Three years ago in December 2011, I found Zurich. Our connection was instant and inexplicable. Soon after my arrival at the Hauptbanhof I stood atop the Limmerstat, the founding Roman hill of Zurich, led there by city’s quiet paths to the place where his story began. All roads lead to Rome is especially true in the way the network of Zurich guides you through itself. The Limmerstat is the place where Zurich’s gray sprawl has joined with the lake’s mist over the hills and into the Alps for thousands of years. It’s his origination, his big bang, a point of no return, where the city was first established in AD 358 as part of the Roman Empire under Dionysius. It was only on my second visit to the city, when I was more prepared with landmarks I wanted to visit that I realized intuition and a trust of place is really all you need to find the places you need to be.
I was en route to Florence, to start my semester abroad there, so after a morning and afternoon in Zurich, I took the train again to the airport and went on my way to italy, delighted at the serendipitous little adventure my layover afforded. I hoped I would have a reason to go back one day.
Fast forward almost a year, and I was a person deeply changed by the seven months I spent in Italy and traveling in Europe. It is true what they say: that studying abroad changes you. I really think it is traveling that changes you, it’s the change of place that can work its magic on your character if you really open yourself to the experience and are willing to forget the mold you’ve been growing into for a while, and once you do there is really no going back to it. This is the scary part of changing that you don’t realize while transformation is taking place. In my case, I went back to New York and had to make peace with the realization that my old life was never going to fit me the way it used to: relationships, routines, attitudes, nothing aligned anymore, and that is disconcerting, especially for someone like me who tries to hold on to all the ways I have loved.
In Italy, I painted a blank canvas of myself, bisqued the green clay so to speak 🙂 every day a new challenge, a new bravery, a new experience, and the growth was exponential. A whole new life curated by the mature me., I had new friends, two jobs, many adventures, a new mode of creative expression that I completely lost myself in: ceramics, the green clay of Tuscany. Most importantly, I was deeply touched by the geometries of the Renaissance, and the compassion of my teacher. I have always nourished a sense of wonder, especially of the sub and supra conscious, but I left Florence with that sense almost completely unveiled. I still had work to do, and that is when, back home in New York, I became acquainted with the work of Emma Kunz.
