I have wanted to write for the past few weeks, as I have been travelling again and rejoined the workforce as well and had lots of new experiences, which made me want to write. I took a job in Paris and I have started exploring that city and about two weeks ago I started a blog entry, a very enthusiactic one for that, on how beautiful that city (Paris) is, where even the homeless lady who asked me for a cigarette a few weeks ago in the sunny park near the Champs-Elysees looked like Sophia Loren and had the style of an English duchess. But then I went back; the sun had disappeared and I spent a lot of time wandering around a strange, rainy and gloomy city going from one flat to the other in the hope of findig a dwelling and I felt like I had become like that nice homeless lady, who, her great smile and enviable eyes (that, in my imagination, hid a beatiful, sad and tragic story) notwithstanding was still a miserable creature with noone and nothing in the world. It is not so bad, of course, enjoying the "glamorous" life, but being a "citizen of the world" as a nice lady that I met on the plane over here put it, means also being homeless and rootless at the same time. I feel that I cannot legitimately have any expectations from anyone anywhere because I am a transitory creature, who is in one place for only a limited amount of time and is hence unable to offer anything of substance. It is very convenient in some ways because there is no need to commit (which frightens me to death), on the other hand, I am so tired. So ready to settle. Not for anything though - just yet; and that keeps me going.

The good thing that has come out of these past weeks: I reconnected with my fake-cousin-true-sister, Elisabeth, and I again realised that as far as relationships are concerned things are not as complicated and unexplainable as one likes to think. Most of our motivations in this area are extremely primal and simple and our ostensibly deep and complex feelings can, from one minute to the next, appear like silliness and a waste of time: all depending on one brief moment, when something clicks and that triggers a view of the other that is suddenly removed and objective. It is sad and encouraging at the same time. Seeing someone, who was the object of your desire (and secretly the potential object of your true love) as a stranger, who is more annoying and embarrassing than anything else is sad. Nonetheless, it is liberating and gratifying: you feel like you narrowly escaped a life of misery, even if that life was only in your head, and if you can stop wanting that fantasy-life-turned-into-a-nightmare, then you free up loads of energy to be able to want something else. Whatever that "something else" may be.

In Paris for now - I will see if this place can become one of "my cities". Now I feel that it takes years to get there; I have that feeling about Budapest and London: every other corner vividly reminds me of an important moment, a significant experience, a meeting that mattered, a few honest words told - life till now, in short. I do not know if I can acquire that again, in a new place - maybe. After all, I am a citizen of the world.

So biazarre. I have this strange relatioship with my blog, whereby it is the only thing that I can turn to as a channel of communication to share my loneliness and mythoughts when I am not really accountable for what I say. My married friends with a child got me so drunk that I can barely contemplate going to a party with my friends. They hang out in their beautiful house in Budapest with their cute child ant their biggest problem is that they might have to move England for work reasons. And yet they are having the best of times and are having a couple of bottles of really great wine on a Saturday with each other (or a friend who happens to be there) and enjoying life. The reason I really like her, the friend, is taht in spite of the fact that she lives a life completely diffenent from mine she is so not judgemental. My other friend with child, preagnant with the next thinks that I will never find myelf a real man or have kids because of the way that I live now. It may be because she has had the luck (?) to find her future husband when she was about 12 and she never even seriously contemplated being with someone else, whereas the other one was married between the ages of 26 and 31 to one guy and then ended up marrying and having a child with a different guy when she turned 32. People tend to be very defensive of their own lives and values and impose that upon others: they think the only way to live right is their way. They do not mean to be mean; they just cannot help it. Is it really that simpele? Is it just by chance that the second woman is not judgemntal because she did not have it so easy? Am I like that too? Do I feel that they are all losers for not living life to the full and not roaming around the worlld looking for excitement and knowledge? I honestly do not feel that way: I truly believe that everyone can make choices that will make them happy and I want to let them be, even if I would not myself choose to live that way. And yet I am frustrated, I am frustrated by the regard (the negative regard?) of others and feel uncertain of my choices even at times when I am satisfied with my choices on the whole. All these f*ckin weddings do not help (the party tonight is yet for another one of those) - just have to acknowledge that these challenge my own choices in a fundamental way and I cannot insulate myself from the values that are implicated. And that makes me unhappy, in theory at least, even when I am happy. Maybe this is similar to relationships: you think that someone expects a certain kind of behaviour from you so you comply even if that entails lies and deceit only to find out that they never expected the things you thought they do to begin with. And then you are only left with the lies and the deceit without the prupose. Perhaps it is the way this works with social conventinons; perhaps the mistaken responses to non-existent expectations screw up your life in ways that are unnecessary. Perhaps that is why I got married - and then divorced when I got my senses back and realized I do not need to comply with anyone's expectations.