At the airport, waiting to board my flight back to Armenia—my second return since I left in 2010—I thought of Paige’s words. When she returned after an absence of six or seven years, she reported, upon her return to the States, that the experience had been a little flat, or at least, not as she’d expected it. Now, I’m paraphrasing her, so don’t make too many assumptions. She had a good time, but, if I remember right, she reported that now, having nothing to do, that is, no work, she didn’t feel the same. She felt idle.
I thought about this at the airport because when I heard Armenian voices at the gate for the flight to Yerevan, I felt uplifted. It had been hard to leave my family and do something that felt a bit unnecessary—perhaps I could’ve done the training online, for example. Yes, I was going to facilitate a teacher training. I had a clear job to do, but obviously, I was also going to indulge in a bit of memory lane, which is not something I do nearly as much as I used to. In fact, children tend to keep me quite firmly rooted in the present. Which I can tell you is a damn gift for me. Until my daughter was born, I’d spent a lot of time with my head in the oh-so-easily-fashioned clouds of nostalgia. I knew that everything looked better in hindsight, but I suppose that’s the reason I spent so long looking at everything that way, just like glossy social media addictions. We know the images are untrue, but we want to believe them, so we do. My past, to me, was your friend’s perfectly curated Facebook page; it always looked amazing and even envy-inducing.
It wasn’t just kids that changed this. I had also come to strongly distrust my nostalgia after an incident with a false memory that felt a bit like an out-of-body experience. When you discover that the things you remember are a bit like dreams, you stop putting so much stock in them and understand just how subject to influence they are. And finally, I guess I used to take refuge in memory because there was something I was looking for it in, a happiness greater than the one at present which felt more real than any potential happiness of the future, especially when the future looked bleak or things didn’t seem to be moving along very quickly. For now, I am satisfied with my present which includes a three and one-year-old who are constantly taking me away from my musings and into the very real present.
So, perhaps this is why my first return to Armenia five years ago felt so different than this time. Back then, I still had this idealized (and frequently visited) Armenian memory. Coming back was a bit like stepping into that memory and probing it, scrounging in it, mining it. When I first lived in Armenia, I had been a Peace Corps volunteer. I traveled freely enough, but I was never at liberty to do what ever I wanted at any given time and I couldn’t go to Nagorno Karabakh for obvious reasons. When I returned as a private citizen, a tourist even, I ranged around with nothing to do but return to the homes and people who had been kind to me. Returning in itself was no gift, but my former friends and neighbors seemed to appreciate it as such.
I was also curating that trip. In the first return to Armenia, I took my wife (then girlfriend, though I think we were engaged—not that it matters) back to the place I’d been telling her about since I’d returned. The storied roads and paths, tufa stones and meals were almost recreated for her benefit. “Look at us!” The stones cried out. “We exist exactly as you remember us! Perhaps we are even greater than in your memory!” Ah. Who wouldn’t have enjoyed such a trip? It was like justification for my nostalgia.
But Paige, I don’t think, looked backwards as much as I did. Her memory of Armenia was a little more realistic and when she went back, she didn’t bring anyone to show it to. I imagine her, silent most of the time, getting on and off public transportation, saying ‘thank you’ but finding it muffled from disuse. I imagine this, because this is how I felt for parts of the day today—my first day back on my third time in Armenia.
I got in so late last night, and all the drama of long-distance travel following me like a comet’s tail. I’d been checking in through video chat in and out of airports and, when I arrived, I felt the relief of being a traveler who’s managed to make it to the other side of the world and find their luggage on the conveyor belt. And early in the morning, Mt. Ararat is something incredible to behold, looming out of the dawn, like the ethereal mountain it is. Where I live, the mountains are low, but green and solid. In half a day’s walk, you are in them. Ararat was like a vivid ghost, encompassing the entire horizon, but gauzy, a bit like a projection. It looked like it could be walked through, but not to.
And then I went to bed.
I woke up around 10:30 in the morning and wandered up to breakfast before stumbling out, jetlagged into Yerevan. Then I met up with Anna and despite the richness of the world I had left behind, I didn’t feel superfluous. Even my strange, touristy rhythm had its place in Armenia. After all, I still had lots of memories to chase back down and see how they were getting along since I’d last examined them. But there’s where things went all homesick on me.
After Anna went back to work, I walked off, confident in my mission to continue looking around. I didn’t have a destination in mind, but there were so many places I wanted to revisit it didn’t matter which direction I went in. I started walking south, stopped and took a picture of myself in front of an impressive cathedral. I still wanted to walk, so I didn’t stop to go in, but continued, in a new direction, up toward the old Peace Corps office.
I knew they were remodeling the place, but I hadn’t expected it to be so empty. There were still a few memories floating about the place, despite the plaster dust and new walls, but, maybe that was where I began to feel out-of-place, like the ghostly projection of Ararat. The last time I’d come had been to show the place to my wife and there had been volunteers here doing the things I had done as a volunteer. It was as if I could point to these living people and say, “here it is, my experience. You can see it in these volunteers. They are living it now.” In that sense, my Armenia was still intact as I remembered it. Others were living it as I had, making the same connections, and learning it in the same way, letting it open their hearts to something outside their expectations. But now, they were gone. There was no one here in my place. Only people who were born here, grew up, had children and got old. People for whom this place was not a memory or a nostalgia but their very existence, their entire world. Without it, there would be nothing. There would also be tourists, but, having lived here, I felt very little connection with those flying in for a week from Germany or another western European country to hang out in Yerevan, see Garni and buy a carpet to remember the trip. Even though I was now somewhat among their class, I almost resented them for their irreverent attitudes for what, to me, was a place to be revered. I went back outside and found my excited route had turned into a bit of a slog. The day was getting on. It was hot and, really, I didn’t have much of a reason to walk by this store, or that apartment. The people I remembered weren’t there and, perhaps, being changed, neither was I.
That night was the first I was unable to sleep. I was both jet-lagged and anxious. That afternoon, I had found little in the new Yerevan to occupy myself with. There were a billion new cafés and lots of new places to eat, but very little to distract the solo traveler and I’d already once returned to all these memories five years ago. Returning to them now felt almost redundant. Some places were still open, like Art Bridge bookstore, others like Rock Bar, had closed. Either way, I did nothing but stand at the door and look on. There was no difference. If it had been open, I wouldn’t have gone in. If Reza had been with me, we wouldn’t have gone in, or, if we had, we wouldn’t have stayed long. The changes went beyond mere closures and ravages of time: I was too different as a person.
While I lay there trying to sleep that first night, my growing feelings of superfluity condensed and soured into a sense of misdirection. Here was this world I had once inhabited, but it was now little more than a stage set to wander through for a day. Meanwhile, my family, my kids, one of whom was old enough to clearly miss me, were waiting for me on the other side of the world. What business did I have being here when my little girl was waiting for her dad to come home and read to her? When my son was on the verge of taking his first steps? And my wife was having to double her workload to compensate for my absence. Perhaps these thoughts kept me up, but there was something also familiar, something that was not quite indistinguishable from the landscape itself. It was the loneliness I had felt when I initially came here, 14 years ago as a volunteer. This place, through a kind of long estrangement from America, had become my home. It had taken over two years, but I had adapted. Now, however, I had finally recreated my home in America, and it was as if I’d returned to the same unknown place I’d found myself in back when I first arrived in 2008; missing everything. The only difference was, that time, I knew I couldn’t go back for 27 months and this time, 10 days. Yet, I only had one setting for loneliness in Armenia. It was tuned to two years of anticipation, two years of adjusting, looking out the window in the evening, walking through the valleys in autumn, watching the snow fall on the mountains in the winter, listening to the snow melt in the rivers; in short, living here and adjusting to its rhythms. And while I tried to sleep, I had to continually remind myself, I wouldn’t be gone this long. My children wouldn’t have to wait this long to see their dad, but, in the back of my mind, there was that memory of looking out over the landscape and thinking “two years, two years, two years”. I hadn’t realized, in my acceptance of Armenia how thoroughly I had buried this memory, this long, slow feeling of adjustment, but, under the relationships and love for the mountains, the people, the passes, the quiet villages with their Ladas laden with vegetables and grandmothers sweeping the dust, the feeling remained. It was understanding that a place like this is not easily known and, it would seem, I had ceased to know it. The only thing to do would be to remain another two years and learn it again. My heart felt squeezed at the thought.
Luckily, I had a job to do. And in preparing for and facilitating the training, I found a way to reconnect and to find value and purpose in my return. It was a bit like my early days in the Peace Corps, when I had still been in pre-service training. Each day was structured and full and it was hard to have much time to sneak away and cultivate homesickness. The primary difference was, this time, it was much easier to call home. Fourteen years ago, internet was still primarily in the capital and getting a bunch of credit on one’s phone was the only way to call outside the country. I only made these calls about once a week and they were always brief and almost always to my mom because calling my friends was too hard—I couldn’t tell them anything that would make sense to them. Now I was able to make these calls for free, at any time, with video. To see my kids was at once a balm, and a kind of agony. My daughter would hold the phone and tell me about her day, but she’d also ask me to read things which I couldn’t make out over the phone and, once, she even tried to wrestle with me in the way we do where she likes to jump on me. She jumped over the phone, and I tried to mimic my typical reaction to being jumped on, but we were both keenly aware of my corporeal absence. We were both aware of the extreme shortcomings of our connection and that I couldn’t very well be in two places at once. So, when I hung up and found myself zooming back from the site of my longing on the other side of the world, I often felt more alone than I had before calling and, perhaps, this is why, I continued being unable to sleep.
Maybe adrenaline kept me going. Somehow, I was able to teach all day and lie awake all night. For the first three nights, I didn’t sleep more than an hour or two and, yet, I was somehow able to be coherent during the day. I think that this could be indicative of how anxious I was. Generally, when I don’t sleep for even a single night, I’m zombified all the next day, but in this new situation, it was almost like I didn’t need sleep or, at least, not for more than an hour or two.
Gradually, I built up a routine around the day’s lessons and, my third night, after visiting my old host family, I slept well. I assumed that my wakefulness had perhaps been nothing more than jetlag and that, at last, I had reset my circadian rhythm, but, on the last day of my lessons, I once again found myself unable to sleep—so, I don’t think jetlag had ever been the primarily culprit. I was now anxious about finishing what I came to do and having days between now and my departure. While I had been working, I was fine, but when I began to think that I would have nearly another week just to wander around, I was tormented by the idea that I would have nothing to do but shift around until I could finally return to my family. This, too mirrored my time in the Peace Corps. After pre-service training—which had been full of activity and language classes—we moved to our permanent sites and suddenly, we had a lot more free time in which to contemplate the changes to our lives and what they meant. In these initial months in our permanent sites, we had most of the drop-outs or early terminations. That initial unguided period was the hardest to adjust to; it was too easy to indulge in homesickness when the structure suddenly dropped away. It was also difficult, at that point, what the passage of two years would even look like. It seemed like each day (all 730 of them) would be spent watching the clock tic. Thank god we met people, found things to do and stopped watching the clocks, but, in the early days, such a change was almost impossible to imagine.
…
Back in Yerevan for my first day off after the training, I slept from around 3-10am and began to accept that, while I was here, I wouldn’t be sleeping soundly, consistently or at the right time. But, as long as I slept at some point I didn’t really care.
I went out into the bright afternoon to return to the new skatepark which I was still quite amazed by, having found it just the night before. The park was a boon because it gave me an excuse to exercise and to mentally ground myself a little. It was also something I was good at doing alone. Wandering around, as I had previously done, had less interest for me. I think this is perhaps when I was younger and living in Armenia, I was still looking for something. I was restless and, therefore, every bend in the road, no matter how remote, offered the possibility of discovery. Now—what could I say?— I had found what I wanted. I was still curious, but curiosity was not enough to send out me exploring for the day in 95 degree weather, especially in a place I already knew fairly well. Primarily, what I wanted was to get on the internet and see if my wife and kids had sent any updates. My daughter’s recent foray into using face paints, for example, was much more of interest to me than architecture or even that hefty and lonely moon that kept sinking into the sky every evening.
It was too hot to skate very long and I set out on a time-killing course through the city, eating here, getting a coffee there, sitting on a bench for a while, going to look at remembered buildings, etc. It was a beautiful day and there was plenty of sun and shade and I was glad for the scenery even if I was slightly distracted in my appreciation.
I went to look at a few carpets, reasoning that it might be a while before I returned and wanted something valuable, permanent, and beautiful to serve as a keepsake of my career in Armenia. I greatly enjoyed visiting the cool rooms off the heavily touristed area around Republic Square and the chance to tell the carpet sellers my story. As always, I was glad to be an Armenian-speaking non-Armenian in these touristy places where English or Russian were more in use. Some good conversations can result that way. And, indeed, one carpet seller and I talked about the carpet museum in Shushi (in Karabakh, now part of Azerbaijan) that I had once had the pleasure to visit and wondered what had become of it. Was it intact, only now with different labels in a different language over the carpets proclaiming a different history and make? Or did the place get reduced to rubble in the effort to take the town. Were those beautiful carpets circulating somewhere on the gray market or is there nothing left of them?
When I had visited Shushi, it had seemed as Armenian as anywhere else and now, in just a few years’ time, it’s been taken by Azerbaijan (again). I find it unsettling to think of the hotel where we stayed, the typical stores we stopped into to get water or snacks and the people we chatted with waiting for the marshutka to take us back to Stepanakert. These were all so definitively Armenian even while they may have had a backdrop of a few ruined mosques and a cemetery in the weeds without crosses. I can see how this produces an existential anxiety in Armenians. No one knows the value of land and country like those who have watched it ebb and flow. In the States, for example, it’s unthinkable that Mexico should suddenly claim San Diego and all that’s there should become part of another world. Enough of this sort of thing, and even the center, the cultural heart of the country, would come to feel impermanent and traditions would have to expand enough to cover the loss so that something could remain.
Our visit to the carpet museum in Shushi five years earlier, had been somewhat unremarkable. A somewhat cranky old woman dropped her hoe and opened the locked door for us. When she began to show us the exhibits, however, she began to brighten, it was obvious she enjoyed having a role in relation to this rich history. The main thing I remember is that she complained a lot about the rich in the area saying they were responsible for the woes of the area. I wonder if she still holds them accountable.
While I was discussing this with the carpet seller, tourists kept coming in and poking around in their touristy way. My host kept having to attend to their naïve questions in English. I tried not to grumble at their expectation that English would be spoken. There was no sign that said such. “At least learn enough Armenian to ask if English is spoken,” I thought. But then I remembered my layover in Frankfurt and how I had been just speaking English to people when I’d gotten myself into a predicament at the train station. I really couldn’t hold anything against these people. They were just as out-of-their element, if not more so, than I’d been. They knew very little about Armenia and probably less about carpets. Hell, I didn’t know anything about carpets either. However, when we’re foreign, I think we tend to rank ourselves in terms of foreignness. Because I’d lived here before and spoke enough of the language to discuss carpets, I felt my ranking was higher and, therefore, my presence was justified, or more justified than these tourists’ presence. Which, of course, led me back to think about the carpet museum in Shushi. I’m sure each party felt their presence more justified than the other. I decided this was a pretty problematic way of thinking and felt like a jerk for thinking anything about the tourists. Let them come. They would probably spend a lot more money than I was.
I left the carpet shop to wander around a bit more; I wasn’t in a hurry to get to Yeghegenadzor. I had more than two full days to be there and very little to do. I figured, for now, I’d stay on in Yerevan poking around at the newness of the city. So many things had been added, cleaned up and refined since I’d first come here. It wasn’t a personable as the rest of the country, but it was distracting as a mall is distracting. There was a lot to potentially buy, even if I wasn’t planning on buying anything.
Later that day, I witnessed something strange. I was waiting at the marshutka stop to go down to Yeghegnadzor. As usual, we were waiting for the van to fill up before leaving and most everyone was milling around. The marshutka stop was just as it had been 12 years prior and, I was surprised that one of the drivers remembered me. When I’d arrived, he’d come up to me and asked, “now where are you wandering to?” I didn’t know him, so I wasn’t sure how to answer then he said. “Aren’t you that guy who wanders all over the place? I remember you.” Indeed I am. Well, I was. Having now both visited and guided I find I don’t feel much compunction to keep wandering. I’m primarily interested in seeing people. Places do nothing to relieve my loneliness and longing for my family, if anything, a beautiful place only makes me wish more keenly that my family were with me to see it. I used to be known for a characteristic I didn’t really exhibit anymore. Given that I’ve been much the same person since my early high school years, I don’t have this feeling too often and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. For example was it a positive or a negative thing that I was no longer very interested in rambling all over the countryside? Had I learned something or exhausted something?
Still, I was happy to be welcomed before even reaching Yeghegnadzor. Already, I was back on familiar ground. At this, the furthest reach of Yeghegnadzor, people remembered me. What would it be like to return? Yeghegnadzor, after all, was the place where I’d lived in Armenia. The rest of the country was made up of places I’d passed through, some longer than others. Perhaps returning to Yeghegnadzor would provide a more fecund soil for reflection. Maybe I’d find something there that hadn’t been as obvious elsewhere in Armenia.
While I was standing around, musing thus, one of the quietly sleeping dogs at the marshutka stop suddenly began snarling, he went from being sound asleep to having his hackles completely up and teeth barred. It was almost as if he had a nightmare, for he didn’t seem to have an obvious reason for this behavior then, curiously, I saw the subject of his ire. He wasn’t just snarling, he as snarling at one very particular person, a man coming down the street with a great deal of sores on his body, though he wasn’t some diseased beggar. He looked like anyone else, he just had a lot of those sores you sometimes see on people’s elbows and on the backs of their hands. I once had a mild case of something like this; it’s probably some kind of fungal infection.
As the man approached, the dog grew more livid. As he passed, the man cursed and feinted at the dog. The dog growled and snapped at the air. He was small, but livid, nearly rabid acting, like this man’s very presence drove him mad. This bizarre pageant continued as the man went down the street, but after he’d left the area, the dog settled down again. A little boy even went over to pet him. I heard someone say. “They can tell about people.” Or something like that. Then, while the boy was still petting the dog, the hackles rose again and the growl returned like a quiet motor gradually growing louder. The dog barked and began to snap at the air again. The boy jumped back and made kicking motions toward the dog, but, once again, it wasn’t the boy. The man with the sores had returned and the whole thing happened again until the man was out of sight and once again, the dog lay down, passive as can be. The strange thing about this situation was that when the man first appeared, the dog had been around the corner. From my vantage, looking in from the street. I could see both of them, but there had been no way the dog could’ve seen the man. He smelled him. The question was, what did that man smell like to that dog and what did the man do to get that smell? Again, it seemed to go back to that justification of presence. For the dog, this man did not belong here but who could say why?
I got to Yeghegnadzor late that afternoon. The last time I had come—five years ago—I had been flooded with the excitement of the tour guide. Here was the place I’d lived for two years, the place I’d been talking about for the last seven since I’d come back to America and, at long last, I was here again, both to indulge in my memory and to show it—in living color—to my wife. Walking up to the town, I had been almost giddy with nostalgia. It was an ordinary autumn day. The dry leaves rustled in the chill breeze. Curbside fires loosed a kind of atmospheric smoke into the air and I strained to see what lie ahead. Almost immediately, people began to recognize me and call my name. On the street, a youth stopped me, from a window, my former neighbor yelled down. I’m not exaggerating when I say it felt a bit like a parade—probably the closest I’ll get to being in one, anyway. Everything that followed for the next few days, was just confirmation of the beauty of that initial moment. One day, we went down to the Ottoman-style bridge (I’m not sure who was in charge when it was built, but there’s an Arabic script dedication on one of the headstones). Another, down to the waterfall I’d found one lonely afternoon when I’d lived here as a volunteer. And every evening, we had to have at least two dinners, torn as we were between invitations. We left a few days later, happy, but feeling like we could’ve stayed another day.
Upon this return, I noticed I didn’t feel as though it had been five years since the last time. It felt more like I’d just left. While some things had certainly changed, there was a familiarity which pervaded everything. I felt a bit like when I first arrived back in 2008: thankful for this beautiful place, but elsewhere in my thoughts. Distracted.
I checked into my hotel—a beautiful place that I had picked at random via Google—and went out for a little stroll as dusk came on. Alone, with the wind roaring down from the hills and the dust dimming the light, I couldn’t but help feel quite melancholy as I passed the once familiar places. This time, no one called out, no one greeted me; This place, that had given me so much, to which I had also given a great deal, was the same but for the people, who had grown. I reflected that, when I’d lived here, most of the kids I’d played with and taught how to skateboard had been between 5-10 years old. This was 14 years ago; they would all be grown up now. Probably moved on. Mandatory conscription would put most of the boys in their two-year army stints.
I stopped into a new bakery where I could see women hard at work preparing lavash. Never have I been in greater company in Armenia than when in the presence of such preparations. The sitting women, sweating greatly by the heat of the tandoor (Armenian: tonir) ovens, smile, chat and roll out the dough. It is as if they still recognize the richness of their task. They themselves are rich to have so much dough to prepare and they are doing a rich thing by baking for the community. I stopped in for a chat and bought a fresh sheet of dry lavash which was crackly, smoky and warm. I walked up to my old apartment building holding this huge sheet of bread, trying not to let crumbs fall everywhere (to be eating bread—or really anything—on the go like this is a curious thing in Armenia, as elsewhere in countries where time is not the most valuable commodity, people generally eat seated and in the company of others—no one walks around eating).
The moon was nearly full and the storks were everywhere in their telephone pole nests with their young. I tried to appreciate the atmosphere, but I could only think, “this is to be shared: this lavash, this moon, these storks, this dusty wind, this evening lassitude. It’s all somewhat useless to the man who is alone and, further, is missing someone. What can I make of these things beyond wishes to share them?” Perhaps I was getting carried away with my melancholy, but, remember, this was a place that was suffused with my longing. When I’d first come, I’d left my known world behind and gradually, gradually, I’d come to feel at home here. So much so that, when I left after two years, I found that I’d inadvertently created a second home, or at least a storage space for so many memories. Only now did I see that, after my last visit, the place had retreated to its former emotional distance. Once again, I was here with everything I loved back where I had come from. I was alone and the place felt opaque, even unknowable. My stay was only to be a few days, but it stretched out in front of me nearly as long as it did when I’d first come. Two years, two days, what difference when you float just over the surface and just under everyone’s notice?
Just as I was thinking this, I came to the old World War II memorial and met a young woman giving her young child a drink from the fountain. She looked up at me. I greeted her.
“Do you remember me?” She asked.
“I’m afraid I don’t” I responded. Happy to have been recognized again, nearly at the height of my melancholy. I reflected that, in the old days, I wouldn’t have been recognized. No one knew me.
“You were my teacher. You teach well.” She said both sentences together, like they were natural cognates.
“Thank you.” I replied. “Is this your son?” She said that he was and that he was three. I told her my daughter was also three and that I had a one-year-old son. “I miss them.” I told her for no reason other than that I wanted to say it out loud on this windy evening, in this isolated place.
“Yes,” she said, bringing her son down from the drinking fountain. “To be with your kids is the best.”
This is something I’d been hearing in Armenia for a very long time. In the years past, I’d been scolded for taking too long to have kids. People had asked me over and over at both 25 and 34 when I was going to settle down and have kids. They repeatedly told me it was the best thing in the world. But I was young; I was seeing the world and happy to have little responsibility. Now of course, this notion that family takes precedent and that children are the most important thing in the world is not only obvious, but beautiful. I realized as I walked away from my former student, wishing her a good night, that I’d finally learned the lesson that Armenia wanted to teach me from day one: create your own Armenia and live there, settle down where you are comfortable and cultivate happiness with your children, your family, around you. When I’d first arrived, I missed my country, family and friends, but I was restless. I wanted to see the world and make connections to it. After two years, I succeeded in doing this so well that I thought of Armenia as my home, or at least another home and, upon returning to the States, I spent years trying to connect to other countries in the same way: Argentina, Paraguay, Thailand, but each time, the experience was different, not quite as captivating. When I returned to Armenia after a seven-year absence, I felt like I as coming home again and perhaps projecting this feeling, I was received in the same way. But my Armenian friends continued to chide me for not having kids. Now I was engaged. I was getting closer they were happy to note, but I was here again, possibly confused, for staying here would not help me create a home, unless I planned to stay here. Of course, my Armenian friends would’ve been ecstatic if I had decided to stay and raise a family here, but they knew better than I did that my home was where I was born, as it was for them.
So now here I am again. I’ve learned the lesson. Learned it well in fact. My entire life is with my family. Without them, I have little reason to go out into the world. Perhaps it was only that I had to come back here one last time to tell everyone that I’ve finally understood what they’ve been saying all along: “You were right; thank you. I wish the highest happiness to you and your families. Now it’s time for me, too, to return home.”
In this realization, more than any before, I have understood Armenia. For now, there is nothing else to find here. I will always be grateful for what all I have learned and perhaps I will return in the future to learn something else from this land and people which continues to teach in a straight-forward and non-prevaricated way.
To underscore this, the next day, I went back to many of the places where I used to roam and contemplate the speeding clouds. I went down to the bridge, past the university where I used to work, out to see a family who used to feed me; in each situation, I felt I had little to add to the immense collection of impressions I already had. They were happy motions, without profound implications. I sank back into this leisure time and appreciated it as the break it was. There it was, this place, which has once been the essence of the everyday had, through time and distance, returned to wonderful inscrutability. After I had learned my lesson, I became--perhaps for the very first time in Armenia--a tourist.
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