Momento.

There are sirens outside my window. The streets are always busy, and they are loud.

The cities blend from one to the next, but they are abundantly different. They are so much their own and they are the same and they are spinning in circles, musical and vibrant, but they are tireless. 

People are everywhere.

We have traveled high and low. We spent ten days in Italy, we’ve taken day trips from Aachen to Bruges, spent seven days on Free Travel — including Ireland and London, for me — and now I am sitting in a hotel room in Paris, France with the window open, listening to the bustle beyond. 

We have had plenty of “down time” in our facility in-between all of the traveling — but I use the term down time quite loosely, since this is a period of classes and stress and getting everything possible accomplished that we can while we have (somewhat) consistent WiFi, and it is the only time we have that we aren’t saturating ourselves with the grandeur of world history sprawled out in the streets right before our eyes, or time spent trying to figure out the next train stop, or meeting time, or next possible opportunity for sleep for an overly-exhausted body. This down time is much more of an up time used to get all of the big and little tasks done that have been accumulating for several days too many, and we have to use it for studying if we want our grades to be up at the completion of the semester, too.

To anyone and everyone listening: I have learned a lot. About history, the present, and myself. And one concept that seems to stick its head up above the rest right now is that of time— and how we don’t have it.

Time to stop, time to wait, time to be still.

We don’t have enough of it, and we probably never will.

Welcome to the maze of cobbled streets and color-blocked alleyways, welcome to the days of aggravation and beauty — filled both with confusion and with friendly reassurance — and to moments that are frozen in time only once you realize they are over.

Because that’s what we have, mostly, are moments. Collections of them, all locked up, filing themselves away without ever needing us to realize it.

Rain, delay. Delay, delay, more rain. Missed that train, scramble for and tumble into a seat on the next one, hair dripping and hearts pounding, a carry on bag bigger than its carrier’s torso filling each lap. 

Marching down into the echoes of the tunnels, trudge the steps back up into the cold and wet sunlight, and 

take in the scenery if you can,

but don’t stop moving.

Knees buckling out from under you the first time the metro takes off, neither for the first time nor for the last. And the faces of all the people pass by, swarming in and around each one before it like the birds on their own routes high up above.

Tears creeping at the eyes’ corners and sliding, smiling, downward with a neck craned up to the ceiling, to every crook and crevice in the Sistine Chapel. 

To every paint stroke in the veins of both hands.

Walking through grandiose chambers, I feel for a moment that I am at the bottom of a tomb. Harrowing, and beautiful, but empty. There are people everywhere, milling about, but not every set of eyes are open.

Sitting in silence reserved for prayer, a marble nun gazes back down at me from underneath eyelids half-closed, and at any second, she will move.

And one day I noticed, where the light streaming in hit the stained glass of a cathedral window—so gleaming— just right, you could see the specs of dust floating and the spindles of cobwebs stretched from pane to pane. And right then, there was no fiction or show. Everything is real.

Our time spent in Italy was my favorite group travel time yet. Maybe because it was the hardest—socially, physically, just all-out generally— and simultaneously the most rewarding. Maybe because everything related to traveling was so new, but something at the end of the day makes it most near and dear in my memory. In Italy, I was introduced to a new favorite must-visit: Cathedrals. Namely, the beautiful archbasilicas of Rome. Each is unique and worthwhile in its own respects; behind their doors, some of the most imposing I’ve ever stood beneath, are some of the most reflective, flooring, and challenging moments I’ve ever known. 

Snowflakes fell across Italy for the first time in several years, blanketing the streets and the gardens and people alike. It was dazzling, the definition of a picturesque day. Every dog, every child, every young-adult-student on this trip held a grin from ear to ear. I laid down in untouched snow, and I ran haphazardly through it. Our feet were soaked and sore and blue, but the day was good. We missed our day trips because the trains couldn’t run, but the days were still never-ending-ly good. We learned the city like the backs of our hands, and when we left, we took it away with us, that good.

There is so much green in Florence. Plants crawl over the sides of buildings, and green shutters call their windows home. Inside the city’s Baptistery, easily one of the world’s most beautiful mosaics wraps and winds up toward the octagonal dome’s center. Michelangelo’s David is purely beautiful, believe me; but with my whole heart, it is dimmed  in comparison to the unfortunately less famous sonnet that he wrote, inscribed in gold on a grey museum wall, piercing its readers from one side while The Deposition breaks hearts from the other. 

When snow fell in Dublin, we didn’t know at first if it was real or not. For a few minutes, we laughed because we still didn’t know. It looked like clusters of styrofoam, sticking to our coats and tossing in the parade colors. By late afternoon, the flakes were falling slowly in the sunlight, and it was beautiful. The Cliffs of Moher raked the low-laying clouds; they were threatening and enthralling in the very same glance. Even the seagulls praised them, circling constantly, landing sparingly. Two orders of hot chocolate at the end of our cliffside trek is the only reason I am still alive today. And drifting in and out of sleep on the smooth rumbling bus ride back, there was a tired peace. There was a quiet stillness, a rest in the measure, in not knowing what time of the evening it was,

because for the moment, it didn’t matter.

And time, oh time, how it flew.

Cats in a cozy Airbnb. Climbing in through a window to unlock a front door, burned casserole in a new-to-us gas oven which cooked a minute too long (but for stomachs too hungry to care), and condensation gathered on the glass above the dishes and the plants because the steam has nowhere to go. But our laughs do; and they do.

Get off the metro, get back on. Count to ten because you messed up, double-check the map and then check it again. Grab your change, grab a jacket— grab a hand— and take it all in as fast as you can. Every moment, each weightless sound, for they are gathering all around.

Moments of panic for missing a train, moments of frustration waiting out the rain, and moments of pure bliss,

because there is nothing like this.

Moment after moment I reach for the straps of a backpack in front of me, holding on to keep from straying right off the edge of the sidewalk, neck craned to the sky. The one bigger than it could ever possibly be— the one that doesn’t, that hasn’t, that cannot stop growing. The one I’m still doubtful would ever want to. 

Because I can’t take it in all at once. I can’t process quickly enough every sight, every gaze, every rooftop and tremor in the air, and every page that is waiting to be turned, teeming with novelty.

But I can see. And these moments are full of sights. And for this, I am thankful.

The whole world is seemingly at each fingertip. With every blink, every breath, every breeze that picks up and twirls every hair, flag, and feather in sight. 

Several months ago, before embarking on this trip, I had a small conversation with a fellow student. It was about writing while abroad, if I should or if I shouldn’t. What to say? And why? I debated, mostly with myself.

And I decided I wanted to write as I went. It would be worth my while, I concluded. But now I see how little time I have, and how each and every moment is filled up completely.

But it is no reason not to try.

Because so oftentimes, the timing is perfect.

be still and know.