Fiefs at Their Core

Each day I spend in Paris is ultimately comfortable and I feel naturally at ease with myself and my surroundings, not to mention the social element involved. But it's gotten me thinking about how in some ways, I feel split between three quite distinct places and the circumstances that surround them. My home by birth and raising is Denver, and it is there in which I feel the most naturally at ease socially, as though what I do and the friends with whom I do it come naturally and with such ease that I think very little about it. I am firmly based in a social manner there, and my closest friendships and most tumultuous love affairs have happened there. Lisbon in certain ways is analogous for me to Denver, with the distinction that it represents a certain exertion of agency in my surroundings and a greater intellectual and spiritual effort to allow myself to adapt and become a part of my surroundings. What I have done by birthright in Denver has come to happen for me by choice in Lisbon, and the choice to call Lisbon home has had a profound impact on how I see myself as well as the trajectory of my future; the connection I have established with the city weighs on my considerations for how I should proceed with the next stages of life, slowly as that image is becoming clear. Paris, on the other hand, is mainly a city of aspirations and projections for me. I have not had the opportunity to experience how my life might work as a resident, but the moments I have been accorded on its soil have proved among the most satisfying of my life, in which I connect more fully with all of my senses than anywhere else. I have been aided by linguistic ease more so than in Portugal, and I have never experienced anything other than open embrace by Parisians. My experiences in Paris embody the way I feel like I should be living my life, tastes of which I enjoy in both other locations.

Yet I am coming to arrive at the conclusion that I'm fully satisfied in none of these three places, and that in place of full-on fulfillment, only the mixture of the group collectively seems to provide me with a sense of realization. I feel most myself, most enamored with my life, and most in tune with my thoughts and feelings when I can comfortably hop between all three places; transience appears to be the glue of steadiness and consistency that I crave deeply in my life and mistakenly pursue. The symbolism of these three places is that of interconnected fiefs, a micro-world of fully globalized commerce that manages to retain individualized identity and expression. They bicker with each other, their relations freeze at times, one grows in emphasis over the others, yet they are all bound together. The silver lining in my hesitance to decide between any of these places, between any of the potential options that abound in each one for what I could be doing in six months, a year, however long, is that I consistently manage to preserve those options. Perhaps that is the most important thing of all.