it's not you, it's not me

Finally he was back there, on the streets of the city he had missed so much. He recognized the silhouette of the cityscape like he had in his dreams during the years he'd been away; and even if it had been long, his feet still knew the way on the winding streets without his head having to have to trouble itself. The smooth surface of the worn-out cobblestones was familiar to walk on and the sounds that echoed from the walls he couldn't stop himself from brushing with his fingertips every now and then had a familiar ring in his ears . The rattle of the tram as it passed by; the incomprehensible mixture of languages that swirled around him when he walked through the herds of tourists. Even the smells were the same; the invitation to eat from the street vendors selling everything you shouldn't be eating but absolutely wanted to, especially after a long night out, and the unmistakable combination of bodily odours in the overcrowded metro train.

There was the bench they had sat on after a night out, he and his friends, still drunk and merry as you only can be when you're twenty and in love with life, watching the sun come up over the roofs and not having to have to worry about anything besides perhaps the next day's headache. There was the bridge leading over the river, the same one he had walked on every night to get home from their favourite hang-out, sometimes stopping in the middle and staring down to the murky water that flowed underneath. And of course there was the street that led to his old home - it was strange to think now that he had had a home here - and on that street there was the small niche in the wall of a building, and there were memories nesting in that niche he could no longer bring himself to think of, so he looked the other way.

It was all there, just as he remembered; and yet it wasn't. It was no longer the same him who had walked on these streets and breathed in the intoxicating air of freedom and love and youth and friendship. The person who he was now no longer had access to the feelings that are possible to experience only when a memory of previous night's madness is still clear. He no longer remembered the details, just knew they were, or had been, somewhere; and even if walking on the streets of the city was able to revive some of them, he knew with painful certainty that many he had lost for good. And he could walk on the streets forever and in theory it would be the same city, his city; he could travel back in time in his mind and think about the things he had thought of then. But he could no longer feel them or understand them in the same way and he could not bring back the person he had been back then. No matter how long he would stare down at the dark water it would not be the same water, and it would not wash over him and his being the same way it had. 

And what he also realized, to his surprise and disappointment as well, was that the city wasn't an interesting place at all. Sure, it was beautiful, in a way that any city of the same age and geographical area is; but it was the kind of beauty that you get used to very fast, and after that you don't really pay attention to it any more apart from the moments when you have nothing else to talk about and you ooh and aah about the decorative facades and pointy church spears. But that was about all there was; the old historical centre, filled with generic shops selling useless trinkets and touristic restaurants were food was expensive and service below average. There was no magic, no energy contained in every surface and wall and no secrets behind ajar doors just waiting to be unveiled. Time had rendered either himself of the city unrecognizable; and one by one he watched how his memories turned insignificant and incomprehensible. 

After four days he left the city without the memories he had arrived with. The city had took them back very much like it had once given them, effortlessly and unapologetic. It was consoling, in a way, to know that the forming events of his life were stored somewhere in the seams of the cobblestone pavements and in the dark passageways known only by a few. He no longer had access to these memories in a way that would have done justice to their importance; therefore it was a relief to leave them in the place that had given birth to them. He no longer was the person who he had been and he no longer needed to be; the city had done its task.

stretching it

Marilyn Monroe once said something along the lines "if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Paris, you better have some amazing sunny days in your sleeve.

one of these days

it was always me who was the independent one. the one who needed their space and got anxious if not granted with enough freedom; the one who always wanted to have things their way and didn't really care if i stepped over someone - over you - in the process. it was always me who said i love you, too.

always me; that's why it was such a surprise that it was you who left. 

when you did i thought i would be fine, that after some time i would just slide back into the existence i had before you, before us. i assumed that i would be able to shed the memory of you like a dog that shakes itself dry after taking a plunge into a pond; fast, efficient, and the reality that you ever even existed would be gone so quickly that i wouldn't have to think about it twice.

how wrong i was.

and it must be said, if i had been taken aback by the fact that it was you who left when it was me who had always been the individual out of the two of us, the speed with which i fell apart after you were gone was even more astonishing. i spiralled down in a free fall, shapeless and unable to hold myself together like a scarecrow stripped from its frame, and the only consolation i had was that the bottom would have to come soon; no one can fall forever.

so any day now. i am sure of it.

thin line

it was easier now. 

there were no fights any more, no continuous drama that increased one's heartbeat and no hot-burning anger that distorted the field of vision and made everything look grotesque. there were no objects hurled through a torrent of screams and shouts and no sounds of doors slamming shut so hard it shook the walls. there were no tissues in the bathroom bin with much-telling blotches of reddish brown and there were no black eyes that always looked worse in the harsh morning light. there was no consuming, exhausting jealousy and no obsessive ownership over another. there was no pain, be it physical or mental, and there was no fear.

that, D had to admit, made things a lot less complicated. 

but there was no intoxicating, stomach-turning and heart-clenching feeling of love and passion, either. no bottomless longing and maddening anticipation, or tears shed first because of distance and then again due to the joy of being reunited. there was no desire to exist only for the sake of someone else and no feeling of one soul divided into two bodies. basically, and D had realized this quite a while back, there was no love as she had learnt to know love. 

instead there was a steady existence, a companionship of a tepid kind when compared to the scorching hot that had once been. instead of mountains and bottoms of the ocean there were plains with hills so low you could easily see over them, and the wind that blew was mild next to the hurricanes that had battered her before. it was easy and relatively predictable and there was absolutely nothing wrong with anything, and D knew this as well as she knew that it was unfair of her to lash out when there was nothing exactly right either.

but was it then really so that you couldn't have one without the other? that the amount of emotion was a constant that had its equally strong counterpart, and that the purest of love could only be brought about by misery equally powerful? it couldn't have been so, and yet it appeared to be, and D couldn't tell who was wrong; she or everyone else. 

but it was easier, and perhaps that was enough.

getting to know you

i am slowly starting to find a shared wave length with paris. i'm not saying i am fully settled in as it still feels a bit foreign, and it certainly doesn't help that my french is very limited; i have come to notice that there is no way i can stay here and feel comfortable if i don't learn the language a bit more. this is not a problem for me in the sense that i like learning (languages), and i fully intend to do so in the case of french as well; but i reckon it might take a bit as, well, it is a mad language.

but that's ok, let's consider it a challenge.

but the thing that makes me start to feel a bit like home is that i have favourites, pet peeves as well as routines. i know the latter sounds terribly dull, but i am the kind of person who needs some kind of structure, otherwise i end up wasting the day and feeling like poop in the evening because i got nothing done. now i know that the reason i came into paris in the first place was to take a bit of time off and distance myself from nine to five so as to give space for other things to happen; but still, i like to have a framework on which i can then build my day. at the moment i have a strong idea as of how this structure should be and on many days it even fulfills itself, so i am half way there.

when it comes to issues of annoyance, the main thing that bothers me is the distance between the place you happen to be at and basically everywhere else. you have to keep in mind that i hail from helsinki, have lived in budapest and prague - all places that are relatively compact. compared to those paris is so huge, so out of control; and sometimes the arduousness of getting from one place to another gets to me. but i reckon in the end this is mainly a question of getting used to; the only thing is that you kind of have to want to get used to it, as in the positives have to outdo the negatives in the grander scale of things.

as for favourites - i know it's early in the sense that i haven't been here so long, which equals to the fact that i don't have so many things to choose the favourite from, but you have to start from somewhere, right? so far the most important one - and this is a combination of favourite and routine - is the paris i get to experience in the mornings. every day due to running but more importantly i have taken up the habit of going out once a week very early to photograph the city when it is empty; and i have to say that walking on the empty streets of one of the most visited cities in the world is quite beautiful an experience.

before i moved here i honestly can't say that paris would have been among my favourite cities; in fact, having visited a few times before, i mainly found it overrated and a slight disappointment. but now, after some time, i can as honestly say that it is growing on me; i guess the place it will eventually reach in my heart remains to be seen.

Le Métro

The metro in Paris carries some four and a half million people every day. It is the circulatory system of the massive machine that is one the most visited cities in the world, transporting people to where ever they happen to be going as well as bringing them back. The metro is an important part of many peoples' daily lives and not always granted with the appreciation it would perhaps deserve; because even if at times restless, dirty and crowded, the system is still of extreme value when moving about in a city the size of Paris. Not to mention that because of the huge amount daily travellers and the sheer size of the city that the network serves, the odds are that if you use the metro on a regular basis, you will end up spending a time long enough in it for it to make a difference. And yet the metro is not a considered a place in its own right; the metro system is an non-place, a limbo of sorts, something you enter and exit because you have to in order to get somewhere else. And of course, as a form of transport, this is very much in the metro's nature; it is the means on the way to an end. But have you ever thought about it, when you descend the stairs to the endless network of tunnels and platforms and carriages, when you put on your metro face and shut the foreign bodies pressing into yours during the rush hour out of your mind and focus on something - anything - else -- Have you ever thought about the condensation of lives, of personal tragedies as well as success stories, the infinite amount of human experiences that travel with you? You share a space with them and for the length of your travel your life blends into the life of the other passengers, those strangers around you that work as hard as you not to look anyone in the eye. It is then, considering both the amount of time spent in the metro as well as the unique blend of personalities, quite remarkable how little attention we pay to this. In fact, most metro travellers work overtime to actively ignore their surroundings; you see people staring out of the window to the black tunnel wall or busying themselves with their smartphones or music devices. You see blank stares, evasive looks, people doing their utmost best to isolate themselves in the crowd they are forced to be a part of for the sake of their destination. In a way this is understandable - when crammed into a small space with a random selection of strangers, many of them way too close for it to be convenient on any level, it is a somewhat natural defence reaction to try to block it out as much as you can. The unwritten rules of public transportation - be and let be, don't engage, don't bother, basically don't exist - these would be absurd if transferred into any other situation; but here in the world of the underground they are generally accepted and endorsed. So in this state of active ignorance as you are, it passes you that the girl sitting opposite to you on the worn-out benches has smeared mascara under her eyes, not much but enough so that it is most likely there because she has cried not long ago. You don't notice that her bag is too full for its size because of the clothes she has shoved in it, in a bag you don't usually put clothes into, and it escapes your eye that she keeps checking her phone frantically and every time she does, her eyes get a bit darker and the hurt in them grows. What also remains unnoticed is the elderly man next to the doors of the carriage, standing despite his old age and even when there are places to sit . The reason he has chosen to stay on his feet is the large cello case that he is hugging with his right arm while holding on to a bar with the left. Or it is wrong to say that you don't notice the man because of course you did, it is hard not to as the instrument he is carrying is quite huge and it annoyed you to squeeze past it. But as you cursed the old man in your mind you failed to notice the fine fabric of his coat and the polished surface of his hand-made leather shoes, the thinning hair carefully combed back and the tender, almost loving expression he has in his old grey eyes when he looks at the precious instrument that caused you so much annoyance. And what about that woman, dressed in black from head to toe with her face as the only part of her skin that is visible, do you see her? Her oval features are surrounded by blackness, looming in the midst of it like a moon that hangs on a dark night sky. Her eyes, almost as black as the fabric that covers every inch of her body are pointed to the floor of the carriage with an intent that would almost suggest that she sees something there, something that is visible only for her eyes. In her feet there is a cardboard box, dented from the corners and big enough to contain a variety of things, everything from a pile of books to a small television, one of those old ones with cathode ray tubes. Who knows what's in it, and who cares; most certainly no one in this metro train. In fact, in that box could be everything she owns, or maybe there is a toaster in it - there is absolutely no way of knowing and both options are equally insignificant to you as you look straight through that woman, barely acknowledging that she even exists. And yet she is a living, breathing human being, just like every single other person around you, with a whole existence behind and ahead. They are like you, carrying everything that they are and have been and will be, all that is them is right there in front of your eyes; but because you don't see, they all look the same to you. You don't see these people and their stories just like you don't see the dozens of others around you; you do notice them, or some of them at least, but you don't see. And to be fair, they don't see you either. In the generic metro carriage nobody pays attention to the bags you have under your eyes because your feverish child kept you up last night. They don't see the crumbs of your hasty breakfast on your collar and they cannot even begin to imagine the level of awkwardness you feel due to the presentation you are supposed to give at work in less than half an hour for the job you dislike but have to keep to pay the bills. To the metro people you are only a slice of existence, a vague reflection of what you are to yourself, and that is the extent of it; and you stay silent, all of you, and keep on looking past as the carriage full of ghosts surges forward in the black tunnels. Maybe that is why nobody really likes the metro. Perhaps this diluted existence that we are forced into - force ourselves into - once in the underground system makes it the non-place that it is; maybe we are afraid that if we stay too long, we lose ourselves and our being gets so thin that the unnatural glow of the fluorescent lamps can shine right through.

anything is possible

"I just think life is meaningless altogether, most of the time. Yes, there is beauty in the moment, but beyond that? People come and go and you can never count on anyone, and life is just life; a mystery, and ultimately meaningless. The meaning is in the creation, and the creation is a human construct; and people just make up stuff in order to get through life."

René Vernor, Anything Is Possible

excerpt

what was the word for someone who you used to love more than you had loved anyone, for whom you would have done anything, everything; for someone who you had thought you'd grow old with, hold their hand on their death bed or maybe they would hold yours, who knows who would go first.  what was the word for someone like that? what string of letters could encompass the love you once had as well as the fear that had gripped your heart when you realized they were drifting away from you? the pain you felt when it became clear that they couldn't find their way back, even if they had wanted to? and the anger that inevitably followed, the guilt as well as the accusations, and the distraught brought about by still loving someone - or rather, the person they had been - and hating them at the same time?

there was no such word, N decided there in the sick yellow light of the street lamp, inhaling the sharp night surrounding him. no such word because there was no definition, no way of simplifying such an excess of human emotions into a handful of letters; and that was maybe part of the confusion he experienced when he looked at S now. most certainly he didn't love her any more, or hate for that matter; but all of that had once been there, and the memory of the emotions was too strong to be overlooked, and he didn't have a word for it all.


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it's cold outside

i feel somewhat cheated by the famous paris spring. as in that i haven't seen even the tail of it - the weather has been somewhat miserable to put it nicely. well alright, miserable is maybe a bit too much but it has been cold, and quite rainy a lot of the time, but mainly cold. and if that is not enough to cause slight annoyance, i am yet again hearing the line "but you are finnish, you should be used to it" when i complain about the low degrees of temperature we've been dealing with here.

so let me make this clear, once and for all, so that no one has to wonder about it again - i do not like cold because i was happened to be born in one of the most unfortunate climates in europe, nor am i any more used to it than someone born on the mainland. i do not have a thicker skin or a layer of body hair my fellow human beings lack, and am therefore in no way better equipped to deal with coldness. if anything, the years spent in finland have made me OD on cold weather, hence my quick complaints about it. and yes, it is a lot colder in finland, and yes, it can be pretty bad there during the winter and oh dear me there are times when the sun doesn't come up at all -- all that, yes, but i. do. not. like. cold.

alright? alright.

that said, i do know how useless it is to complain about the weather and get agitated over it. it is what it is, put some more clothes on i guess and deal with it. and i have to say - it is still so new being in paris that even the discomfort and slight disappointment caused by the delayed spring is so much more easier to deal with than it would be in finland; so in the end, maybe i'll just shut it about the weather and focus on the good bits while still holding on to my winter jacket.