Travelling light

If you have a taste for sights, and buildings constructed with the material of deep history, if what pleases your eye and your soul is austere, colorful gardens, or dream palaces made of artistic aesthetics, if you appreciate quiet people, sophisticated men in contact with a superiorly intellectual world, and if you want to loose yourself in the meanders of an inner search, just don’t go there.

Cause this is the city of red bricks, humid walls, a sky covering only the pallets of grey and black, a city with a hardcore industrial philosophy and life style, a not an unjustified fame for criminality, and an annual average of rainy days which can outdo the competition. Its population is divided in two and a civil war is long standing and ravaging the area. Cause Manchester City and Manchester United are the absolute rulers and governors!

I am secretly proud to have been a Mancunian for a while in my life. In Manchester every time you get off a bus, the common practice is to turn your eyes to the driver, smile and say the wonderful: ”Cheers mate!”. This greeting is pronounced with a little bit of provincial accent, and a special emphasis on “Ch” and “ma”. I had the chance of saluting the bus drivers some hundreds of times, getting off and on Oxford Road, the ultimate passerelle for the 80,000 students studying in the four universities that hold an enviable position among their European counterparts.

The truth is that there I wasn’t quite a model of a student. I hardly remember what I learnt - if I learnt anything at all. When it is the good mother European Union that pays, studies are not much of a pressure. What I certainly remember though, is my final paper bearing the pompous title “Study of the Translation of the Bible through the centuries”. And I presented a quite memorable spectacle as for about two months I was carrying with me at least two bibles and other religious paraphernalia, in all the bars and clubs and those accessories of mine certainly did not match with the drank or behaving-like-a-drank self I was at the time.

Manchester is the city that opened the door to capitalism and Industrial Revolution. This is probably the reason why until today it incorporates the very best and the very worst taken to terrifying extremes. Its night-life is the worthy child of Manchester’s scene of the 1980’s, this landmark in the history of music, with the necessary accompaniment of enormous quantities of alcohol and equal quantities of drags, while its two football teams carry their supporters to an ecstasy, comparable only to the diabolic possession of men and women found in the ancient tribes of Mali and Timbuktu.

In my story, Manchester is one of the most carefree periods of my life, though in the general happiness scale I am now higher than I was back then. My own Manchester makes me think that the road to personal completion is a series of good timings. There is only one good time for terrible hangovers and around the clock folly, only one good time for light spirited flirting and rave dancing, only one good time for future investing hard work. And once this good time is over, we are only left with our unaccomplished desires. And any unaccomplished desire is very heavy to carry in our luggage, cause after all one of the things that define good travelling is to travel light.

Wondering and wandering in Paris

Trying to find even a small speck of logic in life is like trying to loose weight. At the moment we are starting to philosophically scratch our head or on that Monday when we cut down all food except from yogurt and fruits, it is already too, too, too late. By that time a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Too many mistakes on our back, too many chocolates on our hip, for things to be undone. And if we feel that this time we have finally reached some answers ..... what we have truly lost is only liquids!

I have long ceased to be searching for the meaning of life. I’m not that brave, and besides that, I’m only a girl of a small-medium size IQ. I have also long ceased to believe in happiness. Happiness is not a state in which one can lead a life. Happiness and orgasm are one and the same thing. Imagine if they could last for ever! That would mean the end of the civilization as we know it! Proust would never have bothered to write down so many words about a madeleine melting in a cup of tea, if he had better things to do.

The second week of this brand new year finds me with a pessimism that makes me hold an umbrella under a shiny sky. And on top of it all, for reasons that go beyond my reasonable control it will take me a while before being able to plan and make my next trip. To make a long story short, I am left with what is second to travelling, which is no other than dreaming of travelling. Not bad considering the budget of it. A few dozens of lost man-hours is the only cost you pay.

And what I am dreaming of is Paris. Being in Paris is to me being in the hug of a long lost lover. Every time I am there I have butterflies in my stomach. And every time I wish I were there I am setting Paris pictures as desktop background. Tour Eiffel centered, Notre Dame tiled, Place des Vosges stretched.

Paris has a beauty that brings tears to my eyes. I still don’t know whether the incomparable number of books I have read about it is the result or the cause for this love of mine. I remember every literary character who has lived in Paris, as someone I once knew personally. I have searched the map for the streets and neighborhoods found in P. Modiano's books. The hunchback of Notre Dame is of course alive and trying to find some peace in his tower, but how could he with all those savages exclaiming "Oh! What a view!"?

In Paris I remind myself to slow down. I sink down in the haven of the cafés, these democratic successors to the aristocratic salons and I rejoice the “zouzouzouzou” sound of the language around me. In the cemetery of Père Lachaise I don’t use the map sold at the entrance, I am sure my steps will lead me to the tomb of Balzac and to the angel adorning the tomb of Chopin. In the bars of the steep and narrow streets of Montmartre I am wondering if they still serve absinth, and below the open skies of the boulevards I only wish I could fly with the airship of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. I love this city because at a time when colored lips made the difference between a lady and whore, the Parisians dared to place among their urban palaces, and their magnificent structured nature, a huge erection made of iron, the everlasting symbol of modern era.

I’m standing below this four leg monster, which gives me the impression that it waves in the breeze, and I can’t help it to think that here, I can certainly be larger than life.