly grossed me out. I sighed. I tried to ignore it, as I lay sprawled on the bed, so tired out from today, but I really just couldn’t. I kept thinking about it. I didn’t want to call and complain and move rooms, but I really didn’t want to stay in that room for $70 a night. So after laying there for a while, I reached over, picked up the phone, dialed the front desk, complained, asked for a new room, was immediately given one, and moved one room over, which was perfectly fine and had no water damage.

And gosh. That one little action, that microsecond of decision to take that step, that moved me in this direction, felt amazing. I felt like I had truly accomplished something. All I did was switch rooms. But there are so many situations in which I wouldn’t have worked up the courage, wouldn’t have been able to make myself do it. Specifically, in Israel, all the time. Or even if I were with someone else - I would probably make them call. But I’m here alone, I’m the only one responsible for my own comfort. I’m a grown woman, I know he’ll give me the room, or at least a discount if one isn’t available. And it grossed me out so much. It really did. Why should I stay in that room, which grossed me out, which would definitely ruin my night, if I didn’t have to? Even if it meant inconveniencing myself. I deserved to have a better room! So without even a conscious decision in my mind, somewhere in my subconscious, some tiny pulse moved to one tiny trigger and my hand reached out towards the phone, and I dialed, and I waited while it rang and rang, because I wasn’t secretly hoping no one would answer.

It was easy as pie. The next room was perfectly fine and immediately my comfort level ratcheted up 40%. I flopped onto the bed in relief, and immediately strewed my stuff all over the room. Ta-da! I had performed a perfect adult function. Per-fect. Ea-sy-pee-zie. I won. I won at life. I had one small triumph. It felt really, really good.

So much of this trip has been learning or understanding how to “feel good”, how to be in a moment both physically and emotionally. I went outside tonight and sat on a swinging wooden bench facing the lake across from the parking lot. I was looking out at the lake, at the sky, and thinking about the events of the last few days and how I was feeling.

And I was feeling so GOOD!

The Bench of Destiny, Red Roof Inn

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the ASMR thing the internet is talking about - that indefinable, tingly feeling that comes over you from some sensory stimulus. But it doesn’t come from those same stimuli for me. It’s not triggered by anything sensory, but by being in a state of feeling a sense of rightness about myself, about my life, about exactly where I am in that moment and point in space. When I get to that moment of - some kind of euphoria, I am conscious of a physical sensation responding in me. An aliveness, an increased awareness of all of my body, my organs. And I try to let it break over me, I try to truly inhabit that pleasure, and I find it incredibly difficult. I can only do it for a split second at a time before my brain is jumping out of it into an observatory position, judging the situation in some way, asking if it’s worth feeling this pleasure, if I am really experiencing anything groundbreaking, or maybe I’m trying to figure out what it is, the nature of it, so that I can open myself up to it more fully - and then it fades.

So instead of fully feeling the moment, I’m interrogating the moment, trying to decipher it. But I think I can work on it, on simplifying that moment for myself. And I don’t want to get too angry at myself over it, because maybe it’s showing me something important. At any rate, I don’t want to judge myself for not being able to do it. Maybe it just means something different for me.

I had a little bit of a revelation, though now that I’m writing it down it doesn’t seem very original. But I’ll tell you anyway. The thought I had was that you can only really ever be a whole, complete person when you’re alone. You can only being to understand yourself, your whole, uncompromised self, when you are by yourself, with no other people pushing in on you, altering your world with their needs or ideas. When you are alone, you can expand yourself into all the holes left by compromising for others, in even the smallest of ways, and you can fully experience every possibility.

Because although there’s no doubt that being with a partner is comforting and wonderful, interacting with them, for good and bad, changes you. You’re not just acting, you’re reacting. You must constantly compromise, discuss, exchange. Your crisply delineated worlds sort of frizz out at the edges and meld together in a way that is sometimes uncomfortable for you, sometimes uncomfortable for the other, but it’s the way you can live happily together. That’s how it is, and that can be a great place to be. But what if you’re just not in that place yet?

Not having that doesn’t mean you have to be one uncompleted half of a whole. Opposite! It means you get to become a whole in yourself. It means you get to learn who you are, what you’re capable of, what you like, what you want, in the most intrinsic, unadulterated ways. When you’re alone, you have the opportunity to never do anything in any other way that how you wanted to. You get to find out what that is!

I’m winding down on this topic. It seemed an incredible insight at the time. But beyond that insight was my ability to see that this, in this moment, is exactly the thing I’ve been searching for and yearning for and wanting: the ability to be happy while single. That’s the elusive thing that I haven’t been able to find. I had wanted, needed, to be able to learn how to live, how to be fulfilled, on my own terms. There was a time - not very long ago - when I felt so strangled, so choked by being alone, so doomed, so depressed, that I felt I genuinely couldn’t go on. And that’s exactly what led me here. I was searching for a way to live fully, happily, in a world where I was single. But not to become complacent or resigned in the least. Rather, to learn how to flourish on my own, instead of waiting to be fixed by a relationship. No matter what would happen in the future, I had to be able to live now.

And I’m doing it. I’m living. Everything is as it should be.

Famous last words, eh? Ptoo, ptoo, ptoo.