‘time flies’, C. told me.
and feeling it a visible sign of aging, i thought.
when we were kids everything was new, almost everything was a first.
now it’s hard to make one day different from another. it’s rare to have firsts.
some of my last first times were matcha in Japan. lifting weight. smoking weed every night for a week.
i also had a friend evaporated. it was not a first. but it has been a while since i experienced something like this in my adult life. from very present to la nada.
‘some people are not friends, but fans’, C. said. ‘they just admire something about you, they buy the same clothes as you, they compare themselves to you, they consume you’.
thinking of what she said, it was during a morning walk taking a picture of my dog that i realised it has been a year since i moved here.
time really flies.
Gomez moved from marking random garbage bins to mark all the sculptures of Tulleiries.
a lot has changed.
i thought Paris it would be plug and play. after all, it’s my third time living here. it’s like going back with an ex.
but the city has changed. my friends have changed. and i have changed.
Paris is very exciting now. less white. less bobo. less jambon beurre.
it’s moving, it’s transitioning to something. most people visit the Paris that is stuck in the past. but some of us are experiencing the one that is changing very fast.
my friends have changed. some have left. some have stayed. and with others there’s nothing left to say.
and i have changed. still not sure how. but i am not feeling the same.
maybe it has been this Erasmus of adult life i had in Melbs.
or maybe life just happened.
‘there’s this Italian girl inviting me all the time to aperos with other Italians and she is mad at me because i refuse all her invitations to hang out with more Italians’, T. said.
‘it’s not because i am not in my country that i need to hang out with italians that i dont like. many people dont understand that sometimes we are more comfortable on our own’, she concluded.
when you have lived enough, traveled enough, discovered enough, you become more selective.
‘i guess you dont become friends just because a shared love of burrata and carbonara’, i replied.
however, it made me think about Mont D’or. i do believe that Mont D’or got me closer to some people.
there’s something about boundaries being crossed when a group of five are dipping bread in the same cheese. there’s a trust system being put in place. you are ok to share some DNA.
‘lately i am spending my weekends going to the opera on my own and reading a lot. i do like some people, but i am completely ok if i dont see anybody for 3 days in a row’, N. told me. ‘i dont know if it’s aging or confidence, but silence is underrated’, he concluded.
are we all protecting our energy, becoming some kind of pretentious bitches or… just being selfish?
‘your friend K. was very intense, is she ok?’, B. asked me. ‘she is going through a lot’, i answered.
through so much, that she is completely out of touch and is becoming hard to justify.
‘i realised every time that i see E. i end up with a headache. she’s lovely but SO loud’, W. told me once. ‘i need to dose my interactions with her’.
could be hormones, i thought.
irl connections are demanding. but i wonder if there’s even some connection most of the times.
some people dont manage to read the room, dont let others talk or you just talk about themselves for 2 hours straight.
it’s like a bad booty call. someone empties something and feels relieved. the other receives and not sure how to feel about it.
when Gomez finished smelling Le Baiser de Rodin, we started our way home.
made me think that having a house is not having a home. even though it starts feeling like one.
maybe that’s why i am struggling with buying a place.
i could buy a house, but not necessarily a home.
‘we have decided to make Melbs our home’, V. told me.
she is from Istambul, lived in Melbs and Singapore and went back to Melbs. ‘sometimes you have to bet’.
made me think about where i am betting.
nowhere. everywhere, i guess.
it’s like dating, when you have so many choices, you are just paralysed. and you don’t decide.
M. is very intentional in her decisions. i was in Koh Samui a couple days ago celebrating her wedding.
during her vows, M. said that she changed her sabbatical plan that was approved by HR to give it a try with the guy that now is her husband.
it’s very brave.
i wouldn’t change my south america trip for somebody i have gone on 4 dates with.
my mindset would be more like maybe i could meet somebody better there.
maybe there are 2 different kind of people.
the ones that they go all in in trying something specific and the others that go all in trying everything.
maybe my HRs are right. they always tell me i am a generalist.
i think i have never been curious enough to go so deep in just one thing. it makes me feel i am missing the big pic.
maybe the problem of the big pics is that the view is too wide and you dont see anything anymore.
you can’t focus.
maybe i should ask my HR to become a specialist in something. maybe by osmosis i could then specialise in someone.
during the wedding dinner in Koh Samui, i recognised a guy who was the situationship of L. he was seated right in front of me.
5 million people in Melbs, lived 2 years there and crossing a friend’s situationship in the other side of the world.
‘hey, remind me please why it ended, i am seated in front of him’, i texted her.
‘well, he was not really in a place to have a relationship with me. and one night he started a speech of ‘here’s all the ways Trump is saving America’. i was like yeah, gtfo my house’, she texted back.
well, i finally got the white lotus vibes. pad Thai and far right.
the same day M. was getting married, P.’s father was being buried.
made me think about the opposed energies, celebrating life vs saying a last goodbye.
how could you be happy for a friend and sad for another one in the same time frame.
i left the wedding one hour before the party ended and ordered a grab. our house was in the top of a rock that most drivers refuse to go.
it made me think that no matter how many times i start over or to whichever life i move to, it will probably be a new life where i still don’t know how to drive.