Le NeoSpleen de Paris

I have yet to meet a person who has not suffered a major/minor depression after having lived two years in Paris! Paris, the city of love, promises to many way more than it can offer sometimes creating in individuals a delusional acute state known as the  Paris Syndrome. Japanese tourists, dreamers, cinephiles, wanderers are only few amongst many susceptible to the Paris Syndrome. However, people that are destined to Paris for more than a couple of years experience the city and its people differently. At the beginning, Paris' inhabitants may experience an overwhelming child-like appreciation of the beauty of every street, cafe, or park, sometimes to the point of experiencing a Stendhal Syndrome. With time, however, this beauty fades as we cement our images of Paris,  even of the Paris we have not explored. We assume many places are reincarnations of others and we are so convinced that our perception is biased to prove our intuition right regardless of what new places might offer. This slowly leads to anhedonia, the loss of pleasure, and perhaps existentially and morally towards nihilism.  And based on our genetic and environmental predisposition to depression, this eventually leads to mild and long depressions, such as dysthima or major acute depressions that are all vicious and bottomless circles that are only curable with enough will power and support from family and friends. I shall call this last phase "le mal de Paris" which hints to Baudelair's "fleurs de mal" and almost every poet's and artist's "mal de vivre" althought perhaps I could just update Baudelair's "Spleen de Paris" by calling it  "le NeoSpleen de Paris" such that it accommodates a century of human progress or regress.

Le NeoSpleen de Paris, is contagious! You might get it in the metro when nobody is smiling, not even musicians as they play or kids as they don't. You might get it on the streets whether from the homeless beggars or from fellow inhabitants that have so much convinced themselves of being busy to avoid the void, or you might as well get it in restaurants when your waiter does not expect to be tipped or rewarded and has been already suffering that NeoSpleen for years!

It is only after the second year that you become aware of the NeoSpleen epidemic and the options to cure it are expensive and limited:

- You are suddenly convincing yourself that alcohol/drugs are inevitable to calm you and many of your alcoholic/drug-addict "friends".
- Your friends have talked you into medication for depression or seeing a shrink
- You decide that Paris is not for you and pack your bags and try to settle elsewhere
- You spend the money you would have spent on alcohol, drugs, medication, or shrinks, traveling back and forth to always see Paris as a child sees candy, and I am talking about forbidden and rare candy!

I am guessing you have already made up your mind. If you happen to have chosen the last one, I might see you tomorrow in RIO de JANEIRO!

 

Love letters to Anhedonia

Dear Anhedonia,

Please understand that my desire for our relationship to end in this last letter I write you is not dictated by my own passion that you have slowly and coldly sucked into what defines you and your friends of the DSM jargon. You have inspired in me a sense of satire that has eventually ridiculed my own thoughts to embrace ones of nihilism paired with a desperate search for the impossible.

Not that this really matters, but I have never betrayed you with your cousin, Dysthymia. You both come from a wealthy Greek family but I have no interest in your Greek names nor in your submissive games.

Forgive me if my admiration for the dead languages ever gave you the impression that our affair was one to outlast me for your own sake of shining amongst my family and friends.

Good bye,
Al  

Dreams, Desires and Other Things I Used to Have

Many years ago, when asked about what items I would carry with me to a distant island, my answer would be too pragmatic (e.g. computer, books...) if not foolishly religious (e.g. bible). In diaries, I kept track of these answers that lacked imagination and audaciousness.

That was until these answers started unfolding into surreal imaginations to quench simple and basic desires that I often tried to express visually but failed immensely. For example, upon my discovering the inexorable satisfaction that the avocado fruit offered in terms of variety of flavors, vital shades of green, and palpable textures, that are unimaginably analogous to women's flavors (also metaphorically), skin tones and textures, I dreamed of inhabiting an island of infinite avocado and women trees, possibly with cross-breeds amongst the two species where women breast-feed, secrete and, but not necessarily, excrete avocado products, such as avocado milkshakes, guacamole and their cousins. I can vaguely remember if that was through a dream or a day-dream, however, I additionally reasoned that pregnancy was unnecessary as women were sporadically inseminated to reproduce asexually via avocado/women trees and other Daliesque elements...

The reason I am writing this leads to the main theme of this monologue.

I have lately been self-diagnosed with a mild chronic depression termed, dysthymia (greek for malfunctioning of emotions θυμία), if any at all (athymia), and anhedonia (also greek for absence of pleasure) and along these come also nihilistic feelings, lack of ambition and desirelessness, which to my great surprise, is considered as the highest state, or the nirvana in Buddhism, regardless of the paradox of having to desire desirelessness, which was never my case anyway.

Perhaps the surrealist "gyneavocado" island was one of the last dreams or desires I can remember or label earnestly as a dream/desire. Then for a long time I was catching up with the real world and its mundane routines, research projects and mislabeled opportunities...


With a PhD about immune-inspired document classification, I feel as if I have traveled lightyears away from the gyneavocado island I have once dreamed of. The path I have chosen was definitely misleading with respect to my ideal island and I have no idea which path, if any, would have lead anywhere towards it...

Happiness in retrospect is its own termite in prospect. It is even the termite of prospection. 2004, 2006 and 2008 promised me great happiness but did they keep it? That is the definition of beauty according to Stendhal. Interesting how even numbered years of the past decade have been significantly prosperous and prominent, but not 2010. I thought I would have graduated by 2010 and that must have thrown my passion to the nadirs.