paris je t'aime

with a little bit under four months in paris under my belt i can definitely say that the city is growing on me. it's not that i would have disliked being here in some point, i just didn't feel very strongly about it; sure i was happy to get away from helsinki but paris in itself, well, i think i would have been equally happy to be almost anywhere outside the nordics.

i know it sounds amazing on paper - hey, i live in paris. but after talking with quite a few french people, parisians if you will, i've come to notice that they often tend not to think so; and i have to say that i can understand why. the traffic is insane, the city is too big, filthy at times, there's poverty and crime and congestion. it's expensive and summertime heat (yes, it finally hit) can be exhausting. the bureaucracy, i've heard, will drive you insane and the term 'parisian attitude' has a whole new meaning for me, and not necessarily in a good way.

but.

it's also so full of life, it has secrets and quirks and magic, and there is so much history everywhere it sometimes overwhelms me. it has the early mornings when i go out to photograph and the city is empty, as if it would exist just for me; and watching the sun come up by the seine is so beautiful i don't quite know how to describe it.  it has long warm nights and parks and opportunities waiting around every corner, and some of the happiest moments i've had this summer have been biking alongside the canal in the middle of the night and it just hitting me that i am here and i have all the possibilities to make this experience amazing. and huge as it is, it also means that you have never seen all of paris, or come in contact with all of her faces. there is the polished, shiny facade and then there's the other side, abandoned and worn-out and crumbling, and the mixture is just incredible.

and it fascinates me. paris fascinates me.

i'm flying to finland in a few days for a month; and the hint of sadness this brings about in me is the final proof of the fact that i have learnt to love the city. that i will miss being here when i'm not; that i would rather be here. and even if i know that i most likely won't spend the rest of my life here i also know that the time that i will end up living in paris has all the potential to be quite good.

it is, after all, paris.

made in/ of

it is a somewhat widespread belief that every cell in the human body is replaced in a seven year cycle; that every seven years (or ten, depending on where you get the story) we are basically new people. this belief, even if not entirely accurate, is not entirely faulty, either; it is true that every cell type has their own life span, and once a cell dies it is replaced - only the process is constant and doesn't have an exact start or end.

when you think about it, it does give one a sense of renewal; if the cells you drag around as your body aren't the same ones you were born with, doesn't it make you feel.. newer? doesn't it make you think you can start again, treat your body better? doesn't it give you a feeling that starting again is really physically possible?

however, not all the cells in our body are replaced. the ones to break this cycle of renewal are the neurons in your cerebral cortex, the number of which doesn't increase after birth; which also means that cerebral cortex neurons are not replaced when they die. another group to regenerate very slowly are the cardiomyocyte heart cells as they are replaced at a slow rate that only reduces the older we get; a person of old age has had approximately less than half of his or her cardiomyocyte cells replaced, and those that haven't been replaced have been there since birth.

so what stays - our head and our heart. it's a simplified thought but in its naivety almost endearing. but what makes it and the thought that perhaps follows - that maybe here could hide some kind of clue into our consciousness, into our sense of self and concept of existence - truly fascinating is the application of the fact that your atoms are not yours, that energy is in constant movement. 

or, as steve grand has said it:

"Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it?

But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there.

Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place … Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you.

Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

If that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important."

and it is. it really is. even if i don't quite know what it means.

bored

if there is something B is good at it's wasting time. it's maybe because his attention span is often quite short; not that he couldn't get into something and dwell in it for hours, forget to eat and drink and sleep, because he can - it's just that these days this kind of devotion seems to avoid him, B feels uninspired perhaps, and he is left with the concentration abilities of a goldfish. more often than not B is easily distracted and then frustrated by his own failure to focus, which then only feeds the inability to do so.

so what he ends up doing, because his time is divided into these small fractions, is that he does random things with them, and he does them over and over again in rotation, almost compulsive in his franticness to move on to he next thing. sometimes it feels he is looking for an excuse to be distracted, to do something else, anything at all, as long as he doesn't have to keep doing what he is doing. which is strange because B likes the things he has going on; he just gets bored. so fast actually that it is starting to be a problem - people walking slower than him on the street and blocking the pavement annoy B, just like do words (often his own) that come out too slow; and an activity lasting longer than six minutes feels like time would stand still. this then means he does things only for a short time until he switches to something else, which makes it a lot more difficult to accomplish anything sensible.

this, obviously, is not a good thing; and this is why B feels he is wasting his time.

he doesn't quite know where this lack of focus comes from, and why does it apply only to certain areas of his existence. maybe it's because he lacks a clear goal in terms of what he is doing with his life, and this is somewhat confusing for someone so used to having a defined structure. maybe he has too many options, or maybe he doesn't have enough; maybe he is locked down by his own thoughts and ideas of how things should be and how matters should progress. there is not a balance at the moment concerning where he is and where he would want to be - not that he can exactly define either one of these.

and, of course, he could try to think about it, get into the core of the issue; but when he does it often happens that he gets bored with it, and does something else instead.

sleep now

being tired in a way sleep cannot help is maybe the worst thing, or one of the worst things at least. the kind of tiredness that makes it difficult to get out of bed even when you've had a good night's sleep; the kind of tiredness that makes it difficult to sleep.

and you wish that something would change but you don't quite know what that something could possible be, because in theory everything is fine. or maybe you do know, on some level, but it is so deep that you don't want to look at it, maybe because you are reluctant to find out what it actually is that is eating away your energy; maybe you are reluctant because part of you already knows. maybe it has all just got too heavy to bear, and that's why you feel drained, maybe the transformation of your youth and the idealism that comes along with it into something more sinister, more real, more responsible is what is dragging you down. 

there's a lot of maybes, that you know, but the problem is that none of them feels entirely feasible; and you don't have the energy to investigate the matter further.

and they say you are depressed, and that you should get help; but you can't agree with this because you are not tired all the time. there are moments just after waking up, and times when something makes you laugh a true, honest laugh; granted, that doesn't happen so often these days but it's not entirely gone yet, either. and sometimes, when it's really quiet, you close your eyes and then you don't feel tired, because it's then when you don't have to give anything and it's then when all those expectations are lifted from you; and you can just be, and you're not failing in it.

but eventually the noise starts again, and you have to open your eyes, and again you feel tired.

healthy mind in healthy body and all that

i very much dislike being sick. for the obvious discomfort of course, but also because being ill prevents you from doing things; i hate the feeling of being constrained by my body. in other words, if i don't do something i prefer it to be because of my own choice, not because i physically cannot.

and yet at the same time i am strangely fascinated by the change that happens once a flu takes over. how the previous day you can be running around, doing things and staying up as long as you please; and the next morning you are a pile of useless flesh, unable to bring yourself to do pretty much anything but to sleep and just feeling generally miserable about everything. and all this because of something external, some small thing that's not supposed to be there got into your system; and it does make you think how easy you fall.

and we're talking about a flu here; i dare not even think how it feels to get sick in a way more severe and long-lasting. 

so even if i have been suffering from just a flu for the past few days, it has yet again served as a remainder how incredible it is to be healthy, generally speaking, and how important it is to do your best to support that health. something for us all to strive towards to, i would think.