I wake up with the sound of a pigeon at my window. I just hope that their presence doesn’t mean that they are preparing to make a nest again this year at my window. At first I get worried that I am late for work. I check the time, it is 7 am. I am reassured, but then I remember that I don’t even have to go to work. It is Saturday. I decide to stay in bed a bit more. This is going to be a purely relaxing weekend. The weather is supposed to be nice and I am quite excited about it. I just want to go out and wander in the streets and enjoy my day. Maybe do some shopping too. Past couple of weeks have been hectic both in terms of work and interactions and I have reached my limit. I need to be alone. From time to time I love to spend some time by myself to think in peace and recharge my batteries.

After about an hour I get up and go to the kitchen to make my coffee. I open a new bag of a Braziliancoffee that I find absolutely exceptional and make a moka. This is something that I do only on weekends. In case someone is interested, on weekdays I drink a large cup of french press. While the coffee is brewing, I prepare a few toasts with orange marmalade and pour myself a glass of some sort of multi-vitamin fruit juice. As always I have some vitamin deficiency. I take my breakfast and read the news online. The world is going crazy in an astronomical speed. We are just observers who try to find the humor in it all. Chavez is mummified for eternity. Ahmadinejad has hugged Chavez’s mother, which has made a huge scandal inside the country; how can he hug a woman who is not his family! Berlusconi is yet charged for another crime. The cardinals are gathered to elect the next pope. And the Queen has a stomach flu!

How exciting …. 

I take a quick shower and head out. Under the shy sun, I walk in the beautiful little streets of Strasbourg and think about my approaching fortieth birthday. They say that turning forty is an important milestone in one’s life. I agree. We don’t necessarily go into crisis, but it is a crucial time to make a resumé of what we have done and where we want to go from now on. Symbolically, we reach our “half-life”, more or less. Globally I am quite happy with how my life has turned out. I have the peace of mind that all that I have done so far have been based on my own decisions and I have never given in to social pressures. Good or bad, no one is to blame but me. Of course we all do mistakes, but as Steve Jobs said, we should not live someone else’s dream. I have not. But the big question is that what are my dreams for the future?

I don’t have an answer for this and I risk to need many more solitary weekends to think about it. I just know that if needed, I am ready to take radical changes in my route. For example why not a different job?

I let my thoughts carry me. I arrive to the main square. I watch the kids run in all directions and their parents follow them frantically. At one corner there is a musician playing some sort of unidentified instrument and at the other corner there is a secondhand book market. I automatically go towards the books. Since my childhood, I love getting lost in secondhand bookstores. I find that the smell of old books is so inviting and mysterious. Old books have a history with them. Someone has read them before us. Someone has touched the same pages and carried the book to places. They are these inanimate objects which have witnessed many lives. They have so much more character than their brand-new homologues.

I start to browse the books that are jammed inside a box when a tiny little book catches my eye. The format of the book, its yellowish pages that are not cut sharply, and its title: “Une Rencontre” intrigues me. Inside it is written that the book has been published in 3480 copies. The one in my hand is the 2586th copy. I find this charming, mostly because nowadays we do not find such information in our books. It gives a special importance to this one specific copy. While I read the book, I can not stop thinking about you. This is a  true story based on an encounter. A man, a famous editor, falling in love with a married woman. He finds himself in this impossible situation and to describe her, he decides to take notes of his feelings whenever he meets her. Later, a friend of his encourages him to publish his notes as a book. She finally gets to read the book when their story has come to its end and he has stopped loving her.

There are many similarities between this story that happened in early 20th century and ours. It seems that the ambiguity of their relationship, his frustrations, and her fears, are inherent to such situations. I like to think that our modern-age story is more original in the sense that by reading my stories soon after I write them, you stay present in my journey without really being here. This originality has added even more complexity to our relationship and has made me think a lot about whether to continue my “public” monologues with you or not. Finally, I decided to stop complicating things more than they actually are. The simple truth is that I take pleasure in living and expressing my feelings. I like writing about them and apparently you like reading them. As long as we are both aware of what is going on, I don’t see where is the problem. I will therefor continue to write my stories marinated with thoughts of you while they exist and if one day  they stop existing, or if someone else takes your place, well then I will write about that.

One of my decisions for the next forty years of my life is to live my life more simply. Let the flow carry me and try to take things easy. Let’s see how much I will succeed.