I was recently in Baltimore for a few days. I’d been meaning to go back for a while and so when the opportunity presented itself, I “bought the ticket.” This is no simple financial transaction. “Buying the ticket” means making a commitment to deal with the onrush of memories, happy, tragic, funny, absurd and horrifying—all the unfinished business—that the city conjures in my mind. Each time I go there I’m tempting fate, like I may meet my doom, be killed, crippled, maimed, go stark raving mad. I took out a large travel insurance policy for the trip in case Death, like in the famous story of W. Somerset Maugham, “The Appointment in Samarra,” had plans for me.
Baltimore’s always caused me the most pain to think about. The reasons for this are simple, all the things which meant Baltimore for me have disappeared or so altered as to render them unrecognizable. I hated seeing a building I loved either in ruins, torn down, or boarded up.
Before, if I’d come in and seen what I saw on this trip as I descended Howard St. on the Light Rail I would’ve been devastated, cursing the idiotic politicians and social planners who put it in place so many years ago. Entire stretches of Howard St. lie in ruins, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic dystopic film. Graffiti, always a bad sign, was everywhere—the sure sign of cosmopolitan doom. Later I visited Harborplace, which, though never a favorite, was strange to see sprawled out there like a haunted house, something eerie emanated from it like a decaying corpse.
Curiously, the old Baltimore was peeking out everywhere. Afro-Americans speaking Ebonics on the light rail seemed to be time-travelling from 1970; some hillbillies drinking on street corners in Hampden. Classic Baltimore working-class types with rolled up sleeves here and there. But there was no competition for the hellish behemoth of the Johns Hopkins University campus. They’ve won with a soulless message of entitled monied superiority. I must admit, the new social layout is clever. Now there are just enough blacks, Asians and other “traditionally underrepresented groups” in the well-to-do category, that it sends out the message: “If you haven’t made it, it’s your own damned fault.”
I went for a walk in Roland Park, where I grew up. I saw houses sub-divided into apartments. I saw that the country club has sold 20 acres of its land for a public park. I thought back to when I was a child there: impossible that this could ever happen. I don’t know why I cared about the country club land, we were never members. I miss the old WASP snobs; ladies with blue hair, the pretty private school girls in blue dresses and white blouses, the Roland Park where even the maids had snobby attitudes, the gentlemen-in-decline alcoholics in sports clothes. I even miss the violent jocks carrying lacrosse sticks; they were all part of my mental landscape. At least I saw no graffiti in Roland Park: when it does show up, its days are numbered.
This trip was different. It was the first time I’d been back without having a single close family member there. Baltimore’s a place where I go but never quite get there. I seek a connection, a bond, a communion, but it never comes. I was a stranger. As I walked around, or as I was driven around by a friend on ad hoc sight-seeing excursions, everything was familiar, but now, lacking any current emotional component.
I asked my friend to take me to Mount Vernon Place. If there’s a center of the universe for me, it’s there. I’ve been going there since I was a day old. Before we moved to Roland Park, we lived downtown, first on N. Charles St,, then later Mount Vernon Place, next to Peabody. We’d go to Mount Vernon Place Park daily, my sister and I would play on the fountain, sit on the grass, look at the beatniks or later, at the hairy-hippies hanging out there.
I was standing there in the park when I saw a woman that I’ve loved for as long as I can remember. Though over 60 years have passed, she hadn’t changed at all from when I first saw her. I’m speaking of The Naiad, the statue by Grace Turnbull that adorns the fountain. Some force took ahold of me, I took my shoes and socks off, rolled up my pants and waded through the water over to the pedestal where she’s gracefully reclined, stood upon it and looked into her eyes. I heard a voice say “kiss me” so I bent over and kissed her on her lips. Unbelievably, though the day was cold, her lips were warm. Raising my head, I again looked into her eyes, and I heard her say, “As you have loved me for all these years, I too, have loved you. I have seen you grow and have looked forward to your visits whenever they might occur. At last, you have come across the water and kissed me. The circle is closed. Now wherever you go, I will be with you.” I said goodbye to my past; and the next day, caught a plane back to Paris.