The Essence of "Déjà Vu"

Welcome (back) to Paris. Sound familiar? I decided to come back nearly as last-minute as I did going to Madrid, having had issues attempting to book my flight with Vueling and their poorly designed online reservation system. I ended up taking Aigle Azur instead, an airline which approximately no one seems to have heard of before, but which also seems to be perfectly decent anyway, except for having had to pay an exorbitant amount for my ticket three days prior to flying. Oh well. Any company would be expensive in that case, I suppose.

So I'm in Paris, but the trip as it has developed has been an extremely different séjour than last time, there has been no sense of wandering aimlessly, of being a tourist figuring his way through a grand city, of learning how to be and what it means to be, in an almost literal sense, alone in the world. Instead I am visiting (and staying with) friends, seeing as many of the numerous people I had become acquainted with the last time around as possible and certainly meeting plenty of others. The experience has allowed me to be much more connected with the city on a personal level; I am no longer overwhelmed by the busy nature of commerce owing to its size, instead with friends I can breathe easily and enjoy new places in any given part of town without over-thinking anything. I can order my coffee and gelato without thinking anything special of it just for the sake of having been coffee and gelato ordered in a city often considered a living museum. I have taken no pictures whatsoever with my camera despite having brought it. I have instead been received as though I were at home, enjoying speaking a language in which I have no inhibitions for want of experience and confidence, one in which I can express myself adequately well and more or less completely, one in which I need not switch to my native language in general when I find myself short of understanding something.

Thus lies the difference between Paris and Lisbon for me, but although linguistically life may be easier, let me not mislead you into thinking that Paris is so much the more homely for me than Lisbon. That would be a disservice of an order of magnitude, as I will explain. I am not Portuguese in any given sense; I am neither yet a full-time resident nor was I born with any kind of cultural inheritance that might make up for the legal disparity. Nowhere is this more true than when I am going about living my life in Lisbon however I may do so, observing all the time how typically or not I am American and drawing comparisons of that in direct relation to native Portuguese people, everyone noting well the distinctions involved when a foreign person arrives to integrate themselves fully, slowly as it may happen. This is to say nothing of the linguistic issue. And yet, being in Paris for me has allowed me to see from a perspective of appreciable cultural as well as physical difference — much more so than Madrid, which is close enough in relative terms to Portugal physically as well as culturally —the extent to which I have adopted a Portuguese spirit and feel most at home in Lisbon. Mannerisms of all things, from the hours at which I prefer to dine to linguistic quirks that fit more flexibly in situations than English or French, have become my own in an inadvertent way, myself only noticing that I behave in such a manner when outside of the environment where such things are routine. It has taken stepping completely outside of so-called Iberia to realize the way in which I have become Portuguese in some way.

I feel completely at ease and at home in Paris, able to communicate fully and effortlessly, not having any problems navigating the city however large, transitioning seamlessly into my cultural surroundings such that it is no one's immediate assumption that I'm not from or at least very well acquainted with the city. And yet, Paris is not home. It may never be, in a literal sense, but in a more philosophical way there are pronounced obstacles that render it foreign. I have written about the ways Denver and Lisbon are similar, and I believe that at a profound level this impacts the way I feel toward Paris. I'm not from somewhere so large, nor have I ever lived somewhere nearly so large, and so much as I am content in it and prefer it to its natural opposite — I adjust extremely poorly to sparsely-inhabited areas —, I am not a product of it. It is too large and too expensive to become quite so intimately familiar with even after a long time; it is, owing to its size, almost inherently impersonal. It is a city saturated with tourists and people chasing their own dreams of Living in Paris, their version of being a privileged youth vagabond "finding themselves" in Europe, people from everywhere but France figuring out their own abstract ideas of what it means to be French and trying to be accordingly so. For better or worse, there is a distinct lack of cultural fixedness in Paris, the clichéd concept of a typical Parisian being something that exists only as an element of cultural mythology so far as I have discerned it, Paris cosmopolitan and fluid in reverse correlation to Lisbon's provincialism and rigidity.

This is all to say that I have become more deeply attached to Paris than before, more personally connected to it, but I will be happy to return to life in Lisbon, to life at home. I miss Lisbon already, the way that someone without a wandering soul misses the creature comforts they have from their lives wherever they may be based. In Lisbon I have found something of a base, a place from which I can quench my thirst to know and discover more of the world yet unknown that itself has become so of my own doing. I may always feel a bit like a wide-eyed child seeing the reality of the world for the first time despite that being very much less the case as time goes on, but I at least have somewhere to return to, relax, and feel the comfort of being myself completely uninhibited. Paris is a delight, but a delight as a guest.

From Portugal to Paris, Continental Affairs

June is proving to be a busy month with a seemingly endless amount of papers, new seminars, traveling, and money to be taken out of my wallet by governmental agencies and other quasi-official things that are necessary, if expensive. I'm leaving Lisbon for Paris for five days shortly, having arranged almost as much at the last minute this trip as I did Madrid, being limited only by the fact that flights become exorbitantly fucking expensive the closer to the day you purchase them you get. I managed to find people to stay with and I can already feel the excitement and connection to the city I left with prior to departure – in other words, the trip will be much the opposite of how Madrid went. More on that will necessarily come later, but for now I have other, more pressing concerns to attend to.

The much more consequential news is that I have, as of this Monday, enrolled in a Portuguese language class running from February to June, marking the first segment of both my return to academic life in the post-graduate period but also to Portugal in a definitive way as I had been hoping to work toward. There are many things remaining to do, but the work is not for want of being done: having begun the enrollment process (something I keep trying to call 'inscription', despite that being the wrong word, because in Portuguese the word is inscrição), I will then, in consecutive order, pay the enrollment fee and get a document for SEF (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras, or the Portuguese version of border control and immigration office), get Portuguese health insurance, and meet with SEF to extend my residence beyond the end of September as it was granted for my current academic program. It's a lot of running about and sitting in offices mostly not doing anything except for spending money for the pleasure of sitting in offices not doing anything. It's a bureaucratic way of saying that I'm enough of a special snowflake to stay in this bumbling little country, and I'm not bothered by any part of the process – indeed, I've spent enough time sitting around in offices waiting for things to happen and become organized and resolve themselves that I'm at a bit of a loss if such things are not actually happening.

I know what you're thinking. "Good job, you really buried the fuck out of that lead there."

So in order to clarify, what this means is that I'm moving to Portugal. The details are progressing forward as they naturally would in the order that they should and with all of the hiccups that come naturally with such things. There is a lot of work involved, a mind-numbingly large amount of work involved to put in toward moving. The process of moving anywhere is never easy, much less so moving somewhere an ocean and national boundaries away. It is a monumental change in life, this is something that can not be understated in any way, yet at the same time, I am plodding along through each particular step of the way of this without becoming overwhelmed in the process, without losing my sense of self, and without losing sight of the things that are important and give meaning to and reason for doing anything I do in life. I have not lost track of my ongoing process of learning Portuguese and integrating my lifestyle into the Lisbon sphere, nor have I lost track of my intellectual pursuits and academic responsibilities, the necessity of putting work in to finish basic classes in order to graduate in December, and so on. By doing everything one step at a time, one bureaucratic office, one meeting, one piece of paperwork, one social interaction at a time, I have figured out how to breathe and be, for the first time, my own person on my own terms equal among those around me with no exceptions. I am not magically independent at the stroke of a pen, the likes of which you might see in a movie or hear in a pop song, but I have a sense of personal legitimacy that seems to have reached a point of saturation both within myself and those around me. It is a rewarding path to follow.

Just the same, as the reality of being truly rooted in Portugal begins to sink in, the idea of somberly parting from dear friends on an indefinite basis fading quickly with the knowledge of return in six months' time, I find myself with mixed emotions toward both Lisbon and Denver as places I consider home. At a relatively superficial level, the two cities are remarkably similar: they are of roughly equal populations both in the city proper and including the suburban environs, they are similarly provincial with a streak of cosmopolitan and cultural brilliance if you look in the correct places, they are in similar economic positions, and so on. Such similarities have struck me at a profound level, making me realize that at least part of the reason I feel quite so much at home in Lisbon is that it is inherently familiar in its character. Lisbon is a city at the nexus of a culture always trying to pit itself as adequately well-accomplished and relevant much as Denver has a similar complex from its geographical isolation within the United States. With Denver being my home by upbringing and Lisbon my home by matter of choice, I have already found myself with a form of dissonance, realizing at the same time as I have come to love Lisbon the positive aspects of what I have in Denver. The impact of moving — the prospect thereof, rather — being what it is, I appreciate Denver as a home of mine in a way not entirely possible before. I do not miss my friends or family in the sense of a painful, longing lack of their presence, but I value their continued presence the more so given that sticking around with me doing the things I'm doing can be an exercise in great frustration at times. On the other hand, of course, I feel much the same about Lisbon, having made highly valued friendships with people which will continue to grow all the more upon moving back (although in the case of G, perhaps the most prominent of these figures, it is ironically not quite the case, since he will go back to Brazil at the end of the summer). I believe this sense of feeling alive and the connection with everything around me is what I've been chasing after for all these years.

The Castilian Diversion

I decided to go to Madrid entirely on a whim, having been fully convinced after talking to a friend living there for the month who happened to have time and space for a visit. I had been thinking about going to Spain since I got here, but tickets to Barcelona became prohibitively expensive and I ended up deciding not to, but Madrid opened up as an option after G, my Brazilian friend, missed his flight home from there a couple of weeks prior and had to take a bus back to Lisbon, which turned out to be a cheap and comfortable option. After looking into it, I decided that the price was right and left for two days to Madrid a matter of hours after deciding to go in the first place. It was a snap decision that proved to be an astute one as well, which I will elaborate on further.

Before getting to describing the trip, however, I must note that my relationship with Spanish as a language and hispanic cultures in general is a long-standing love-hate affair, me having spent many years dating or caught in complicated relations with men from throughout the Spanish-speaking world, attempting feebly at various times to learn Spanish, embracing the language and the cultures that it opens oneself up to, and then invariably rejecting it all entirely and proclaiming a great disdain for anything and everything Spanish. Of late, I have found something of an equilibrium, living with a multitude of Spaniards in my apartment (and building, more generally – everyone in the building knows each other to some extent) and having a more nuanced, Europe-specific experience of cultural exchange. The result is that I find myself understanding the language very well — but not perfectly well — and being able to interact with everyone to some extent regardless of a language barrier, but having to an appreciable extent a boundary between cultural habits and mannerisms. It is still a foreign land and culture for me, even though there is a great level of mutual understanding between us; this is all to speak nothing of the differences between Spain and Portugal, something that has profoundly affected my perception of the country. I went to Madrid unable to have any specific expectations, knowing only what my friends who had recently visited had told me and other more obvious facts about it as a city in general; I had no preconceptions of how the city would feel, what would be best to do, or how I would like it before going.

So it happened that I left on an overnight bus for Spain, the cost being the same as a flight that a more intelligent person might have booked several weeks in advance, expecting to sleep but instead finding myself observing the rather tasteless and undignified sort of people who take the bus on the alternative to ALSA, which was fully booked for that night, followed by a short moment of concern over the fact that the bus broke down an hour outside of Madrid for want of fuel. A refueling and a short nap later, I had stepped foot into an ugly bus station at an ugly hour of the morning onto a marvelous, truly spectacular metro system and headed to my friend's apartment. It is a metro that, in contrast to Lisbon especially, just works: the trains run on time and there are notices for when the next trains will arrive at every platform, you almost never wait more than 5 minutes for a train, the system covers the entire city, and so on. It is comparable in feel and scope to the Parisian metro, if not nearly as visually appealing in general — the system is what I would describe as "functional" in place of "beautiful" in that it is not well-designed in a visual sense, but it does get you where you need to go with the utmost of efficiency. Portugal and its entitled, ridiculous public transportation workers who can not ever seem to do their jobs correctly or serve passengers with a shred of decency but never hesitate to go on strike could learn a lot from the brilliance of the Madrid metro.

Madrid is, of course, a rather large city, comparable in size to St. Petersburg or Dallas, and you take notice of that fact almost immediately when you arrive to the center — Gran Via, in my case — and step foot onto the calles that wind around and lead to everything the city has to offer. It is well-built city, the streets being compact and the buildings large, and you never feel as though life is not happening everywhere around you. That is the main feeling I got from Madrid – for better or worse, I got the distinct sense of it being a city very much teeming with the life of madrileños, the place where lives are made and ruined, stories are made, and histories built for the occupants there. Just as well, there is not one particular architectural style that dominates the city or pattern to the way the streets work, there is just a little bit of everything, much as there are people of all types and walks of life everywhere as well. Perhaps as a result of this, you do not see the effects of the crisis nearly so visibly as in Lisbon (and Portugal in general), except perhaps in the form of the "Compro Oro" people and shops that occupy only the most touristic areas of the center of the city. I will note that I did not find madrileños very well-dressed (less so, indeed, even than Lisbon), nor did the city feel particularly cosmopolitan, there being an overall lack of other cultures and people save for the tourists staying there just as temporarily as myself.

Plaza Mayor

Palacio Real

Parque del Retiro

Parque del Retiro

For as large of a city as it is, once you turn off of the main tourist thoroughfares, their presence largely stops and it does not feel like a place that is as much of a tourism destination as it ostensibly is. I wonder whether Barcelona feels much more so or not. I saw each major plaza, park, and general tourist spot on offer in the center just shy of going into any museums or cultural attractions, the energy for which I had run out of entirely, as well as a choral concert at the Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid located rather outside of the center itself. I left the city ready quite certainly to get back to Lisbon and with a much more concretely established sense of Lisbon as home and Portugal and Portuguese as being what give me a home-like comfort that is incomparable anywhere else I have been as of yet. Madrid was great to visit, although I am not completely inspired by it as a city mostly as a result of lacking a strong personal cultural connection. Fair enough, it allowed me to learn something about myself and gave me a break from routine and daily habit of Lisbon that I had needed more than I realized.