It’s like changing cities — changing environments — for one such as I, a nomad and a wanderer. Caught between two places I call home, but home indeed is not the right word for either. I find a self to live through in every place, and I remember a long time ago when it was I who came to the realisation that Alex did. He said, “I’ve been so different at home than when away, and when I had to be my away self at home, I had a hard time.”

It’s like changing cities, and then bumping into somebody you’ve only ever seen in a different place. Even worse when that person is being the himself from the other city. The necessary phase-shift is uncomfortable at best — fucking insane at worst. It’s like picking up a girl at a bar and bringing her home after sex — then bumping into her dad, your boss.

It’s a lot like changing cities, this falling in love thing. Where you start thinking that you have no choice but to permanently and consistently be just the one self. You didn’t realise that that was not so much you falling in love as it was you making sure this person also falls in love. You didn’t see that to lay your entire being on one person is to lay all of your entire beings on all of that person’s.

 

It’s like… changing cities — cities which yesterday had been vacant lots and today are roads and parks and buildings. So many interpretations of the same core idea, so many colors to the same emotion. Every city headed towards the same direction, but each with its own flavor. As many selves as there are cities — a transmetropolitan life. You start to become comfortable with the phase-shifts, and you tell yourself that that’s you, too.