Anniversary

I have not written in ages. I wanted to, I had some stories to tell - about the Italian offsite I went to with my work colleagues, my stay in Budapest and other trips around Europe - but I had kind of a writer's block. I have been reading so much good writing in The New Yorker et al. - hence the writer's block...

Now though it's been a year since I started doing this and it was the first anniversary of the best thing I had done so far: my trip to Rio (and the rest of South America). It was the 8th of April if I am not mistaken and I feel nostalgic. For the feeling of liberty, the apprehension and excitement of the unknown. At the same time, just as much as I had no idea exactly a year ago that a year later I would be sitting in Paris, in a gorgeous apartment writing an update on my life on a 2000-pound Dell computer - I have no idea what I will be doing a year from now. This is comforting because it seems to be a theme of my life of late, the desire to not know and not settle. And also frustrating, for this cannot be a legitimate theme for a life now, can it? Or perhaps, after all, why not. Temporarily at least.

Nostalgia has been a general feeling in this past month. Beginning with March 15th, my formerly favourite Hungarian national holiday, which happened to be an amazingly beautiful day in Paris this year reminded me of the excitement of 1988-89, the days when I was beginning to come to my senses as a semi-adult and that happened to correspond to my country coming to its senses politically. Then there was the trip to the house of my yuppie boss near the Garda lake, the place which I will always remember as a symbol of my Eastern European humiliation. The decadent eating and drinking feast that this supposed work-away week turned into more than made up for the lingering feeling of inferiority that had stayed with me because 17 years earlier it was by the Garda lake that me and my family (thanks to my parents' bad planning) had to munch on a rotten orange and a few pieces of potato chips before spending the night in an olive garden like homeless people due to lack of cash...

Of course, now, even that is a wonderful memory and a great story. A story that awakened memories of my mother and my family from our childhood and, in turn, started this deeper thought process and nostalgic pining-cum-analysing about my parents, their marriage, etc. No conclusions so far, but I want to believe that I will be able to come to an adult understanding of it all, if not for anything else then for learning how to live better.

(It is my fake cousin, Elisabeth's birthday by the way. We spent the day together in Paris, going to the theatre and hanging out at my place. I cooked rougets avec citron confits (oh, I am taking cooking classes now, they're great) and we finished a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, followed by a bottle of exquisite Italian wine, which explains my blabbering in part...)