Alternaverse
What is there to say when it's sunny every day? When I spend Tuesday afternoons in parks drinking cider, nights drinking magnums of cheap rosé in outdoor cafés, and Wednesdays eating ice creams and having walks along windy beaches? When stealing chairs and dancing in fountains constitute normal Monday nights? When I have few classes, and no pressure to attend most of those on any kind of regular basis? When those classes that I do attend are taught by twitching ladies who speak neither English nor French, but only a strange, shaky mélange of languages in which sentences begin, but trail off into oblivion before they ever manage to find an end? When my only responsibilities are so located so far in the future that I don't even have to feel guilty about spending entire days window shopping and coffee drinking and chattering? When I've been watching so much Sex and the City that pick-up lines in supermarkets seem like acceptable ways to meet men?

The other day, as the result of some silly discussion or other, one of the actual residents of the flat in which most of my friends here live - the flat where I spend all my time - made a sign to put on their door; it reads (in Franglais, of course) "Bienvenue au ALTERNATE UNIVERSE", and it speaks the truth. On the other side of that door, and in places all around this city, there exists a languorous space, different to those which I am used to inhabiting; normal rules and expectations are not applicable. And even though the things that happen in this space may sound strange when pronounced aloud, they feel routine. Days here produce impressions rather than stories, and as such, I can't capture them with my usual narratives. Maybe, in theory, that means that I should develop a new way in which to express them, but in actuality I'm not sure that I can be bothered. For now, all I can say is that I'm so glad I had to come here; I'm so glad I "suffered" through the fall, and meandered ambivalently through the winter; now that Spring has arrived, I'm convinced; I no longer have to tell myself to embrace it - I can even find pleasure in the bad bits.