In three months and five days I will become an illegal immigrant in this country. It looks like I’m on the losing end of admin battles, which means that I have to live harder, savour every afternoon on the grass, remember everything more desperately. It feels like I’ve been robbed and have no choice but to live on the remainder that has been spared.
Somewhere along this week I felt that I’d finally made the transition from visitor to resident. I stopped saying ‘going back to the apartment’ and started saying “heading home”, realised that I now know the quirks of this new habitat — how long it takes for hot water to come out of the shower, the exact bend of each curve on the bike path, where the black cat with the red collar takes its afternoon naps, where everything is in the kitchen. Finally I’ve started bumping into friends in corners of school, recognising classmates on the M line bus, developing suppertime guilty pleasures with the lovely girls of #2089. Everyone has warm, smiling eyes.
Going to San Francisco for the weekend, and hopefully all bad feelings will at least temporarily disappear? Yuelin sent me this, from homer’s iliad, over whatsapp, and I’ll try to live by it this weekend. Seems apt for the situation: The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment could be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
retrospectif: a notebook 
black cat with red collar!
it’s pure black, not spotty like yours!!