I know I know I know. Bloggers aren't supposed to disappear for weeks at a time but I swear I have a great excuse...
I went on a trip in the last three weeks that took me a long way back.
It's funny how our past only exists in our memories. I mean we know we lived through all this stuff, we remember it, we have pictures to prove it, but otherwise, it's non-existent. And I realized that by going back to New York after almost four years. I was nervous to go back in a way, even though I was mostly very excited. When I was 16 and I went there for the first time, I remember standing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, looking down towards the skyscrapers I was seeing for the very first time, I thought to myself: "How can anyone live anywhere else in the world?" And I ended up by moving there and living there for two years. It was the first place I went to build a life of my own, getting my first apartment, getting by without asking money from my dad, learning to be an adult. And I got to do it in one of the greatest cities in the world. And here I was, going back to my city and it turns out, nothing had changed. My favorite Barnes and Noble was still at the same spot, my Bikram Yoga Studio still had the same schedule, the 1 train is still just as disgusting as it always was and Artichoke pizza is still heavenly. I hadn't forgotten my streets and avenues and still knew how to take the subway and buy a metrocard without holding on to a map like a tourist and it felt like I had never left the city at all. Except that I had.
And although nothing was different, everything had changed.
I am not the same 22 year-old roaming the streets of Manhattan listening to "Suddenly I see" on my i-pod. My memory of New York hadn't changed but in the present, it did not feel the same. Suddenly I saw the streets of Manhattan as too busy, too noisy, too crowded. The buildings were too big and the lines were too long. The very things that used to give me energy drained it out of me completely. I'm the one who was different. The last four years of my life changed me.
Then I went to Paris for the first time in 18 years and that was a pretty big leap into the past as well. I lived in Paris from 4 to 8 years old and I really only remember bits and pieces, but I know it feels like another lifetime. It was a time when everyone I loved was still alive, we went to Disneyland for christmas, I was carefree and spoke with a Parisian accent. Again, all I keep from those days are pictures my mother carefully put together. But I went back to our old address and the building was just as I remembered it. I actually recognized it from far as we walked towards it. The gate was still there, the little path leading to the main door just like in mind, and the smell of the wooden stairs which for some reason stayed with me all these years. And the neighbor I used to play with on the 5th floor? Still there too... Except now she has a 2 months old baby.
But Paris was also something new. It was inspiring, with its pink skies and its brasseries. I liked the creek of the wooden stairs even when it was a 6th floor walk-up. I enjoyed sitting on a green bench and watching people go by, going to the Opera for the very first time and having real discussions with people. It made me want to write in Cafe de Flore like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It made me want to walk under the rain (and I hate the rain) and kiss my Parisian in the middle of the street, just because.
It made me realize that the past is in my memories and the future something I dream of. The present, however, that's where I'm living.
I went on a trip in the last three weeks that took me a long way back.
It's funny how our past only exists in our memories. I mean we know we lived through all this stuff, we remember it, we have pictures to prove it, but otherwise, it's non-existent. And I realized that by going back to New York after almost four years. I was nervous to go back in a way, even though I was mostly very excited. When I was 16 and I went there for the first time, I remember standing at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, looking down towards the skyscrapers I was seeing for the very first time, I thought to myself: "How can anyone live anywhere else in the world?" And I ended up by moving there and living there for two years. It was the first place I went to build a life of my own, getting my first apartment, getting by without asking money from my dad, learning to be an adult. And I got to do it in one of the greatest cities in the world. And here I was, going back to my city and it turns out, nothing had changed. My favorite Barnes and Noble was still at the same spot, my Bikram Yoga Studio still had the same schedule, the 1 train is still just as disgusting as it always was and Artichoke pizza is still heavenly. I hadn't forgotten my streets and avenues and still knew how to take the subway and buy a metrocard without holding on to a map like a tourist and it felt like I had never left the city at all. Except that I had.
And although nothing was different, everything had changed.
I am not the same 22 year-old roaming the streets of Manhattan listening to "Suddenly I see" on my i-pod. My memory of New York hadn't changed but in the present, it did not feel the same. Suddenly I saw the streets of Manhattan as too busy, too noisy, too crowded. The buildings were too big and the lines were too long. The very things that used to give me energy drained it out of me completely. I'm the one who was different. The last four years of my life changed me.
Then I went to Paris for the first time in 18 years and that was a pretty big leap into the past as well. I lived in Paris from 4 to 8 years old and I really only remember bits and pieces, but I know it feels like another lifetime. It was a time when everyone I loved was still alive, we went to Disneyland for christmas, I was carefree and spoke with a Parisian accent. Again, all I keep from those days are pictures my mother carefully put together. But I went back to our old address and the building was just as I remembered it. I actually recognized it from far as we walked towards it. The gate was still there, the little path leading to the main door just like in mind, and the smell of the wooden stairs which for some reason stayed with me all these years. And the neighbor I used to play with on the 5th floor? Still there too... Except now she has a 2 months old baby.
But Paris was also something new. It was inspiring, with its pink skies and its brasseries. I liked the creek of the wooden stairs even when it was a 6th floor walk-up. I enjoyed sitting on a green bench and watching people go by, going to the Opera for the very first time and having real discussions with people. It made me want to write in Cafe de Flore like Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It made me want to walk under the rain (and I hate the rain) and kiss my Parisian in the middle of the street, just because.
It made me realize that the past is in my memories and the future something I dream of. The present, however, that's where I'm living.
My favorite Pizza in Manhattan
My first real apartment in New York
Where I lived 18 years ago in Paris
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