The unbearable lightness of being happy.

Well nobody seemed to enjoy my binary coded update. I became somehow fed up with the blogosphere in the past weeks seeing that:

- I wrote 100 pages about it in 3 weeks and it's enough to overdose on anything 'wired'*

- I don't have Internet @ home** for now

- I am paid to deal with forums and blogs all day long

- London's e-cafes usually make me want to cry

- I have a life (...I know!!! How silly it is to always realise that your internet consumption decrease as your life and activities increase? Makes me ponder on the content of the past 5 years of my life, really...)

* Makes me think, last week my husband stated that Wired was 'so 90's' and kind of passe. I begged to differ, even if I do realise that Wired's hours of glory were circa 1995 when Coupland wrote pieces for them.

** Houseshare in an IKEA-ish (...) flat in a very cool aera of East London, with two Italians and one New Zealander. I hate IKEA, but I love the flat.

I had a weird conversation with Mohammed on Friday night, in which I tried to explain something that never happened to me before. I am, as for right now, quite contempt and happy with my life. While years and years of living in France were spent trying to forge a plan to escape the country forever, now I actually done it and secured a place to live and a job and well, a new life in less than a couple of weeks, I don't really feel to need to run away.

Yet.

Mohammed, being the eternal optimist, underlined that happiness was very realtive and such a state of mind does not last. I said well, it's reassuring.

And I meant it. Being contempt sends brains into a lethargic state which provoke laziness.

That said, being depressed does just the same thing.

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This is something I wrote to someone when I came back from Canada to France last June. A year ago already. Those periods of transition between countries are always eerie and just plain Bizzare.

"When I last talked to you I was standing in the boarding aera of Montreal's airport; trying to use all my 25 cents change phoning you before leaving the country. The flight was uneventful, we did not sleep, and watched Ocean's 12; which is bad but you are right, good fashion designers were hired.

Upon our arrival Boris and I were both drunk (both with the free gin tonic Air Canada gave us, and truly what was exhaustion). It's funny how true it is that french people are mean compared to people from Quebec, who are always smiling and helpful. My first contact with France was the policeman asking for my passport; which he violently grabbed from my hand without even a 'Bonjour', looking at me suspiciously. Same happened for Boris, but it got us lauughing; that's how people are in France: they don't give a fuck about being fakely polite...but quite franky it is ridiculous most of the times.

We then spent a good hour trying to pick up our suitcases. You have to understand the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris is probably the less organized one in the world; it is huge and round (!!), which makes it extremely difficult to find your way inside. So after fighting with two or three bitchy people, and after being disgusted at the sight of topless Quebecois fat hairy men changing their t-shirt in front of everyone (it is my understanding that french people are too conservative when it comes to this kind of things, while Americans don't have complexes, see obese girls in mini skirts just because they can, that would never happen in France), we finally found our way out and chain-smoked (Players light for me... I still have a part of Canada with me this way, and smile everytime i light one).

When i finally arrived home it was a bit too much for me. It is all too depressing, coming back to a city like this one after living with close to 2 million of people in Vancouver. Everything feels like i left last week. What hurts the most I think is being able to move automatically in the house, find my way without thinking. Even after 9 months abroad, I have this instinctive way of doing things around the house, like turning the TV on or sitting on the same sofa or how to start the microwave.

It reminds me of a silent yet deafeaning routine I thought I'd escape for good going to Vancouver and leaving France, and it's killing me. So many little details I can't cope with here, the news with the same old showmen, and the same weathermen on tv, and the ads, the newspapers in french everywhere, the way signs on the road are different then they are in Canada, everything seems to underline the fact that I liked life there better because I somehow fitted.

(...) Me, coming back here makes me more determined to leave again, everything around me is devilishly screaming 'Jessica you don't belong there'. I am just really glad I am off to London now, because if I had stayed here, at home; for the whole summer, I don't doubt I would be the most unhappy person on earth. London will save me for the summer at least."

Ahhh, and one year later I find myself in London again, this time for more than two months, and this time definitely, infinitely more happy than I was a year ago.