The Eagle Has (Almost) Landed

The only culture shock I ever know is when I go home.

Photo Credit: Trevor Hayes

After a rocket is launched into orbit, it burns through space in stages. First, its fairings are jettisoned. These are the metal structures meant to enhance streamlining. Second, the rocket activates its own thrusters, which then pushes it into final orbit. Often, the entire rocket falls away since it’s only used once to deploy its payload into space, where it joins an increasingly cluttered junkyard of other space debris serenely circling our planet.

On a much smaller and less consequential scale, my exodus from Italy back to the United States is happening in stages, too. A week ago today, John left for New York City, and I left for Portugal on business. The plan is for me to join him at the end of the month. But the three days prior to our separate departures were so tumultuous and emotionally wrenching, I marvel that we survived them.

First came the rehoming of our two cats, Bunny and Olive. That wound is too raw for me to poke open again, but suffice it to say that my heart is in chunks right now, and the only reason I managed the loss at all was knowing they were both adopted by good people. In Bunny’s case, a lovely woman drove five hours in icy conditions from Puglia to claim her; in Olive’s, she went with an artist friend of ours who has the skill and patience to tame the furry little she-beast. Olive has since imprinted on him like a gosling—sleeping between his legs, following him from room to room, supervising his work at the easel. All she’s lacking at this point is an artist’s beret.

But the ache is still there, and I am forced to acknowledge that it might never go away. Some of us don’t recover from loss that easily—or perhaps we’re just more honest about it. It was a double blow, losing both of them at once. And instead of being together to comfort each other, John and I are on separate continents. The hardship is about as real as it gets.

Photo credit: Triston Dunn

Then went the furniture. John inherited some beautiful pieces from his mother, which we added to over our decade together. Within a 48-hour period, so many people thronged the apartment to buy them, it became a Covid hazard. As with the cats, I was happy to see so many beloved items go to good homes, friends’ homes, but their removal left gaping holes and painful reminders of what was and is no longer: our life together in Italy.

For me, Italy was a dream. It was a restorative, a badly needed one. Nine years ago, I rolled the dice on a new relationship, a new country, a new language, a new lease on life—and I won. Now, I’m doing it again, only it feels as though I’m going in reverse. Instead of raindrops trembling upon new leaves, the chipped and faded glory of old Madonna shrines, lazy sun-drenched courtyards, fields of ripening sunflowers, and horizons where the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean meet in seamless unity, I am headed toward this. And quite frankly, this terrifies me.

For nine years, I created my own sanctuary, my own world, within this one. I became my own home. Piece by piece, I took off the armor that had served me in the United States. These are softer robes I wear. Now, I have to put that armor back on, if it still fits, and likely add to it. New York City is the most expensive city in the world. I’m arriving there jobless and homeless.

So, another loss. For almost a decade now, I’ve been able to control who I let into my creative space. Now, loud, drunk, stoned, crazy, obnoxious humanity will encroach upon it every time I set foot outside. Since the legalization of marijuana three weeks ago, the whole city is enveloped in a cannabis cloud. There’s talk of installing a casino on the top floor of Saks’s Fifth Avenue.

It’s Gotham, and trust me when I tell you, I don’t belong there.

But the dread is more existential than that. For me, it’s the impermanence of all things. It’s the feeling of oneness that I had with John as we drove the winding roads of Italy, windows open, the sun on our faces. It’s the church bells tolling, and the soft shadows gathering in the piazzas on late summer afternoons. It’s stumbling across half-abandoned villages in the foothills of nowhere and feeling the quiet thrill of discovery.

All of that is gone now, or quite nearly, only to be replaced by the skronk of car horns and the merciless screaming of pneumatic drills.

I don’t do well with noise or impermanence. I tend to fight them, which makes me nothing more extraordinary than a modern-day Don Quixote tilting at windmills. It’s the hardest part of getting older, I find. The losses pile up. Impermanence gets rudely shoved in our faces. Friends die. Relationships die. We die.

Now, I will return to a culture I barely understood the first time around. A consumer culture. Most Americans don’t realize how cog-to-the-wheel they are. The United States is a market economy, meaning that wheel only keeps turning so long as people are spending. That means ads—ads everywhere you look—and lots more psychological manipulation.

Remember: they can’t sell you something unless they can make you feel deficient without it.

This has led, of course, to a nation of demented narcissists who talk ceaselessly about themselves without awareness, understanding, or wisdom. They have no idea what’s driving them to despair, only that they are despairing. And having lived outside the biodome of growth capitalism for so long, I see it with disturbing clarity.

Consumer culture is what led to Trump’s election in 2016. In a very real sense, his brand of malevolent populism gave rise to a purer form of democracy, a popularity contest waged almost entirely within the confines of the media. He turned our nation’s highest office into a television show, and we, the drowsing, opioid-addled hippos, avidly watched it. We continue to watch it, willingly or not, as Trump is returned to Twitter and Facebook.

This is what I’m coming home to.

So, yes, I live in a state of absolute dread. Of course I do. Will I eventually land on my feet? It is likely I will. For a sensitive, artistic soul, I am surprisingly tough. It’s not for nothing that John calls me a “mean little motor scooter.” But at what cost? How much of that hard-earned peace of mind and reparation of soul will I have to give up in order to survive? After all, it’s not Bethlehem I’m slouching toward; it’s Gotham. And right now, I’m sitting in this heatless empty apartment waiting for the Doomsday Clock to tick down.

Yet, for those of you, like me, who are facing a personal reckoning, take heart. Home is inside each and every one of us. We take it with us, like a snail’s shell. We are stronger than we know. And I have found that the safe, inviolable space inside of me can weather almost any condition, even a cultural milkshake like New York City. In inverse proportion, we can assess our potential for growth by degree of difficulty.

As a writer, I should welcome this next leg in my journey. There are some people (I am certainly one of them) who are born to fight, born to do the things they think they cannot do. It is, in fact, our entire purpose on this planet. And this move is nothing. Something to me, of course, but nothing compared to the challenges you may have personally faced.

We are never as alone in our suffering as we feel.

An Italian village of mill races. Photo credit: Stacey Eskelin

In this way, we are spat forth like a watermelon seed into the universe, again and again. We are born, we rise, we die. It may be the end of a dream for me (and a sudden rude awakening), but unless I’m ganked on a New York subway, it’s not the end of my journey.

Which brings me to this.

When Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, he had less than thirty seconds of fuel left. The spacecraft Eagle had overshot its landing, and all onboard were close to dying one of the most terrifying deaths imaginable: asphyxiation in the black cold void of space.

Apollo 11’s Eagle spacecraft, as seen from fellow spaceship Columbia. Photo credit: NASA.

But Armstrong and his fellow star traveler, Buzz Aldrin, did not give in to fear. They maneuvered their way to the flattest part of some pretty rough terrain—and survived.

If they could do that, I’m pretty sure you can handle the next obstacle in your race, whatever it may be. I can, too.

“When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the moon, I cried,” astronaut Alan Shepard once confessed.

Substitute “Italy” for “moon,” and I think you’ve pretty much got me.

Copyright © 2023 Stacey Eskelin

Are you experiencing any personal Waterloos? I want to hear how you’re surviving them. Be sure to chime in below.