I am approaching a big decision. Nothing serious, you might say, a first world problem. Should I move to another city and start a new chapter of my life or stay in a small town where I have felt, for the first time in my life, at home. Maybe it's age or a certain restraint of expectation that comes from having lived through a series of disappointments with myself but the whole concept of life recently condensed into a very simple idea: a sliding time window around today. My life, or reality, is for the majority what I feel, think and physically go through today. A little bit comes over via memory from last week, a slither of the future, next week at most, influences my decision making. Reality is full of excitement and intensity but outside of my control. I don't know who I will meet, who I will share a gentle, fun or cute moment with, where I'll be at what point. I can only be and honor that fact by living attentively and remembering diligently. The measure of a good life then becomes how many sliding days have been good, how much I liked my experience and the memory, how well my idea of the future guides me to the next one. I have many good days, thoughts I am proud of, people I care for, routines that make me be and appear as a person I like. And this all happened in the small *sputo di paesino*, as my friend would say, called Le Puy en Velay. I came here for the first time in 2012 or so, it was the first french town after Lyon that I have visited, my gf then, who still is my gf now insisted on me tasting an authentic french restaurant by the name of "Tourneyre", see the saturday market, meet her parents. Very soon I was introduced to the whole family, including the paternal grandmother at a fancy restaurant following in the footsteps of the nouvelle cuisine which became what is now known worldwide as french fine dining, another first experience. Today I am standing on a balcony overseeing a magnificently rugged view of hills and medieval churches which is ever changing and I can't remember how many times I had to rush out here because a cloud, thunderstorm, snow, rain, fog or just a particular hue of setting sunlight flooded the resonance cavity in which my attention trembles like the membrane of a finely tuned loudspeaker, compelled me to. It so happens that this restaurant closed down soon after our visit, but it used to be just 50 meters from where I now spent 5 years, they still have the glass room where we ate almost 15 years ago. My assumption has always been that life is linear. One set of events, move, another set of events. I have moved more often that most, changed school half a dozen times in small towns, then studied in Vienna, then moved again, Germany, France and another half a dozen times there. I would have moved even more and all of my interests are pulling me far away, even today, my current main projects being the mastery of Japanese and Chinese. But somehow live turns out to be circular. After 10 years I ended up in the same city my gf insisted on showing me upon my arrival in France. And now after 15 years I am thinking about moving to Vienna again. But Le Puy has been different. I became myself here. Opened up, met friends, cared, participated, liked, loved and felt the irresistible onslaught of perception that is life, if you give it the attention it needs. I want to go out, almost daily. A couple of years back this would have been unthinkable. I liked my living rooms and my PC with the LED-imbued graphics card. Too much sun would be battled with lowered window blinds. My body was just another interface to thought, filled with interesting considerations and hardly ever outside the highly sought after flow of the friendly tug-of-war between mind and a self defined challenging problem. I wouldn't go back to this state if you'd pay me to. Maybe nothing can become of me now, from the perspective of an outside judge, but the inside of my conscience is pristine like a diamond and you wouldn't believe the marvel of the scintillating chromatism that happens on it's edges! Today was a normal day and it makes me hesitate. I went out to drink world-class coffee at my friends' place just down the hill. We chat a bit about people pleasing and wearing masks, preferring to mingle or not, and the inevitable definition of boundaries that let you balance your energy levels with those of fellow humans. "I am an introverted extrovert. Just like you", she points excitedly to me, "you are definitely one! Always so sunny and bright. Everytime you come over I'm like: gee I have to match that energy - let's gooo!" It took years to get to this moment, many hours of small talk which are all great by themselves and then - a moment of crystalline community, mutual appreciation. My gf and I go for a walk almost every day. It's sunny but the air is still pleasantly cool. My gf's midlife is in full bloom. I tell her about that time-window idea, because once every 10 years or so she takes one of the words I say to heart and drops a bag of ballast that has held her down against her will, like a smiling hot-air balloon that is kept close to the ground because it's meant as a ride for children - and ascends to a higher level of breathing freedom! Along the way we meet AB, the sage who went through the school of life and has thoughts of 40 bearded philosophers and 70 poets, we had a great talk the day before yesterday and now I get a cheerful "How are you doing" from across the street. At the red light a car honks, it's FA's husband who never misses to stop and exchange some jokes. Last time we met, we shared that he's looking for a new company to manage and my gf was on her way to the cemetery because she likes the inspiration. "Tu as raison, mieux être préparée", he quibs. Alors, vous êtes en train de chercher votre prochaine boîte, tous les deux…, I added.. If you're like me, you'll recognize this as one of the ultimate moments of joy for a language learner, where a fine joke that cannot be translated just comes to you like that. A couple who also frequents the coffee shop and we got introduced to by their black Chou Chou are leaving on a road trip to Switzerland, tomorrow we'll play a campaign about some magically talented kittens with T, the empath game designer and dungeon muster and Sunday we take the bakers to lunch, whose shop has been a haven of good vibes since they came into town. The thought of leaving all this behind stings somewhat. My friend F is very radical in this regard: "Change is exciting! Change is beautiful! Change is inevitable!", she's like the wind rolling over the globe like an all encompassing wave, sometimes hugging, sometimes storming, always moving. I have to admit, for me it's more nuanced. My time here has come, I know that. There's not much more to discover and my lifestyle would be better served with a different kind of infrastructure. The picturesque volcanic wilderness of the Haute-Loire would be better suited for retirement or settling down. I want to be a part of life in some cities on the globe, feel at home among different cultures and tongues. I want research-level reading material with access to universities and libraries and maybe see an opera again by simply taking a streetcar. Or maybe I don't, what do I know?! Still standing on the balcony, by the way, the sky has shifted. The hills are vibrantly green, the sky dark blue in parts while others are heated to an intense orange by the sun that sets unto the brink behind the building. It smells of freshly drizzled rain and the birds are discussing the weather forecast in all the avian idioms. Change happens also when you stand still, maybe I'll be in this exact same spot again 15 years from now? The thought is comforting. What did you see on your journey? How was life in your new home? What's the name of your kid? How did your business turn out? I might never get to ask these questions. Those handshakes, smiles and gentle nudges, these lives in parallel to mine appear more momentous than the most groundbreaking scientific discovery simply because they happen often in my little slice of space-time, the reference frame in which I am the only constant other than the speed of light, which will rend all of this apart by it's unstoppable flow, mine and billions upon billions of other experiences, infinitesimal interference in the incandescent glow of being.