it was history repeating.
charles de gaulle airport. february 25th. almost midnight. 4 suitcases. 80 kg weight.
the driver the company hired was waiting for me. he was mad.
apparently i was having too much baggage. he would be petrified if he got to see the emotional one.
stoicism says that any person or situation capable of angering you, controls you.
‘will be ok’, i told him. the new me was full of good and polite aussie vibes.
we arrived to the parking lot after a 10 minutes walk. the driver opened the car. a renault twingo.
très bien, i thought. i could just grab a cab and avoid to be squashed.
‘monsieur, c’est ok, je vais prendre un taxi‘, i said with a big smile. ‘no, no’, he said. ‘i have the keys of your temporary place’. ‘great, give them to me’ ‘no – no, not until i drive you there’.
he was stubborn. i was tired.
and that’s how i added to my 24 hours trip another one, where i trained to be the next acrobat of cirque du soleil.
‘it’s here’, he said meanwhile he gave me an envelope with the keys. a third floor with no elevator. ‘would you help me?’, i asked with puppy eyes.
‘je suis conducteur, pas porteur‘, he said. fair enough.
i had a cross fit session of heavy weight lifting for free. some people have to go to a gym and pay for it, i told myself trying to be strong.
but stair by stair, i felt how all the politeness and good vibes were abandoning me.
my eyes started to tear up and had a mental breakdown in between the second and third floor with suitcase number four.
i already wrote this, but felt valid again. maybe i am not empowered, and maybe i am just alone.
why i am doing this again?
or maybe i should check my mental health if every time i have to lift a suitcase i end up questioning the life choices that i have chased.
the day after was day one of my new life.
i called B. for a walk and lunch at Le Progress.
onion soup for me and steak tartare for him. is this lily rose deep?, he asked me.
it was. this place has always been one of my favs if you like people-watching and having an instagram feed in real life.
‘how are you feeling about being back?’, he asked me. ‘i don’t know… like anything could be’, i said. ‘i could change everything. or i could change nothing’.
‘and what could be this time? or how would you like it to be?’, he said.
‘i feel this is a moment where i want to ground myself’.
it’s like i had a lot of learnings. of myself. of the others. of the world where we live in. but i don’t know how much more i want to learn. they call it growing pain. and i don’t want more pain.
lived in 3 countries the last 7 years. i am still curious, of course, but i feel i want to be chill for the next five years at least.
maybe buying a place. maybe giving back to community. like training kids in basketball as i used to do in my twenties when i played.
maybe being more consistent in writing this thing. maybe cutting my hair and changing my clothes. maybe finding a partner.
maybe talking to my mother after 18 years of no relationship. maybe finding my father.
‘should we ask another round?’, i asked. didn’t want to break the mood verbalising how entangled i am with my life.
we spent the whole night mesmerised by the beautiful people passing by in front of us.
the week after i went to a sofar gig with A. and D. cozy, little, charming venue with emergent artists. it was stunning.
when you go through massive change, you never know when the stress, the sadness or the happiness will make you decompress.
and it was listening pacha mama, of Lia Naviliat that my eyes started to tear up.
i texted Z. ‘i just cried in a concert for no reason’. ‘i feel you. i had the same picking up my resident visa at the embassy before leaving France’, she replied.
we went for a bite after. A. introduced us 2 friends that were visiting her.
one of them quitted his job to start politics. ‘so what’s your program? for what you stand for?, D. asked him. ‘ecology, of course, and eat the rich’.
‘what do you mean, instead a roasted chicken, you do a Bernard Arnault roti?’, he asked. ‘yes’, he answered.
it’s intense.
‘eat the rich is becoming big’, he continued.
bigger are the inequalities, bigger are the radicalisms, i thought. but to this point?. on my way home i looked for this thing in the phone.
it’s real. Eat the rich, mangeons les riches, by Monsieur Rosseau: ‘when people will have nothing left to eat, they will eat the rich’.
welcome to France, i thought.
the day after at work i was in this kind of meeting where everybody introduce themselves for 20 minutes.
‘hi, i am jeremy, head of ethics’, ‘hi, sara, head of data’, ‘hi, beatrice, head of services’ and in the middle of all these titles, i thought how much i would love to just be the head of my body.
what if all the effort and energy i put into being the head of this or that i could be the head of my life.
the next weekend i proposed a spanish chill vibe at cortado paris. some jamon, pan tumaca and vermouth to put us in a solar and mediterranean vibe.
‘do you think the guy i am seeing looks gay?’, C. asked me showing me some pics of him. ‘how could i know’, i answered her.
‘after two years in the north of Melbs, all guys for me could be bi or gay, like these 2 Tom i met once. there is one that looks gay and he is not and the other one that looks straight but turns out to be gay. my radar is not working’, i said.
‘you were saying the same thing about parisian guys’, she answered me. ‘well, that’s why maybe i am still where i am’.
‘i have some updates to share’, L. said. ‘i have gone in a date since a i don’t remember when. we were vibing pretty well by text. but when we kissed, the spark was not there’.
we have all been there, i thought.
‘option one – you feel superficial for ending it just because the lack of vibe in the kiss, or option two – you give it a try with the risk of gathering bad kisses memories. either way, you will survive’, C. answered.
when i made it home i decided to download hinge. in every start of a new life, i always give it a try.
‘what are you looking for?’, A. asked me. ‘i want to fall in love with someone. and i want it to be reciprocated’, i answered her.
‘are you sure about this?’, she asked. ‘because there might be different approaches. you can like somebody to spend your life with without being in love’, she said.
‘i have friends for this’, i laughed. ‘the only thing is that i don’t know if i can learn to love somebody instead of waiting for the coup de foudre‘, i thought out loud.
‘there is the love you feel. and the attachment you build’, she answered.
‘the first one is always ephemeral, you want to fuse with the other one, lost in the believe he completes you, and together you make one’, she said.
‘the attachment is a partnership, a bond that becomes stronger the more you share experiences together. so you can choose to who be attached’, she concluded.
‘it sounds like efficiency in the feelings for me’, i said.
like attaching yourself to something that will work. like Toyota cars.
nobody goes crazy into Toyotas. but they are reliable and they drive you from here to there. they do the job. they are hybrid as well… who isn’t confused or exploring or changing nowadays.
made me think that in this ultra-tech world, where everything is framed to be more efficient with AI, and productive and decaf… is non-planned love out of the scope?
is falling in love without the guarantee that will work the ultimate privilege because we might waste time and energy?
i texted Z. ‘am i getting love completely wrong?? is coup de foudre overrated?’. ‘it is. and lust underrated’, she answered.
and here we are. the spanish gal becoming a romantic in my late thirties and my french besties converting to efficient love.
the day after i went to the movies in the rive gauche with R. ‘how was your day?’, i asked her.
‘well, i started my day with a coffee and some scrolling in insta when i saw a couple stories of the guy i am dating. he was talking about the benefits of mouth tapping’, she said.
how funny it is we were intellectualising love meanwhile what we get is dudes tapping their mouth.
she told me coupe de foudre wasn’t there. but she was not interested either in further developing the relationship to discover what could be next after mouth tapping.
in our way back after the movies we crossed Pont Neuf.
some street musicians were playing Je l’aime a mourir. and sunset was starting.
‘i will be leaving paris this year’, she told me. ‘i am going back to spain. i am going back home’.
i am normally the one who leaves, not the one who stays. and paris is kind of home for me. but my paris was always with R. on it.
sometimes we assume that when we go back everything will be the same. but your friends changed. or you changed.
or life just happened.
and i understood that this time it will be completely new and different. it will be a Paris without R.
i might be entangled with life, entangled with work and entangled with love.
but meanwhile we have songs like je l’aime a mourir, we can still dream how we would like it to be.
and hopefully we will eventually figure it out how to detangle everything.