Perfect Tides: Station to Station is a passionate coming-of-age tale that taught me how to love again.
People come and go. That is a given in life. If you are lucky, some of them will leave you a parting lesson. If not, they will just dissipate, which is its own kind of devastating. Regardless, everyone leaves their mark, for better or worse. Who you are in your late teens, starry-eyed and grasping at any kind of exciting opportunity, is mostly defined by how and with whom you decide to spend your time. Such an impactful era is full of cringey, embarrassing, and teachable moments. Those are the ones that can be somewhat easily shaken off. A profound moment that reverberates for longer, though, is falling in love. It could have been a kiss, a one-night stand, or a six-month relationship. Perfect Tides: Station to Station disarmingly portrays the life of 18-year-old Mara so vividly it left me reminiscing about my experiences.
It was my last semester of high school. For my final project of the audiovisual class, I decided to adapt a short story from “The Book of Illusions” by Paul Auster into a short film. Erica was a friend I always had a crush on, but we surprisingly stayed friends for the duration of our school year until shooting that film. The protagonist—a writer, as it were—created a fictional woman in a cabin to finish his script. He ends up falling in love with her. And so I did with Erica. That intense feeling of infatuation blinded me to the point that I drove her away, ignorant of how “lovebombing” (a term I did not know existed then) could have such a negative effect on my relationship. And so I learned.
Mara, an aspiring writer, is wrapping up her freshman year of college. A relentlessly curious mind, because Perfect Tides: Station to Station is a point-and-click adventure, it lets you ask yourself and side characters about any topics or people you have met. This makes reading Mara’s innermost thoughts a constant, most likely empathizing with her if you are by chance an introvert. Unfazed by external judgment, we see a glimpse of her deeply personal struggles and, yes, of her hormone-filled sexual impulses as well. After all, with a story set in “The City,” a bustling metropolis with other impressionable young turks, she is bound to find love, loss, and growth. Maybe even all in one night.
It was a week after Hurricane Sandy hit New York City. I was studying acting at the New York Film Academy. A far more prestigious name than what the campus really offered. But I digress. With two of my roommates from my 8-person apartment in the Bronx—money was tight—we went to a fundraiser at an art exhibit for those affected. I was 19 at the time. A rather handsome man in his late 20s seduced me, and while we were on the way to his apartment, I gave him a kiss goodbye right before the subway doors closed. It was the first time I felt any sort of agency, while also riddled with anxiety about how I had become so… cruel.
The moment I fell in love with Perfect Tides: Station to Station is when Mara is at a dingy Irish bar with his best friend (or is he?) and a group of drunken randoms singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Or when the sunset looked positively gorgeous while she fell deeply in love with an older man, she knew it would not last. The sincerity in every scene is to be admired. There is even a scene where Mara, surfing the internet in 2003, looks at quite a traumatic picture without her consent. A nervous mess, she constantly jumps at the prospect of love and adventures with clear disregard of the consequences. This usually comes back to haunt her, but at the end of the day, the stories she gained are difficult to neglect.
I thought she was the one, Daniela. Now in my late 20s, I perhaps thought that all my previous mistakes had led me to this. The spark was there from the first instant. Laughing at every instance, agreeing on each topic, connecting on a deeper level unlike I had ever felt before. The downfall of it all was something I should have seen coming but did not: jealousy. From both sides, if memory serves. Turns out asking your partner where they are and what they are doing repeatedly is a recipe for failure. Who knew? Effective communication is a relationship’s key to longevity, but being older does not mean being wiser.
All the situations I have described from my life are present in one way or another in Perfect Tides: Station to Station. Mara jumps from relationship to relationship, entangling herself in an impossible web searching for her voice as a writer. They say all fiction is autobiographical, and in this case it rings true. Each passing thought, hazy chat at a dorm party, and thoughtful conversation with a professor reveal a morsel of truth. Not only of Mara, but in the grand scheme of things, of the pains of adulthood, of ourselves. Everybody leaves, but there is comfort in knowing that they leave something pure in us, and that will never be erased.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station is available now on Steam.
