Pensamentos, Take 2

The finer details of life. It's a cliched concept that has spurned a quasi-industry of self-help books, purported experts, and many a vacation for the sole purpose of losing oneself within oneself. It's a lofty goal to attain for anyone, though less so those in the higher strata of the socio-economic spectrum, and the idea is kind of ridiculous inherently because how can we begin to define what it is? What are they, where do we grasp them, where can they be bought, what does the box look like? This is, what I have begun to gather, a particularly American way of looking at the world, and yet I arrive at having to dismantle that particular cultural yoke in order to pursue them within myself.

My post-graduate space is, of course, marked by the time I am spending in Europe doing approximately nothing (and nothing can be a whole lot of things, let's not get so literal as I am wont to do), the relationship I have cultivated with a certain bodhisattva and how it is deconstructing, reconstructing, enriching, and detracting from all the rest, and how all of this is supposed to sum up to a platform from which I will leap into the next phase of adult life, be that a master's degree or the commencement of a professional career.  Yet coming to Paris and having two weeks to occupy my own head space free of the banalities of life as I am accustomed to it and the obligations that come along with being at home in Lisbon or Denver, being received in an optimal fashion, and breathing somewhat more introspectively has given me a needed refresher on greater perspective and allowed me to stop viewing the loose ends around me as rope with which to form knots from which to hang myself, others, anything at all. Overwhelmingly, to the extent of requiring a change in linguistic environs, the message has been to stop thinking so much about the minutiae that perturb, period. Just stop. There is no elaboration.

So I have taken on, starting in Lisbon but continuing along much more in Paris, the idea of retreating inward and appreciating the more basic details of life—the sensual pleasure of the texture, smell, and taste of food, the full-body experience of the way the sound waves reverberate within oneself when listening to good music, the physical excitement from the intellectual challenge of discovery and growth. To think that a pursuit so simple has caused, in its own way, such a fair amount of grief and strife in my personal life is to oversimplify, yet it has. It's taken this long for me to fully grasp that this is all to say that part of self-actualization and part of being your own person sometimes means that you don't have to have complicated or finely elaborated explanations to things. Sometimes things are as simple as the brevity with which we describe them, and that should just be left at that. Sometimes the grand adventure is banal and mundane, and sometimes the satisfaction derived from that is acute. I could stand to learn from that in my own writing, don't you think? I, uptight by nature, reserved and literal, pragmatic and organized, rigid to a fault at times, obsessive always, am learning to chill out.

Alas.

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.

Parisian Redaction

The original draft of this post was written at 2:30 in the morning as I awaited the time to pass so that I could board my KLM (via Air France) flight to Paris by way of Amsterdam, cost covered by an exceedingly generous French man who has an exceedingly French manner of interest in me. Life could be less interesting, I suppose.

Twelve days in Paris. I'm not sure what I'm more surprised about, the fact that I am actually able to go back to my favorite city more than once this time around, or the idea of being able to spend an appreciable amount of time in which I won't feel rushed to "do" the city the way that I tend to otherwise. June should prove to be more of that, and yet, here we are in March. Last year at this point, the only major trip I had made was with E to Porto, and that doesn't count for nearly as much in terms of great travels because we stayed in the country. It was worthwhile, but not as life-altering as each time I step foot on the polluted trottoirs of the City of Light seems to be.

Stop short of calling me a believer, but in some ways the timing of things is nothing short of providence. While I had spent some time recently ruminating about the problems revolving around my intimate life, time has changed things quickly and I find myself in awe at what I'm doing. I have never felt more in the moment as I do sitting here in Paris, wondering how this happened and planning what I will do for the rest of the day. Instead of worrying about particular or petty details of anything at home, whether in Lisbon or Denver, I am taking in the things I appreciate most in a city that facilitates it readily. I am professedly a bit tired of my thoughts as well, similar as they tend to be, revolving around Portugal, my future, my intimate life, and all the rest that comes along with those, so taking a leave of absence feels like just what I needed at just the moment I needed it. Intellectually, I have been digesting Portuguese at such a steady pace that I can easily say I speak and understand at a much more advanced level than when I arrived, but it still stands that I have hit a point of operating on autopilot leading up to flying away, and a detour in a different linguistic paradigm is encouraging me to continue building upon both, rather than losing track of myself trying to bend my mind into speaking perfect Portuguese. I'll speak good, if imperfect Portuguese and French, and they'll both get better bit by bit. I understand better now what most people mean when they say that taking a year or however long off was the best decision they had made between undergraduate and graduate studies—I feel a resurgence in my intellectual creativity as well as my overall creativity.

In the meantime, though, I have nearly two weeks to try not to spend too much money, take photos, revert inwards while subjecting myself to the ultimate form of outward expression, and take the most out of life. In Portuguese, the word is aproveitar. In French, as I noted so many times in the past on this blog, the equivalent is profiter. I am grateful I have been able to experience what those words mean in their respective cultural applications.