This trip has been a long time coming, such a long time that, even as I write this, less than 4 days from my flight, the whole idea of moving to Madrid is still so dreamy, blurred and embellished by wishes and fantasy. I haven’t started packing, but I’ve quit my jobs, moved all of my stuff back home, got my visa, said goodbye to my best friends and those close to me, bought my plane ticket, got an email from the director of the bilingual programme at my school, etc etc. and yet I’m still pretty chill besides the random waves of emotion that have started washing over me these last two weeks or so.
Everyone keeps asking me if I’m excited. And I am, but I don’t think this is going to be real for me until I set foot in the Barajas airport, until I see the skyline of Madrid, hear the first slight lisps of Castilian Spanish and the vosotros form. Even at that point, after a 7 hour overnight flight (which will be the longest flight I’ve ever taken), jetlagged and dazed, I feel like things will be decidedly unreal. After the airport, I’ll be headed to a hotel for about 2 weeks for orientation and a consistent bed while I try to find some place to live. Housing will definitely be the biggest hurdle to getting adjusted, but I have faith that something will work out. There also seem to be a lot of people from my program that want to live in the same barrios as me, so even if we struggle, we’ll struggle together.
It will be sometime after I get my apartment, after I’ve started to make my daily commute on the metro a regular activity, after I’ve found some bars and cafés and learned some street names, when it finally sets in that this is my life, this is where I’m living, and most of all, that I’ve made it.
To conclude, a few strophes from Apollinaire’s “Les collines”
Au-dessus de Paris un jour
Combattaient deux grands avions
L’un était rouge et l’autre noir
Tandis qu’au zenith flamboyait
L’éternel avion solaire
L’un était toute ma jeunesse
Et l’autre c’était l’avenir
Ils se combattaient avec rage
Ainsi fit contre Lucifer
L’Archange aux ailes radieuses
….
Jeunesse adieu jasmin du temps
J’ai respiré ton frais parfum
A Rome sur les chars fleuris
Chargés de masques de guirlandes
Et des grelots du carnaval
High over Paris one day
Two enormous airplanes fought
One was red and the other black
Meanwhile at the zenith flamed
The eternal solar plane
One was all my youth
And the other was the future
They raged against each other
As Lucifer struggled against
The radiant-winged Archangel
…
Youth farewell jasmine of time
I’ve inhaled your fresh perfume
On flowered wagons in Rome
Bearing masks and garlands
And bells of Carnaval
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