Persistance rétinienne

Sunday 1st of July

I'm back home, to France, my home.
Only for 3 weeks. But I'm back.

I was not even in the plane that I was already back.

The check-in line : families, children, friends, I hear French everywhere.
I'm happy. Happy not to have to think to understand.
Like if, even after 9 months in the States, my brain is still a mess, fucking confused when someone speaks English, and it tries to find the connection to this weird database, while saying "Fuck, I should know by now where are these wires !! "
My french wires are always connected, somehow.

It smells like holidays, people going or coming from. I really enjoy the company of the people surrounding me. Travels are always kind of stressfull.
But I don't feel stressed.
Even when a guy from the french airline starts to explain the policy : hand luggage no more than 5 kg.
"What is a hand luggage"? I ask to myself. I have my purse strategically huge to put books, sweaters, food. It does not count as hand luggage. I try to weigh my backpack and ask to my travel companion I met in the shuttle. " 5.5 maybe but you're ok".
9kg says the employee.
I then take off my bag, some shoes and my jacket saying my laptop is all left.
I'm lying. I've still a few gifts, and flip-flop over there, but I just don't want to transfer all to my other luggage. She nods. "That's fine. If there's a laptop, that's fine."
I feel relieved.
Among all the opened luggage and the clothes and stuff everyone is trying to organize at best, stressed by this "new" travel condition nobody was really aware, I was not really stressed.

I get a bit stressed however, when I arrived to the boarding gate. Sits fulled everywhere.
I try to find a peaceful place to wait.
Too much changes, too much trouble. I need to just sit and breathe.

The couples I sit next are all French, with hand luggages more than 5kg. There's a suspicious smell in the air that makes one employee checks the weight of the luggage again.
I don't understand anything.
But people are angry. And they make it clear to the guy: "What's that? We pay for having more than 5kg and you're still checking over an over?!"

I don't feel peace.
The guy across me is playing with a keyboard. "They're fucking assholes" he grumbles, adding these indefinable sounds "pff", "shit" and "what's the point".
His girlfriend next to her, she's reading. She does not even face her friend, but between 2 pages, she says "1 hour late ! That sucks. THEY suck!"
"Yes, they're assholes".
And an older couple next to me also complain for themselves but aloud like if they were talking to everybody but without talking to someone exactly. Maybe searching for espousal in the eyes of the others.

I'm not even in the plane that I'm already back.

I stand up, take all my stuff with me and search for a more peaceful seat. Maybe my laughing american travel companion is standing close by?
That's all I can do right now. I don't feel like hearing insults and negative thoughts.
I need rest. That's all.

Hours later, in the train to home. I ask a stranger for a cell phone. She helps me.
People are nice everywhere.
She helps me but still, a bit worried, she asks "You're not calling abroad?" Of course not, I think.
But still it's akward. Do I look like a foreigner or is it just because I got in the train in the airport station?
Same feeling in the press shop, while I'm handing what is for me a 20 € bill. The girl says "Oh, we don't have change for this, here!"
This? But it's 20 €!?
Looking my hand, looking back to her "Oh I'm sorry! I mistaked. I took mexican pesos instead!".
"You're going to Paris? Maybe you can find a way to change it there?".

Going to Paris? Fuck no! I'm 10 miles from my home town.
With my flip-flop, my californian hat and my mexican pesos, I'm back home.