29/09/2011

We're experiencing some sort of late Indian summer over here. Better late than never, I guess. At least we get to see some sunshine before the summer months are truly gone, replaced by more darkness, gloom and wintry weather.

Perhaps 'revolution' will end up coming from so-called emerging countries as economies like to call the very places the 'developed' ones used to exploit - and still do, obviously. 'Revolution' in the sense that they might get so fed up with the rampant corruption and polarised world we live in, where one half has too much while the other has nothing, that they'll simply bring it about in some way, and like wildfire it will trigger it everywhere else. Or something.

The idea occurred to me while talking to my boss about a conference he went to not so long ago. That conference was full of smart black ties - bankers. As various people took to the stage to pat one another on the back, one speaker suddenly began to explain in detail why the world was doomed exactly because of them. My boss described how everyone in the room slowly turned awkward and irritated by that speaker - it just wasn't something they expected. They didn't expect someone to go on stage and start telling them how bad they were for the world. The guy originally came from a far east country and had spent many years in the business.

Perhaps hope rests with people who come from emerging countries because over there corruption is literally in everyone's face. It's impossible not to see. People in rags live in a shack next to mansions with 5 BMWs. There's no politically correct system that pretends that those who have nothing will get anything - ever. There's no so-called freedom of expression. People who have nothing have no rights and don't exist in the world, they don't really have a voice at all and there is no fabricated illusion to make them believe otherwise as there is over here.

Perhaps the very fact that these people are living with corruption and rotten ways staring them straight in the face will allow for them to take action at some point. Whatever this means, no matter how dreadful change in a deeply corrupted world system entails...

By contrast, the 'developed' world is immersed so much in illusions and fake ideologies that make people believe things that don't actually exist in reality that it's hard to see any reaction come out of people. Most are just too immersed in their little bubble, and they end up only caring about preserving whatever comfort they can get.

Trying to understand why governments and nations in general are so prone to corruption, greed and the inclination for either war or exploitation, I sort of realised that when one looks at a country as a whole, all they're really looking at is the exacerbated version of a mere individual's behaviour. In other words, governments, corporations and the likes are nothing more but a bigger representation of a set of behaviours that could be observed in a single human being.

That leads me to think that to even hope that the 'world' could ever be peaceful or harmonised, is an illusion. For that to happen, you'd need to see human beings capable of doing just that on an individual level, and since the majority cannot, there can never be any form of organisation that would.

Governments and corporations at large reflect themselves on the people, but in essence these governments and corporations at large are made up of people, which leads us to some sort of funny totology, I guess.

25/09/2011

I felt so much like I'd had two lives... I guess anyone who's moved countries and way of life is bound to feel that way at some point. After a few years have passed, life in the previous country starts to feel like another life, or even a dream. Age must matter in the way we end up feeling, too. Children would barely remember anything and adapt almost completely to their new surroundings, but teenagers and young adults never forget, and yet the detail becomes hazier everyday.

The way things panned out for me, I was a teenager when we moved. Not yet an adult, no longer a child. All I know or remember from my previous life is the language and school routines - nothing beyond that. The fact that we pretty much severed all contact with anyone we used to know was perhaps another factor playing in the way I feel so disconnected with my past. I remember wanting to tell a couple of my friends at school that I was leaving, but my mother said there was no point, because I'd never see them again. It was better to leave and never look back. So I did, not knowing any better at the time. I left my city like a ghost. Nobody knew. The few friends I had, I left behind without a word. I simply disappeared.

So I returned where I was born and grew up yesterday with my mother. We emerged from the train station and it felt like summer in the city. The sky was a pure diluted blue and the sun was shinning strong, making the white stone of buildings shimmer like diamond dust.

The architecture of Paris is stunning. The moment you step outside into the street, you can recognise it and it captures your imagination at once. As we looked around in a daze, my mother realised that she no longer remembered the streets of Paris so well... her memory had played a trick on her, making her only remember the main parts of the city, but no longer the detail of how to get from one place to another on foot.

We wandered down a quiet, large avenue. It was Saturday morning, there was almost no traffic and no crowds. We were trying to go south towards a place called Chatelet, and as we walked, my mother recognised a street where an old friend of hers used to work. It was the friend with whom she'd moved to the city with when she was 20. I still remembered the woman, because she used to visit us often when I was a child. I remember them sitting in the large kitchen of our old flat, smoking Gauloises and speaking in their native language I barely understood but that will forever sound extremely familiar. They would chat for hours while I played with my lego blocks and other toys.

Sometimes we'd go to her place, and I remember it always felt like such a long trip because she lived far from us on the other side of town. In fact, I remember the woman's place in striking detail, perhaps because it was a small place, and we used to go there often. I remember that when I was around 8, she got married to an Egyptian man who always used to wear those middle eastern dresses. I remember he used to pick me up and throw me in the air with his arms as if I was but a feather. Then when I was around 8, they had a son, followed by a daughter when I was 10, and I used to play with them whenever we came to visit.

So there we were, in that street my mother recognised. She turned to me and said: "Let's go in and ask if she still works there, what do you say?"

I shrugged, uncertain. "It can't hurt to check, I guess," I replied. We walked inside the building and asked for the woman. The man at the desk knew at once who we were asking for but replied: "Ah, she's retired now, you know, about two years ago."

"Do you have a phone number for her? asked my mother.

"I do, but I can't just give it to you," he replied. "I can call her now and see what she says."

So he did. He called her, and then passed the phone to my mother, and we arranged to meet for a coffee in the city centre around lunch time.

It was only morning, so we carried on walking around almost at random. Our footsteps took us down the river banks where Notre Dame stands proud in the distance. We stopped by a bakery and bought some pastries to eat as we kept walking all the way towards my old high school... Past the river, and past the Latin quarter that remains just as I vaguely remembered it. And then I saw the old bus I used to take every day to go to school drive past us. We were getting close, yet none of the streets looked familiar to me. I had no clue how to get to the school... until I realised that although my mind didn't seem to remember, my feet 'knew'... Suddenly I knew how to get there without knowing how exactly. It was all starting to come back to me.

When we arrived in front of the black gates of the school, there was a crowd of students loitering outside... standing exactly where I would stand for a while after school myself all those years past. It was so strange to see all these teenagers standing there just as my own past generation used to. It was like watching myself back in time, in a way. And then I realised that I didn't feel sad or nostalgic at all... We walked past the school and went to sit outside a café in the shade to wait for my mother's old friend.

The woman arrived and although she looked much older than the way I remembered her, she hadn't changed that much. It was strange to think that the woman had known me since I was a baby. She showed us pictures of her two children, and seeing them as adults on pictures contrasted greatly with the baby faces I always remembered because I'd only seen them as such.

Of course, one of the first things the woman asked my mother was: "Where the hell have you been? You just disappeared..." Yeah, that we did, I thought to myself. They chatted for a couple of hours, and then it was time to part ways. I took a picture of them together and we carried on with our journey, this time back where we used to live. It was getting late by then, so we had to take the métro this time.

Walking around where I grew up was strange. Not much has changed in the past 10 years. It's all mostly the way I remember it. We stood outside the building we use to live and my mother pointed at windows on the fifth floor.

"That's the kitchen window," she said. "And in the corner, where the shutters are closed, that was your bedroom, remember?"

I remember alright. It all felt so familiar, yet distant. It was where a younger version of my self used to live, but my person today can no longer relate. I realised that my only link to that place was the memories I had, and it actually didn't matter to see the place in reality anymore, because what made it special was the memory I kept of it. It was certainly not a place I would wish to live in again, that's for sure. And I realised more fully that all I was after by going back was to make myself realise that although we'd left too abruptly, it actually turned out for the better.

We ended the day by going to Montmartre - one of my favorite places in the city. We walked down various narrow, winding streets, reached the top of the hill where the breathtaking Sacré-Coeur stands reminiscent of some fairytale castle from the East, and then made our way back to the train station. As we were about to go in, I turned around to stare at the street now bathed in settling darkness and whispered: "Good bye Paris... it was nice seeing you again, but now I'm going home."

Indeed... I don't think I could ever live there again. The city has become way to foreign to my person, but I hope from now on I'll be able to simply appreciate the fact that I was born and bred there for most of my younger years. I'll probably enjoy going back there from time to time, but this time I think the ghosts of my past have finally be put to rest.

I feel... relieved.

23/09/2011

I was feeling slightly edgy all day today, and then I realised it's probably because I'm going back to my native city tomorrow after just over 10 years.

As I took a break from work and stepped out of the office for a few minutes, I went to stand right in the ray of sunshine, my head to the blinding skies, just... feeling.

Paris, laide ville, mais tes quais sont si beaux,

Et le long des berges ou coule la Seine

L'or des cieux se reflette dans l'eau...

I'm going back tomorrow for a day, and I don't know what to expect. I'll be facing another life, that of my childhood, gone forever never to be again.

To walk again back where I grew up... to see the buildings, the streets, the puny trees lined up along those very streets... birch trees and others. Walk down the Avenue des Gobelins, then further down Port Royal, all the way to my old high school... Chatelet, le Louvre... But most of what I want to see would be boring to a mere tourist, of course. I wouldn't care to see the monuments, and the only reason I would want to see the Arc of Triumph down the Champs Elysees is because when I was 14 I used to leave school early just to wander about in the early spring right there... right there. I want... to relive the feeling. And remember. Just... remember.

Since I now feel so much like I've had two very distinct lives, I need to face the old to embrace the new. No choice. I just need to.

After that, I don't know.

22/09/2011

I wake up in the morning feeling just as drained as I felt before going to bed. It only gets harder to get out of bed, but then the same routine takes place; have a shower, some coffee, a few minutes spent browsing the net, check my emails, get dressed, sometimes remember to eat something before I leave the house... then hurry down the tube station to catch a crowded train to work. And then spend most of my day sitting at a desk and starring at a computer.

Growing up, that's hardly the kind of lifestyle one dreams about, is it? Although, to be fair, didn't I spend most of my childhood struggling to wake up in the morning, have a shower, get dressed, have breakfast, and then spend my day sitting at a desk in a classroom to listen to various teachers? But here's the con: they spend their time telling you that if you do as you're told as a child, and go through the mind-numbing process of school routine, then you'll have a better shot at a 'great', 'fulfilling' life later on. And then you grow up, and you realise that most of the 'good' jobs are at a desk somewhere anyway. Obviously by then you've already caught up on the deception and realise that it's just the same mind-numbing process. So what does the adult world tell you? They tell you that if you do as you're told, and go through the mind-numbing process of work as we know it, then you'll get money, perhaps even lots of money, which will give you a shot at a 'great', 'fulfilling' life.... See where I'm going with this?

Then you look at all these rich people, and what do they do? Sure, they have it easier on a material level, and they probably get to travel the world, sleep in on a Monday morning, etc... but their lack of purpose is just as striking as someone with a few coins in his pocket.

Work is an integral part of living within a social setting. We each contribute to the whole, no question about it, and yes, it doesn't always have to be pleasant. If it were pleasant all the time, we would even lose the ability to appreciate what we do have, or the ability to appreciate the pleasant experience itself.

But there is no 'whole' anymore, is there? You or I don't really contribute to a whole, because society itself is now so fragmented and driven by individual greed that there is no longer a society to speak of, but a consumer base, or a giant Tesco, if you like. Not a society.

We're left with the ghost of what may have started once as a society of some sort. Today, all we have is the ghost, or empty shell, and while the language remains the same, and we keep using words like society, the reality does not match the meaning of these terms.

They can use such words as democracy, freedom and society as much as they want, they do not exist in reality. What we have is industries parading behind the terms.

The problem with a lot of people is that they have the habit of believing things the moment they hear it often enough. So if the media, the governments, the schools, hell, all the 'founding' bases of a given area start parroting the same things, then a lot of people end up believing it as truth. It's that easy. Why think for yourself when you have industries out there that can do it for you? They're even paid to think for you, or you may actually be paying for them. Whatever, the result is pretty much the same.

14/09/2011

So mentally drained I could cry, but there's just no time to even cry... There seems to come a point when the mind is so full of accumulated thoughts that it ends up feeling empty. You try stringing one single thought that comes from within you - your own reasoning- together, and it just gets stuck at the first word before dying into nothingness.

Listening to Ravel's Pavane.... that kind of music is soothing.

I'm officially no longer the 'new' girl at our desk at work. The girl started last week, with no financial background whatsoever either. Looking at her panicked eyes and eagerness to do the 'right' things is probably like looking into a mirror, in a way. I'm pretty sure I looked just as lost and confused six months ago.

Last night we had to go to yet another networking event and ended up in some obscure, secretive bar in the heart of the city whose outside entrance looks exactly like that of a derelict building. I went there with my colleagues, including the new girl, and we glanced at one another in surprise at first as we stood in front of what looked like some squatting building. We rang the bell and when they opened the washed-out black door, we suddenly stepped inside a narrow corridor full of mirrors and sparkles. There was champagne and canapés 'a volonté' and soon enough the underground crib was bursting with people in black suits everywhere.

I stayed for a while, talked to a couple of traders, and then left at the same time as the new girl, so we made our way back together to the tube station. I was slightly tipsy from the three glasses of champagne I drunk just because it was free, really. And that was really when we got the opportunity to get to know each other a bit better than the polite smiles and 'hellos' at work.

She kept asking me whether it was normal that she felt so lost and clueless and I said yes, it is. I found myself telling her exactly what other people had told me when I'd asked them the exact same things, that it would take her about three months to start feeling slightly more at ease with the subject at hand. I added that even after that she'd probably still be struggling with whatever else she'd end up having to write about overnight.

It was rather strange to suddenly be playing the role of one of the 'ancients' when I still feel so much at loss myself.

Tonight, we had to go to yet another event, but this time I was so tired - inside and out - that going there felt like I was sort of walking on a cloud. I was there, but at the same time I wasn't really there. I had to be extra careful because I felt so disconnected with everything around me that it made me terribly oblivious of my surroundings. Polite words and the 'expected things to say' came out mechanically out of my mouth, but I'm pretty sure my eyes looked dead to the world.

Sometimes I feel like it wouldn't take much for me to disconnect completely, and irreversibly, from the world, and that feeling frightens me. It's not a fear linked to something bad in itself, it's more a fear of the unknown because I don't know what it would be like to disconnect fully from this plane of consciousness... which is also why I never want to meditate, because I know deep down that it would speed up the process, and I don't know why I don't want to. It's hard to explain, I guess.

So much more I wish I could express, and there is such a huge backlog of thoughts swimming inside my head... but I'm too tired to even type much.

When I was a teenager, I used to write a diary of thoughts and daily occurrences just like this one, except I would write them in a little notebook... Often when I felt like I was being suffocated by the world, I'd end my entry with an abstract sentence that said something like: "Someone lend me a pair of wings..."

12/09/2011

Impression, Soleil Levant

So many things have happened since the last time I wrote on here, and at the same time nothing. I've tried writing an entry several times, but every time I ended up deleting it. No word seems to ring right these days. Too many thoughts I haven't had the chance to reflect on, and at this rate I wonder if I ever will get a chance to.

Does it matter? I don't know. Life is life, and this reality dictates everything in the end, regardless of dreams we may have.