To be back from the land of relax into the land of rashness is always a bit of a shock. Lately the effect that experts have came to called post vacation depression (really?) are longer lasting than they used to be.
Maybe I am not tasting London properly. I guess that routine is an old habit and, like all old habits, it dies hard.
I got used to an area, to having a walk in the same streets, to buying the coffee in the same coffee house where I always find some familiar faces, and suddenly a huge urge to want all this to remain the way it is just for me spoils the frugality of the moment; I become aware of the impossibility of enjoying this very moment because I am conscious that nothing lasts forever, that soon this scenery will change into something unrecognisable. And I am jealous of all those who will come and will find it lovely in the same way I do.
But London resists permanence. In that sense is not a city; it looks more like a human organism embracing change, throwing itself into the arms of experimental streams of cultures and subcultures that emerge and disappear at the speed of what the daily fashion dictates.
London always has to catch its breath because it's eager to reach the goal that none knows where it is. But its perseverance in finding it, impulses its growth, its greed, its postmodern anxiety that spreads in the air its unique scent.
London smells to the certainty that we are capable of enormous achievements, that we can master the world without moving our position in space. In here the impression of being in control and out of it moulds our present hopes to reach another chapter in the history of humanity. In here, humanity is alive. Constant movement of particles creating and destroying life.
Maybe I miss the sunsets and having the gift of finding meaning in the North where I belong. But not questioning myself and what I believe in, would be a dull way of spending my time.
This city agitates my consciousness like no other place does, and that can be quite an addictive substance to live without.