sixty

13:42:55

I’m a mess in Paris.

It has been so for some time now, this feeling of being at a loss, of being unable to, of putting up obstacles as soon as I jump one.

So I ask myself, what is that special place I yearn to be at.

Paris?

London?

Beirut?

I see hoards of tourists everyday take the same picture of Tour Eiffel, of Notre Dame, of statues and monuments that make up Paris. Paris is nothing but a pop-up postcard, a map of relics to an age long past, a large walk through museum with never-changing Parisian stereotypes. Paris is a marker-stick stuck in a river that moves an inch forward and bobs an inch backwards. It gives you the impression of taking you with it, but then pushes you back out.

London. London feels like a large river that carries you along, but doesn’t give you time to grab unto something. It impresses you with its speed and power, but it flows through you nonetheless and when you leave, you don’t retain, only the mud stains of dirty gritty Thames cling to you as reminders of what you did and what you saw and what you didn’t arrive to.

Beirut, a memory of strings undone and their ends shriveling into ends I can’t get hold off. Roots are rotten, friendships dried up, lovers withered – a lost paradise and I, a lost cause.

But that is all a made-up, that is nothing but a fantasy of someone sad. Places aren’t what they are said to be in Lonely Planet, they aren’t what they are marked out to be on a map, they aren’t friends’ stories, they aren’t what you previously experienced, they aren’t street names, nor corners, nor squares, nor houses. None of it matters.

The only place is inside your head and it is the place I think I have to go first, if I ever want to go anywhere.