Answers to Questions WHERE AM I

 “Where am I?  

Try and imagine all the reasons you are in Paris.

Yes, Kattia but well before her there were other things.

You could point to Jaws, the movie that made you want to study oceanography which in turn caused you to take French as a language because you'd read it would help your chances at becoming an oceanographer.  That was before you realised you had no propensity for biology or science.  It was language all along, not science.  

And with that French class, your first real trip abroad; France and Paris.

What was it, 1980 Paris?  1979 Paris?  1981 Paris?  All hard to say, hard to remember.

But you got drunk for the first time in your life in France and stayed drunk for more than 40 years.

Something kept luring you back again and again.  Pit stops.

You went with Claudia, who had lived here for a year abroad and hated it.  You slept in the morning in Jardin de Luxembourg because the hostel didn't open until later.  You don't remember what you did with her there on your way to Spain.  You only remember getting violently ill from a meal in a restaurant before boarding a train to Milan via Switzerland, that snow-blurry ride of gastro diarrhea train terlets slowly evovling into the lush descent of greenery towards Italy then opening the windows to have a smoke and stare out at Milan train station.

You went other times with other birds but you went also with your father after a sea trip from England.

There was always soemething about being here and usually, from that first time as a teen, it involved getting incredibly fucked up, roaming the streets all night.  

But what lured you?  You spent years at first on the left bank, always near the Sorbonne.  

Can you remember what compelled you so often?  The music of accordians, the homeless sleeping underneath the bridges near the train station.  Getting drunk on red wine.  

Muddying about for decades until finally grabbing the bull by the horns.  Needing that lifeline, Kattia.  

Without Kattia there would probably be no Paris.

Kattia and Paris now define more of your life than anything else.

Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him”.