Reflections on the Relationship Between Environment and Self-Awareness

One of the first things that I noticed here in Paris is that people look at you, without reservation. Especially the men. It's odd, how I feel safer here in certain ways than I did in Chicago. I'm not so scared of being attacked or raped if I'm out late at night by my apartment and get a little lost. I'm not constantly looking behind me to make sure that no one is following me (not that I do this so much in Chicago anyways, only after a particularly busy night in Wrigleyville as I'm walking home after work).

I always would play this game with myself in Chicago. If I caught someone looking at me on the street or on the train, I would stare back until they got too uncomfortable and had to look away. It never took long. Here, it is a little different. I'm not sure if I find it refreshing or if now I've become the one that gets uncomfortable too quickly. It's still a city, everyone is still in a rush to get wherever they're going, but everyone seems to be so much more aware of everyone else. Or perhaps I'm still new here, and naive in my thinking so.

During the first week of classes, I got very sick. Only for a few days, but there was one day that was particularly horrible. I took the train home, feeling sorry for myself. I listened to a song that I would often listen to in Chicago with my friends (Dance Yrself Clean by LCD Soundsystem). At first, the song made me feel a little bit better. A little bit happier. But once the line, "with friends that always make you feel good" passed, I started crying. Who am I going to dance myself clean with here? Alec doesn't really dance (seriously though, if anyone else wants to get down... let me know. And I'm not talking about that Parisian girl night club dance. I'm talking about jumping and flailing arms like a child whose neurosynapses have not yet developed enough to produce fluid motion kind of dancing).

So, there I was crying and ironically listening to a song that has played during some of the happiest moments of my life (aren't those movie scenes always the best ones? The ones with the contradictory music?), and I swear so many people saw me. I saw them look at me, right at my face, and realize that I was crying. It doesn't bother me at all that no one tried to stop me or talk to me about it. I don't expect that.

But in Chicago I cry on the train all the time. I cry on my walk home from the train. I cry in class. If I'm having a bad week I'm a fucking faucet and I don't care who sees it, because I'm not really ashamed to be crying. But the difference is, no one ever sees it there. No one's ever really looking.

I find it odd, that here I am less aware of myself. Here, in a place where I don't exactly belong (or perhaps, don't know where I belong yet), and in a place where I feel like my surroundings are just a tiny bit more aware of me. Perhaps this relationship reciprocal. Is there a finite capacity in regards to what we can be aware of in the world? How does this correspond with our awareness of ourselves? Would we be happier if we attempted to dissolve the self entirely in order to truly experience the world outside of it? Rather, what degree of self-awareness (if any) is necessary in order to think about the external in a productive way?