Quiet daze
Written on March 21st, 2023:
What can peace and quiet really do for you anyways? Is serenity pleasant when the silence around you becomes so deafening you feel unreal? I find myself rarely asking these kinds of questions until today when I went on a little stroll…
Right now I’m in a French town in Switzerland called Chandolin. It’s very beautiful and very quiet. The chalets look like something from a German fairy tale, with their dark oak logs and wooden shingles. The inside of the homes are concealed by lace doilies hanging on the windows that are patterned by the little cartoon boys and girls but I imagine they remain rather similar on the interior. Everything is picturesque, sweet, and lovely, but being unable to see inside the houses makes me feel like I’m walking around a deserted movie set.
In fact, my entire walk around this village reminded me of the Universal Studios tour in LA. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a tour bus that passes through various film sets like the Wild West, Whoville, New York, Jaws, and many other fictionalized places. On the outside, you marvel at how realistic the sets are, the attention to detail in the window shops, or the random trunks and benches on the sidewalk that convincingly sell the identical reality shown on television. There is a sense of eeriness behind it all, knowing that the final product rests in front of a backdrop constructed of beams and wood.
I felt a similar sensation to this when I was walking around Chandolin. I don’t know if that’s offensive to say, because it really was calm and charming. Maybe the tranquility of the place masked its feeling of life from me.
I think this is a complete fault of my own. I have become so accustomed to being overstimulated at every waking hour that a nice stroll around a pleasant town has rendered itself impersonal and a little spooky to me. Maybe I just have to find a way to live again without the unnecessary Netflix on the laptop and Instagram on the phone combination but I fear I’m in too deep. How do you regain the meaning of life if you haven’t felt that you’ve even lost it? This is what I’m used to.
I guess the quiet I’m experiencing right now would mean more to me if I felt that it was simple, true peace, instead of a daunting illusion. I wish I was better at enjoying this downtime rather than getting into my head.
I have seen two people on my walk in this village. The first one was working: he had on a painter’s shirt and pants and was plastering the side of a house. We exchanged quick nods and I saw him washing his hands a few minutes later in a green communal wooden sink sitting on the side of the road. The second man I saw on a staircase entering one of the chalets (presumably his own). A few paces later I saw what I assume was his car. His trunk was open and there was a baby stroller next to it. I figured it was pretty naïve of him to leave it open (what a foolish mistake to make!) since anybody could just go on and steal his belongings until I remembered we were on a remote mountain in Switzerland, not New York.
Noting these strangers during my promenade was one thing that did bring this place to life (they are just doing normal human things like me and we live our separate lives that will never cross again and that is okay). It’s nice to recognize the similar routines we all share, even with people we can’t communicate with or relate to in any other sense. Every experience I’ve lived has already been experienced ten times over (and more) by different people in different places at different times.
The consistency of life is comforting when you think about it. It just rolls on as an immovable force cycling through the same human experiences generation after generation, spinning back like a VHS tape. It’s nice to know that my joy, boredom, fear, and pain have been felt by so many other people before me.
I don’t exactly know what this is about anymore, which tells me I should get off my soapbox…
Until next time.
