When you live for a long time in one place you begin to confuse your life with the city; its avenues and landmarks come to stand for your memories until you become the tourist of your own past, viewing a younger self with the fascination of someone just passing through.

For so many, the past has gone soft with distance, so that when they talk of a building that used to be beautiful or an avenue that once burst with yellow flowers in March, they are really talking about a self they wish to have been.

I am afraid, if I tell the story now after all these years of silence, that I will be confused for one of those dreaming tourists who point out only the graceful and vital, who are happy to deal with the surface of things.
Ana Menendez, from Loving Che