That clicking feeling

It's funny how things click, sometimes. When two people fall in love, they click, they interlock. But the clicking feeling doesn't limit itself to romantic love : it works with friendships, too. And one can even click with a place.

I have heard so many people say that they fell in love with Paris, or Philadelphia, or Spain, or New Orleans, or Berlin... I wonder what leads us to have special affinities with places. Does it have something to do with the energy? The colors? Some distant childhood memory that invites itself subconsciously in our appreciation of a new place? Whatever it is, it's a real feeling. As unfathomable as human love, as random. You can't really choose with whom you click, nor can you decide with what you interlock... I really wish I clicked easily with Paris, but it'll always be a love you/love you not relationship between us. That's the way it is. I have to accept it, and move on. That doesn't mean I won't end up living there happily, but it does mean that there will always be something about Paris that I will want to change. On the other hand, the places with which I really click don't ever need to change for me to love them unconditionally. I realize how dirty Dublin is and even how racist its taxi drivers are, but I still click with that Liffey city. That doesn't mean I'll go back, either. It just means that, to me, Dublin is one of my very favorite places. So is Brittany. Irrationnal and most certainly annoying to the people who don't agree with me. Mais les goûts et les couleurs, ainsi que les villes préférées, ne se discutent pas!

I'm starting to feel that specific clicking feeling with Touchstone Theatre. It's only been a week, and yet... that stage is no stranger. The offices are welcoming. The café inviting and friendly. Everything about it says to me that I will like it here. The people are warm without being phony. They are theatre professionals, all about performance, yet remain elegantly private. Theatre is regarded as beautiful, dangerous, fragile, worth loosing money for, worth promoting, worth a life of very hard work. The building is flooded with light, until you step into the 75 seat theatre. There, you wait to be flooded with the warm lights of the projectors, and surrounded by beautiful stories.

I wouldn't describe this move to the United States as easy; it definitely came with some sacrifice. In no ways will this internship year be easy, either. My fellow apprentice and I were warned, from the very first day, that we were going to face some serious challenges. But easy is not what we're aiming for, really. Or maybe it is. But the easy we're looking for is the one that comes from "ease". It's the way in which two parts fit with ease, once they have met. Because they were meant to fit together, because they click.