Today I fly to New York for the second time. I went there in December 2013 to see where I was born… It was a big time for me. So I decided to share old posts from my previous blog. I hope to write a bit more about this trip.
There are symbolic destinations that move you deeply according to your story, faith and education. I imagine a trip to Mecca is the trip of a life time. New York gives me the same feeling.
My family lived in a small town near New York. My father worked on Lexington Av. As for me, I was born there. It turned into a personal fantasy but not only.
In France, the American culture is omnipresent. So many artists, novelists… But of course, all the images we have from famous places or from a certain lifestyle come from movies and series. It is as though we knew all these places… And particularly New York.
Works of fictions manage to convince us a world may exist since it is so well described. Yet, we will never go to Narr Shadda or Tatouïne. New York is the setting for many fictions, yet it does exist.
I have been walking in its streets for 4 days now and it’s real. It is slowly becoming a place for my own memories and a place of reality.
I am only beginning to relax after a few days here. I used the phrase trip of a lifetime, It feels like that.
We can spend a lifetime planning to do something: to go on a mysthical trip, to go and see where our family come from, to realise a dream or something we promise to ourselves… And yet living our life till the end without fullfilling any of it.
In my childhood and teenage years, we used to talk about coming back with my parents. They would show me where I was born and I would be admitted through the citizens gate at the airport. But the years went by.
I had to go back as an adult and by myself. Then my father died and the possibility to share this event with him too.
That’s why I am feeling the urge to live the moment since I arrived, to see everything to understand and feel. I am a poor tourist who wants to live up to the dream. I am ironical. But it has something to do with my story too.
I don’t know if I’ll come back to New York (yes indeed!) but I start calming down : enjoy the moment, welcome every new day and take care to make your wish and dreams come true.
With this inspirationnal quote that sounds so weak, New York, New York, here I come.
