Tuesday tantrum

"One day, I decided I wanted to work in [a specific, exclusive, pseudo-artistic niche of the appearance industry]", he explained with much studied nonchalance, another of his desperate effort to appear every inch the modern dandy. "So I knew that I had to go to bed with X", he added as casually as if he had applied to the job the traditional way, sending a resume, crossing his fingers and hoping for the best. (X, by the way, is a local celebrity, ice-queen of the local A-list fashion gays, friend to the VIP and accessorily a master of this trade). This took place over tea, a couple of days ago on Sunday. I stayed cool: I was too frozen to argue, I said "Oh all right, then!" and that was it.
I stayed cool until this morning. I don't know why nor how, but I woke up in a fit rage, thinking of this particular conversation, the mother of confessions of the same kind I heard countless times over the years. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Special friendships. Family connections. Money. Outstanding favors returned. I could (and I will, eventually) write a fat roman à clef on the shamelessness and lack of morality of some people. I'm enraged that this too-easy road is a boulevard over here, and almost everyone (with the few exceptions that -unfortunately- convinced me to stay) seems to be driving north and south on it.
I've had plenty of opportunity to join in the traffic but, although I was tempted more than once to get fianlly started, I never did. It's not me. Call it pride, integrity, stupidity, honesty -anything goes. Call me naive, call me stupid. "It happens everywhere, all the time." Oh, it does, doesn't it? A quickie, or an influental family member, as an alternative to rightful credentials, is that all it take?

 

"Why do you stay then?" would be a rightful question to ask. An irritating one too. Hmmmph, do I know? Well, for one, there is BF, and I decently can't take him into another of my renowned guilt trips. Then enters my being stubborn. "I decided I'll make it here and I will". When I forget the reason behind such stubborness, and fall into an unsastifying routine, how do you call it? I used to think that I was talented, that I could make a difference (and a living out of said talent). But all I can see is that I'm 33 and sitting at my computer at home  on a Tuesday afternoon and on the verge of fearing it's all too late now... 

On a scale of 1 to 10, how gullible am I? Or is it high time for me to beg Hillary and the State Department for a permanent visa?

The most interesting man in the world

I'm back to an old routine I had almost forgotten. I sit at my desk most of the day, scouting the Internet for anything that could be a possibly good lead for a new full-time, paid occupation. Outside, the skies are grey, the air is cold and the only reason that will convince me to venture out and brave these natural factors are basic needs: food, cigarettes, love (I sleep most nights at BF's, who lives near the gym) and the gym (more obsessed than ever, I plead guilty). 

What else is on my plate these days? Not a lot, but... I am currently writing for some extremely famous fashion publications (in "writing", you should understand "providing large amount of painfully researched, anonymous and underpaid contents.") Never bite the hand that feeds you, so they say, so I don't. I'm very happy about it.

Last July, I interviewed with the Italian branch of a globally famous music television, which was in need of writers. Nothing came out of it, but the woman I met was unusually kind - you can trust the expert of the Milan job market, I think I met with any kind of interviewers and rarely were they that nice. Today, I decided I should try my luck with her once again. What could I lose? The American in me wrote to her. "I'm back", I wrote. "I really loved talking to you last summer. Now that I have travelled the New World and a couple of the seven seas, you'd love me even more. Please, hire me. I'll be good for you." More or less. Bluntly to the point.

I couldn't quite believe I did that. Me, the person who used to excuse myself when you stepped on my foot? Am I finally able to market and sell myself? As if I were a beer? All this reminded me of a self-portrait I shot while in Albuquerque while under the influence. I decided that I am indeed The Most Interesting Man in The World. Like the guy in the Dos Equis commercial, who incidentally gave me excellent career advice just today. 

BTW, the lady answered my email. They don't actually need me. She changed job. She's not sure she recognized me. She forwarded my email to a colleague (who happens to be a man.  Don't get me wrong, I love men, I tend to prefer working with them, rather than with women, but I'm better at interviewing with women. Understand who can). 

But anyway, in the end, who cares? In this new era, if you close the door, you can trust the MIMITW to break in through the window. And no, I'm not on Ritalin!

Glee...

...makes me very happy. Long time I haven't laughed that much, maybe since the first season of 30 Rock. The perfect watch on these solitary and cold January nights. And it reinforces this weird fixation I've had for some time with Ohio. Did I mention I miss America? 

Back in town

This has been the longest hiatus in the story of this blog - due not to a lack of creative drive, but essentially to a crucial lack of time (what with Christmas and the New Year, and travelling for both occasions to Paris first and then to Istanbul) and of a decent Internet connection. Blame it on something or someone else – I can do that, I worked in fashion such a long time. I guess I also needed the break too, to come back to this blog with a fresh mind and a renewed dose of enthusiasm.

It has been exactly a month since I came back to Europe. Three months in the USA, strangely, didn’t feel they went by that quickly, as it often happens when I am having a good time. The past month in Europe, in comparison, has flown by so quickly it is almost scary.

I moved back into my flat yesterday, and slept in my own bed for the first time since early September. And yes, it was weird. As in, what am I doing here? And today, I woke up early and sat at my desk, and asked myself the big question. What’s next?

I fully expected my return here to be hard, and it exceeded my previsions, in many, many ways, thank you for asking. Mainly getting used again to social behaviors and codes I didn’t miss for a sec when I was in New Mexico. I fully expected that at some point, I would have to sit down and wonder what to do, and this is it, here I am. And I expected to get very depressed by it all, but I’m not. On the contrary. I am surviving. I have projects, that may be blurry at the moment, but I have them. And I’m changed, as in much better. And that is priceless.

Miss America

I will miss a lot, when I fly back to Europe on Saturday. I will miss people who smile at me, for no reason, be it in a shop, in the street or in a bar or wherever. I will miss people who are curious to talk and get to know me, even before they give in to the exotic factor when they learn I’m French/European/a legal resident of Italy. I will miss people who ask me how was my day so far, even though I just meet them enough time to pay gas or cigarettes. I will miss people who can say “I appreciate”.

I will miss half and half in my coffee, event though it classifies as pure evil in the book of the muscle-conscious gay in me. I will miss ready-made oatmeal that comes in a zillion flavors and provide my healthy, protein-full breakfast in just one minute. I will miss a nation that has a coffee named for itself, incidentally the one I drink gallons of everyday. I

will miss homemade buttermilk pancakes on Sunday morning, and I will miss being able to order bacon and scramble eggs anywhere, even in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. I will miss being able to take a close look at death-provoking junk food, balanced by my decision to eat well and healthy. I will miss pomegranate juice and cranberries in virtually everything. I will miss the shocked faces when I order ice tea or lemon water without ice. I will miss the refills. I will miss the massive portions in restaurants, and I will miss when waiters ask me if I want to bring the leftovers home in a box.

I will miss my gym, and its rainbow-wide variety of people, from the cute gay who knows he’s cute but not yet he’s gay, to the 105 year-old woman who religiously spends 30 minutes every night hanged by her feet. Among others. I will miss the general unaffected friendliness of people there. I will miss JJ when he sits on my butt when I do push-ups. I will miss the drive home at night from the gym, especially when I get that two-second glimpse of the city lights from the freeway ramp.

I will miss being on a close time-zone with The Muse in Seattle. I will miss speaking English all day long. I will miss the monthly DUI notices in the local newspaper. I will miss the free press. I will miss listening to NPR on the radio, and not on my computer. I will miss buying Vanity Far a week before the rest of the world, and not paying half a kidney for it.

I will miss Tivo and TVR, Jeopardy and American Football and its galore of adorable All-American players. I will miss all these sitcoms and shows and series that can’t be seen even online in Europe, and that I eventually see at the price of a serious breach of the law. will miss the local evening news, and the jock-ish guy with red cheeks who does the weather with the seriousness of a priest celebrating his first mass. I will miss Conan and Jay and the others, when they keep talking and I should really go to bed. 
I will miss infomercials for kitchen appliances.

I will miss hearing the same mix of Michael Jackson songs on the radio in my car, and masochistically listening to the conversion stories on that hardcore Catholic radio that very often made me fume with anger. 
I will miss TV advertising for all kinds of medicine, the most poetic ones I ever saw in my life, with a voice over explaining that side effects may include severe depression leading to suicide, 4-hour long painful erections, losing the sight or the ability to reproduce. 



I will miss people-watching at Walmart, shopping at Target’s for briefs and plain white T’s (I can open a wholesale business of them when I’m back to Europe). I will miss that everything is so cheap, and not even considering the Euro/Dollar conversion rate.

I will miss my car, I will miss driving and the strange, new, manly confidence I found in it. I will miss the gas stations, and the shocked look on the face of clerks there when I tell them that gas is at least twice more expensive back home.

I will miss Albuquerque, the weird industrial downtown, the desert and the mountain, the chilly air in the morning, the amazing birds I saw flying everywhere, which made me feel as if I was inside the wildlife issue of National Geographic.
I will miss the longest conversations I've had in ages. I will miss my hosts, my friends, the people I got to be in contact everyday. I will miss how people are so proud that I came to New Mexico or California. I will miss that they offer anything, from help in anything they can help with to hospitality. I will miss my newfound ability to make small talk even with the trees.

I will miss the simplicity of people, their openness, an overall parity in human relationships. I will miss those bits and pieces of any kinds that make everyday life easier. I will miss the smells and the tastes, the sounds, the views, the opportunities. 
I will miss understanding how this country works. I will miss how its people aren’t afraid to say loud what they like or believe in.

I will miss all this, and a lot more. I will miss the distance, both the physical and the abstract ones. I will miss the feeling of thinking many times a day, “Oh my God, I AM here!". I will miss this country and its people, its good and its bad. its truths and its contradictions
I will miss feeling so strangely free, I will miss feeling so… myself. I firmly intend to bring back to Europe a lot more than three bursting suitcase.

Fortuitous 49er

San Francisco: I went, I saw, and I am still beyond words.

Last week, while virtually all of the USA were binging on their Thanksgiving turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, I was busy running my own, though non-culinary, marathon in Northern California. The challenge I set myself was to make the most of my 4-day Thanksgiving break. And see as much of San Francisco as I could. And I did. I walked nonstop, uphill, downhill, from neighbourhoods to parks, from landmarks to places highlighted on my to-do list. Till my toes bleed, and my head burst - and yes, they did.

Seeing San Francisco was a dream come true.

To make it short, I loved everything, the architecture, the topography, the views, the unpredictable, yet not that awful, weather. I loved the vibe, American yet European yet Californian yet so distinctive. I loved that I saw a lot, but just the emerging tip of the iceberg. I loved that getting to know the city may take a lifetime.
I loved the Golden Gate Bridge, so much that when I first saw it (by chance, at a corner of Larkin Street near the wharves, when I wasn’t really expecting it), I remained motionless, speechless, grinning and on the verge of tears, like the mad man that I am. I took zillions of pictures of the bridge, from every side and end, I crossed it by foot lengthwise once and a half. There, I felt on the tip of the world, and on top of the world, yet also in the middle of it.

I could say a lot about everything I saw and loved, but nothing that had not been written or documented before. What I loved best were the San Franciscans – and their gorgeous houses. From the strangers in the Castro bars to the old vegan woman who tried to gain me to her cause while riding the Muni downtown, from the check-in lady at the airport who volunteered to post the postcard from my grandmother I had forgotten about, to those who smile and start chatting when they wait next to you at a red light, or serve you coffee, or engage in a long conversation for no other reason than sheer pleasure.

I am particularly thankful to Lyndon, the taxi driver in his late 60s (who came to San Francisco in the 1970s to live his life as a gay as far away as possible from rural Ohio) and who took me to an hour-and-a-half long grand tour of San Francisco by night. From the Castro, to the Golden Gate Bridge, from telegraph Hill to the Mission, from the Tenderloin to Union Square - and everything in-between, he told me everything, what was what, what happened where, sharing all his San Francisco memories, with an infectious enthusiasm.

I am also grateful for Marie, the main protagonist of a little (embarrassing) anecdote that happened to me in the Haight: I never thought that a total stranger would be so gratuitously kind to me, when everyone else in Europe would have given me maximum evil.

And then, to end this post on a mysterious note, I saw a San Franciscan spirit at Dolores Park on Saturday, lying on the grass, enjoying the warm rays of a late November sun, waiting a bit nostalgically for his true self to open his eyes and move back from the other coast, to where he totally and only belongs, as a duckling on the pond.

Now if you excuse me, I certainly will come back to all this later, but I have to dash or I might just unreasonably, predictably go Tony Bennett on you.

Make me smile, gimme a bridge...

Two months and two weeks

Two months and two weeks is the (almost) exact amount of time I spent in the USA so far. Twelve days is the remaining time I have in the USA, and I can’t help but feel a lump in my throat (or is it a knot in my stomach?) growing not so slightly every day.

This has been an amazing experience, a mind-shaping, life-changing experience. I heard and saw and read so much about this country that I thought I knew it. Of course, ever since I can remember, the USA have been one of the most discussed, commented, loathed or loved countries. I thought I had a pretty clear picture in mind, and yet everything here was a discovery. The geography, the culture, the people, the places, the habits, the politics and what else? Seeing things, experiencing life from within is always a different story. And, I found, a rather pleasant one, to keep it understated.

Certainly, there are beliefs and behaviours I don’t totally agree with, truths I would like the Americans to think about and consider, and maybe change. Surely, I mostly experienced a privileged side of the American life. Evidently, there are millions of people in this country who may not be living the American Dream as I did, on a daily basis. But I realized that, behind the (vacillating) economical and political Superpower, there are a large, diverse, often very lovable people, a people with creeds and ideas and beliefs identical or radically different to mine, but all the same respectable.
These are people who can smile, make small talk, people who will make the effort to remember your name, enquire about you, your day or your family, people who are genuinely interested in other people, even though their geography and their geopolitics are not that good. People, I realise now, who have an outstanding sense of community, and that was the most important to me.

But America is too big to be summed up in a post and after just a couple of months. I had a fantastic time here, I learnt a lot about myself, what I like, what is important to me and what’s not. My next dream would be to get to see more of it, and meet more of them. Because they made me feel so special and welcome. Because they helped me realise that, unlike what Europe has been telling me for 33 years, everything is possible. Even for me.

I kinda dread my coming back to Europe. Big time, man!

My kind of call-girl

There is a blog I discovered a couple of months ago, that I really like. One of those that keeps me hooked, until I go through its whole archives and read every single word that its author wrote. The heyday of this blog was a couple of years ago; there is nothing much to read these days, apart from the occasional updates. BUT… this blog was so successful, that it was turned not only into a book series and a mini-series (haven’t read the books, but loved the mini-serie a lot…)

It’s called Diary of a London Call Girl, by Belle de Jour. Whatever your views on prostitution (and once again, there is a raging debate going on online, that I’m not willing to open or bring here…), there is no denying that this woman is not only amazing, but that she has big balls. And boy, can she write. I love her style, I love her intellectual honesty, and the outlook she has on herself, her career as a call-girl (though it was a 14-month, temporary occupation), other people and where our society stands on such sensitive matters. Prudish people may be shocked to the core, but I’m an old monkey and I wasn’t. I just loved it. Belle de Jour remained anonymous through the years, which didn’t prevent her to publish articles on various women’s issues in the British press, where she was, of course, both loved and loathed. Nobody ever saw her face, knew her name or anything about her. Speculators went regularly crazy, of course.

She remained anonymous until last weekend, when she outed herself in the Sunday Times (so that she could short-circuit another Sunday tabloid who hunted her and was about to out her). The decision must have been hard to take, yet she got the upper hand (cynics already claim she did that on purpose, a publicity stunt or something, but I don’t really care for that). It turns out that the woman is actually called Dr Brook Magnanti, and she is a cancer researcher in one top British hospital (if there is such a concept, of course…). She is not as cute and foxy as was Billie Piper, the actress who incarnated Belle de Jour on TV, yet she has something fascinating. She is a successful woman, who knows what she does and what she did, and l like that. And despite what one can think of prostitution, she remains a very likeable character. Read her coming-out interview here, and of course, if you have time and are in search of a compelling blog reading, her Diary of a London Call Girl.

I might not go into prostitution myself, but her writing remains, to this day, one of my favorite online, and Belle/Brooke is definitely one of my blog role- model.

I left my heart in ABQ / NYC / SFO.

I should have been in New York, as I write these lines. But I'm not. And I can hardly get over it. I will, eventually, but I haven't felt so sad and disappointed in a very long time. OK, before you try to remind me, hard things in life are different, and frustrating as this is, my life is not at risk. Still.

Everything was ready.
I bought a plane ticket early on, (which was rather cheap, considering not only the higher prices I'd pay for shorter flights in Europe, and the actual distance I'd be covering). Selecting a flight proved tricky, as flying from ABQ to NYC implies at least one stopover, if not two, to get to one of the nearest big airports (either Dallas, Houston, Salt Lake City, Phoenix or Denver). And short domestic flights in the US mean small, propeller planes or MD80. Planes I really hate, they scare me bigtime, because they shake a lot, and because here (as happened to me between Denver and Albuquerque), the hostess won't say "Your safety jacket is located under your seat..." but "In case of an emergency, grab the cushion of your seat, and hug it hard for your life". I know that the probability of falling in water on a domestic flight here is extremely low, but that was exactly what the passengers of flight US whatever who ended water-skiing on the Hudson also thought. Give me a large plane with reactors under its wings, that's all I ask.

The most important, the goal of that trip was that I was meeting BF in NY. Our mid-term reunion vacation, in a sense.
I had booked a room at the Chelsea Hotel, maybe not the nicest NY hotel, but certainly not the worst: I always wanted to stay there, because of the aura of the place and because I love the Leonard Cohen song so much. I was really looking forward to spending time with him, in a city we both like but know little, to be together, in a place that is neutral, foreign to our relationship. I know it has been a bit hard on him, me being all happy-chappy here, and he home in Milan, and I missed him much more than I thought I would. We had 3 days packed with a state-visit-like program. As time went by and the date was nearer, I grew even more excited.

That was notwithstanding the flu. I fell ill the day after Halloween, and I just start to feel better now. I went delirious, with a temperature culminating at 39.8°C/ 103.6°F for over 24 hours. We really feared it was H1N1. It turned out it was not, thank God. I stayed in bed all week, and my temperature was still too high for me to board a plane last night, when I was supposed to fly early morning. I had to take a decision and a hard one, and I cancelled. It was the right thing to do, even though I deeply regret it now. But controls at airports are too strict to take a chance, and I didn't start to get better until today. And it's always so easy to challenge a decision once the dice have been cast. I'll be a good sport. Yet frustration, sadness, disappointment made me shed quite a few tears yesterday and today (and being sick far from home made things actually worse...). BF is flying to NY, I insisted he didn't cancel anything, and our friend Laughing F. has accepted to go with him at the last minute. Friends in need...

I counted my blessings, remembered how lucky I've been for this experience here, and promised myself to use at best all the good energy I packed here. And I realised that the States are not as far as I thought they were (as in, I can come back soon...)
Five more weeks and I fly back to Europe. But in the meantime, I have to schedule a weekend in Seattle, as I need to spend some quality time with my artistic godmother/litterary midwife and then... Then I will fulfill one of my oldest dreams. Before I go back, I am so flying to San Francisco. San Fran-fucking-cisco... The city that has obsessed me forever. I can't wait. And the idea litterally dries my tears.

A glimpse into eternity

When I woke up this morning, I felt positive that there could be no better Sunday program than to drive the 70 miles north to Santa Fe. I settled surprisingly well and fast to my new community on Albuquerque’s Westside, so much that I sometimes get very lazy to go discover this New World, when I’m on my own and have time. I needed this small escape, as I had to make some hardcore thinking about what will happen in 7 weeks, when I’m due to fly back to Europe. I hate the idea right now, but I have to face it and address the issue. I’ve been surfing on a tidal wave of positivity lately, and I want to use it to make the most of what’s ahead of me. For once.

When I was in Santa Fe, last time, a month or so ago, the whole place felt like a beehive that would have just fallen off the tree: people from everywhere had gathered there to enjoy the most perfect day of Indian summer. The Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque was taking place, and must have convinced many of its out-of-state visitors not to miss a chance to visit the capital city of New Mexico (and one of the earliest town founded in what wasn’t even yet the USA). The trees were golden and red and green, the sun was shining, in that unmistakable perfect blue that I only ever saw here or in Greece. H and I walked through the city, visited the Georgia O’Keeffe museum, had a late Sunday brunch in a diner on the Plaza and made our way back home via the Turquoise Trail (passing through some of the most memorable panoramas I was ever given to see, and the funky, impressive and admirably preserved ghost towns of Los Cerrilos and Madrid).

However, today, Santa Fe was (exceptionally, I dare hope, as this is only my second visit there) loaded with melancoly. Indian summer had given way to a more European, non-descript autumn day, visitors were nowhere to be seen, and the locals must have stayed home by their fireplaces to get, deservedly, warmer. It started raining as soon as I parked my car. I made my way to the plaza, when hail started to fall. The few people around ran away like cockroaches in the light. On the north side of the Plaza, under a covered gallery bordering the Palace of the Governors, Native Americans were selling traditional jewelry, a place that is traditionally reserved for them and their business. They looked as gloomy as the weather. (I should write more about that: with just the little I read here about their history—and after seeing a terrifying exhibit at Denver International Airport on them—I can easily understand the reason of such an hereditary sense of dreariness on their face). It was too wet and too cold and too weird to stay in Santa Fe. I had come here to change my minds, and do a bit of people-watching, but it was obviously not worth the gas today.

For a moment, I sat in my car, on the parking lot behind the San Francisco de Assisi cathedral. I smoked a cigarette, listening to some random piano concerto on the local classical radio. The sadness of the tunes matched the athmosphere of the city. I felt as paralyzed in that moment, as I feel sometimes (as I've felt often?) in my life. I need to go somewhere, home or to other obvious places in life, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t move. As if not moving kept me from making bad decisions. I have a lot on my mind going on, despite being as happy as I can’t remember having been in ages. The car park was empty, until I saw a priest in one of the car’s mirror, making his way to the center of the lot. A young guy soon came from the opposite towards him. My mind racing with every kind of worst ending for that encounter in such a strange place, I felt very much the town's Peeping Tom. But I shouldn’t have been so dramatic: the priest gave the guy the Holy Communion, in the middle of a public parking under the rain. As quickly as they arrived, they left, each walking away in opposite directions.It was all so strange I couldn't help smiling, despite my not-so-funny-inclined spirits of the day.

As I drove out of the city, the sun ripped the curtain of clouds open, and it was summer all over again. The weather in New Mexico makes me think of this accelerated videos of natural elements: it’s common here to experience the four seasons in just over an hour. I drove south, not in a hurry to go back to Albuquerque. I was up for novelty and nothing big had happened. Not even the strange communion qualified. I followed Interstate 25, the late afternoon sun in my eyes, when I saw a road sign for one of the many Indian pueblos in the Rio Grande valley. I exited the freeway, without really thinking about it and entered a different world. I entered a movie, a western. I expected to see wagons, and John Wayne chasing Indians. The landscape was amazing. I drove through a couple of Native-Americans villages. These pueblos are the social centers of the thousands of Indian reservations within New Mexico (and Utah, Arizona and Colorado, for all I know). Their land is considered sacred, and no one is allowed to build there, nor live I believe, if not them. As they are tax-exempt, they often fall for too easy business, such as building atrocious casinos, that provide good cash flow and tend to destroy their own community. Their villages are utterly sad, beyond words. At best, they look like refugees camps. I kept going.

The paved road turned into a dirt road after a couple miles, as I kept driving along, up and down, past gentle hills and small canyons. Cows and occasional horses were gazing on the ground of what seemed like huge ranches. I kept driving until I reached a very isolated gas station, outside of the pueblo of Pena Blanca, after driving for about half an hour. As it is located on sacred land, it sells tax-free goods, mostly tobacco, and Indian artefacts (made in Oregon, upon checking, hardly the most Native American traditional state…) and the place was packed with people, that had appeared out of nowhere. I realised, looking at the map, that I had made a large loop, and returned close to the Interstate: these people had made a good-deal stop, a small detour well publicized on billboards along the freeway, before going back to their un-sacred places. I sat down outside, in the early-evening cold, looking at the grim looking Native Americans running the place, a group of three healthy-looking jocks playing mock football while filling their car with gas, an overweight white couple, a Latino family. One country, so many people. I watched the sky, and the horizon, and filled my head with them. I had my camera, but I didn’t take any pictures, on purpose. They would never give justice to what I was seeing, to the experience I was living. They would never render the emotion I was feeling. I engraved that instant, that panorama in my head, as thoroughly as I could, promising myself that I would only return to them in my mind, not by clicking on a thumbnail on my computer.

The deep blue of the sky in the late afternoon, the dark red of the rocks and earth, the washed color of the vegetation, the openness of the panorama, repeating itself indefinitely. Those clouds, huge, gigantic, mammoth-like, that only served as a dramatic background to the other elements and emphasizing them. I thought of what I lived in the past months, of who I am and what I want. And I felt so incredibly good. It was one of these moments when I feel that I can reach eternity with just my hand.

A tentative example to illustrate what I saw today (the picture taken last month nearby, outside Los Cerillos).

Deptford. Again.

I may be thousands of miles away from my native Europe, but there are ties that can be severed. Such is my fixation with the green city of Deptford. Have I ever told you about Deptford? I'm sure I did, but in case you don't remember, you can refresh your mind here and here.
I realized lately that I'm a trendsetter. Or some kind of visionnary, if you prefer. I was the first to link the London jet-set and Deptford (in some very indirect way, but still...). I was the first (or among them) to report about the newfound uber-coolness of the place. And see, the rich and famous and royals, as HRH The Duchess of Cornwall (formerly known as Camilla Parker-Bowles, a woman I really like, and would have tea with, if she ever asked) follows my cue.

Once again, you may not know it yet, but this blog is the voice of what will happen tomorrow. Mark my words...