Always Leaving

This semester in my German class, we learned all -- and I mean all, we read two books and saw two movies and a musical -- about Elisabeth, the queen of Austria-Hungary at the end of the nineteenth-century. I can see why my German prof was mildly fascinated by her, and why the country was for the entire forty years she ruled; she was incredibly beautiful and naturally brilliant. She had dark brown hair ("tinted by walnuts", one of our textbooks told us in a gossipy sort of way) that fell to her feet. She dressed beautifully, corresponded with the leading thinkers of the time, wrote poetry and excelled at sports. She ensnared the heart of a ruler when she was I think sixteen and quickly became the queen of the largest empire in Europe.

She was, in short, awesome, and so saying that I see any parallels to myself in her is bald vanity, but bear with me. I'm not saying that my famous beauty should put my image on everything from decorative china plates to postcards for a century, nor am I saying that I correspond with genius poets.

However, the Empress liked leaving, and it's something I'm learning that I do well. I'm really hoping we do it for different reasons, though. Empress Elisabeth had it all, but was never quite happy; historians think that although she was staunchly Catholic, she was trying to slowly commit suicide by traveling on dangerous trips, using dangerous methods of transportation. From her dark poetry, sad family life, and habit of wearing black every day, we can gather that she might have been seriously depressed. She was definitely anorexic, at least -- she ran from things both in the metaphorical sense and in the physical sense, jogging miles in a corset every day at a time when other women gave up and sat on fainting couches. (She was also an avid horseback rider, although I was angered to learn that while she took her horses over the scariest jumps possible, ones that sportsMEN of the time wouldn't take, she never ONCE broke both wrists.) She was never at home for more than a few weeks without taking off again.

I left Bray today. I quit the ELTAP program after four weeks, first of all because I realized it was costing me far too much money, and secondly because I'm tired of being indoors all the time. So I found a WWOOFing post in southern Ireland --- the WWOOF program places willing workers on willing organic farms. They are fed and housed in exchange for food and board (and, well, sometimes money). I will be staying with a woman who had rhuematoid arthritis surgery and can't feed her goats. (The best part is that she has CASTS ON BOTH WRISTS!)

I'm sitting in a nice hotel room in Cork right now, a town where I know exactly nobody, and I like it. I'm happy this way, running -- not away from something, but to the unknown. Is that the difference between me and Empress Elisabeth? Or did she also have moments like this, moments where she sat in her hotel room and thought, "This is pretty tops, maybe I'll order room service for dinner and watch TV all night, or maybe I'll go out to the bars and people-watch? Oh, and fuck Valentine's Day"? Is this feeling of unlimited potential in solitude all it takes to make a person constantly leave?