The end of longing
On the price explorers pay
You’ve probably heard me say this already, because I say it a lot, but: when I was a kid, I was obsessed with explorer stories. Archeologists digging up lost cities, pirates reaching unknown shores, astronauts chasing the final frontier: if it involved people going where no man has gone before (or at least where no man has been in a few hundred years), I was game. For a long time, I imagined my own profession would match this fascination; at different moments, I’ve wanted to be a diplomat, an international correspondent, and a paleontologist (all I had to go on for that one was Jurassic Park, so, you know, maybe not the most informed career decision). An image I often call back to when delivering this little speech to those unfortunate enough to be in the radius of my waxing poetic is a time when I was 6 or 7 and playing in the backyard. I looked up and saw a tree branch poking out of my neighbor’s house, and behind it, the Andes mountains (or the pre-Andes, as my dad pedantically corrected me on the occasion of my return to Mendoza in late 2019, as the Andes themselves can’t be seen from the city). Kid me was filled with sadness at this image: be it my neighbor’s tree or one of the biggest mountain ranges in the world, they were both beyond the walls of my house. Adventure called to me, and to answer was to leave my world behind.
20+ years later, I sit in the international departures terminal of the Rio de Janeiro airport, heading back to New York after a lovely family visit, and I’m full of the same sadness. I did not become an archeologist or a Catholic missionary, but rather a writer (lame)—and yet, in some ways, I have led a life of adventure. My family relocated to Brazil when I was 12, starting over in a foreign place with a completely new culture and language, and because I don’t learn from trauma (how would my therapist pay his bills? He has a child, he needs the money!), I did it all over again thirteen years later. At 25, I left behind a high-paying job, and a stable marketing career, to brave the entertainment industry in America, landing in that most exotic of locations, New York City. My life has been a series of jumps into the belly of the beast, hoping against hope that the beast vomits me back on the shores of happiness.
This year, the beast threw me up into a place that suggests happiness: I’m exiting 2023 with a green card, putting an end to the nightmare that is the U.S. immigration system; I got my shit together enough to co-found and launch an initiative meant to make that nightmare easier on others; my play Machine Learning is ascending from development hell to finally be seen by audiences; I signed with an agent and no longer have to steer the unruly ship that is my career alone. Things I’ve worked on for so long are here; I’ve reached shore. The final frontier is still ahead of me, sure, but I’ve been promoted to whatever is not captain but still, like, senior ship management. I even opened a high-yield savings account! How much more adult can you get?
And yet: I’m waiting for my flight’s boarding process to begin, and I’m sad. Of everything that I’ve achieved, being next to my family and to some of my dearest friends, the people I love most in the world, is not one of them. Being able to visit my two beautiful countries is still a 10+ hour, $1K+ flight away. If anything, the achievements I’ve listed put me even farther away from those pieces of my soul: a successful career in the U.S. means more commitment to staying there (not for nothing, these holidays I spent less time with my family than last year because Machine Learning rehearsals conflicted with the visit). A green card is, after all, a permanent residence status. I’m permanently away. And I don’t know how to solve this. We always think of adventurers in terms of what they’re chasing, but they’re also leaving things behind. We go to where no man has gone before and, of course, there’s no one there. We are alone.
During this trip, I introduced my dad to the first season of The Terror, which I have recommended before, and I’m happy to report still holds up on second (maybe third?) viewing—though this time, it resonated in a different way. Based on the real-life 1845 expedition launched by the British Admiralty to find the Northwest Passage, which resulted in 100% deaths and 0% passages found, I initially liked the show for its ability to find nobility in its characters while highlighting the pointlessness of their demise. They are maimed, frozen, and starved in the name of making it easier for Britain to exploit Asia; the colonialism embedded in their interactions with the local Inuit population and their spiritual traditions betrays a fetishistic fascination at best, and a desire to dominate at worst, to color this piece of the map for the glory of the Empire. It’s an adventure story that condemns adventure—and yet, as I noticed this second time around, acknowledges its inevitability. “Why would someone do this?” asked my dad as we watched the show’s turning point, when the ships are frozen in place in the icy sea, and the sailors pointlessly try to dig them out. “Why would people go through this hell instead of staying warm in their houses?” It’s the question at the core of the show, one whose answer is “because they wouldn’t be happy in their houses.”
The second-in-command of the expedition, my namesake Francis Crozier (played by the endlessly watchable Jared Harris—email me for details on the Mad Men watching club!), has spent the whole voyage nursing an emotional wound: being turned down three times by Sophia Cracroft, niece of the voyage’s captain. Sophia does not believe Francis would make a good husband because, amongst others (like being Irish—yuck), he’d miss her while he was away, sure—but he’d miss the sea when he was home. “I’ve seen your dresser,” she says. “You only use two of your ten drawers.” He lives with his bags packed, metaphorically as well as literally. Near the end of the show, we see a quick image of Sophia back in London, out in the cold without a coat, taking her shoes off and digging her feet into the snow to try and imagine how Francis might be feeling in the Arctic. Regret covers her face, but this quick tableau landed hard with me because I knew, heartbreak aside, that her decision had been correct: had she accepted his proposal, she’d be forced to suffer through the loss of a partner; as is, she’s not a widow. She might mourn Francis, but she’ll move on, find a husband who won’t spend time with her divided, thinking about the other side, the other life.
Of course, I don’t live in the 1800s, or even the 1900s. I often think of Carmen Miranda, another artist who, like me, went back and forth between Brazil and the U.S.—but, unlike me, had to go by ship on a trip that took weeks. A ten-hour flight is not that bad. My dad told me that when I was little, and he was traveling around the world on business, the company would allow him just ten minutes per week to call us; I remember talking to him on the phone and there being a delay, having to pause after each sentence so we wouldn’t cut each other off. I read in the Times that when humans inevitably land on Mars, calls home will take at least three minutes each way, making real-time conversations impossible; sending a package could take a year. Compared to all of that, how can I complain? I videocall my parents at least once a week, and I speak to my family and friends abroad on Whatsapp daily; I often know as much or more about their lives as the people who live with them.
But I can’t hug them, watch TV with them, shoot the shit while waiting for an Uber to arrive, watch the baby learn a cussword that makes everyone laugh. I hear about it all secondhand. In an essay for The Cut, writer Andrea González-Ramírez talks about how, in her words, she feels loneliest when she visits her family in Puerto Rico. While I don’t relate to the particular brand of exclusion she feels from her loved ones, I heavily empathize with the puzzling feeling of loneliness she gets when surrounded by her loved ones during a visit. All around me, I see signs of a life lived without me: I may be in touch, but I am not there. And when I am, it’s so short, over before I know it. And if it wasn’t short, if I was back for good, then I’d be miserable, thinking about New York, my career and my friends back there.
Another exploration show you should be watching, For All Mankind, which imagines what would’ve happened to the Space Race if the Russians had gotten to the Moon first, is currently wrapping up its fourth season. It finds (spoilers throughout this paragraph) two old-timers, Ed Baldwin and Danielle Poole, inexplicably still in space despite the severe graying of their temples, running a station on Mars (and, by the way, the whole call thing is part of it—they communicate with their families via pre-recorded videos). Ed keeps coming up with excuses not to rejoin his daughter and grandson on Earth, taking on tasks that are now beyond his physical abilities, and hogging power that he should pass on, while Danielle, who by all accounts had settled happily back home with her family, leaves them to take on command of Happy Valley (as the Mars station is called), supposedly to serve her country—but really, as it quickly becomes clear, because space is where she feels most useful. Once young explorers who were first to settle the Moon, and then Mars, Danielle and Ed now butt heads and struggle to reconjure the magic. They are miserable, but they don’t know how to be anything else. Adventure can be a domineering mistress, refusing to let go of those who have served her well, and who deserve their rest.
Without meaning to, two of the most recent things I’ve written feature Argentinian protagonists living in the U.S. who regret leaving their homeland and struggle with whether to return—and, in one case, only find happiness once he does. At this moment, I don’t think that’s what my future holds, but it’s interesting (and somewhat surprising) that the idea is floating around in my subconscious, coming up unbidden. My plane has now landed, and I’ve breezed through passport control, enjoying the power that my new green card affords me in this situation—now that I no longer can be kicked out, my full Karen is ready to come out (I will ask to speak to your manager, even if that manager is Joe Biden). I take the AirTrain (which, surprise, is broken), headed for what I want to say is home—but I know that’s not true. Didn’t I tell my American friends that “I was going home” when I left for Brazil? Which is it? They’re all homes, and none of them are.
The final scene of The Terror (again, spoilers) finds Francis, the sole survivor of the expedition (I lied about 100% deaths, I guess—and I also lied about the 0% passages because one character does glimpse it) dressed in furs, sitting patiently by a hole in the Artic ice, spear in hand, ready to catch a fish should the opportunity present itself. Head in his lap, a child sleeps—ostensibly his offspring with a woman from the Inuit tribe that has taken him in. He’s at peace, no longer trapped between worlds. He’s assimilated, been domesticated, and one could gather that the Empire to whom he once was subject no longer holds any sway over him—and neither does the call of adventure. He’ll catch a fish, return home to his family, and eat it together before going to bed. It’s the end of longing.
In Corinthians 1:29, Saint Paul tells us that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Of the unimaginable promises of Heaven, Francis’s is one I particularly look forward to: an unqualified home, rid of choices and compromises, where everyone and everything I love is. I wish it didn’t feel so far away. But, if this recent trip is any indication, it’ll be here in the blink of an eye.