I watched Amelie tonight, and I am now lovesick for Paris. I was exhausted while I was there, but the sight of the Metro stops in the movie brought back everything--
the strange, acrid smell underground that was a mix between machine grease and stale air, the bright "Sortie" signs, the endless steps of stairs, the advertisements that somehow seem less intrusive and more decorative than ads here....fumbling around in my pockets for the black-striped green Metro ticket, and squinting to see whether it's been used or not...the Seine at night...sharing a joint with a bunch of random French guys who spoke almost no English so that I had to communicate with them in my horrible Spanish...Falling asleep on the bridge to the Ile de la Cite....sitting in the sun in front of the fountain at the Luxembourg Gardens...getting ass-drunk and stumbling around Sephora on the Champs Elysses...I can close my eyes and imagine it quite clearly, but there is a good chance that I will not see this place again until I am in a completely different stage of life.

I need another journey.

"...We cannot see who we truly are; we cannot see that we are not free. This is why humans resist life. To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive--the risk to be alive and express what we really are. We have learned to live life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else."

--Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements