November, 2020
I’m writing at Cafe de Flore in my leather-bound journal, a gift from Cecilie almost a year ago. I use it for my personal, disjointed thoughts. Thoughts that don’t necessarily have substance, but carry a weight that would otherwise hold heavy on my mind. Sometimes my thoughts are so good they mature into an idea. You’re never alone when you’re left with an idea.
My coffee came, allonge---I had said---sans sucre. Somehow “long” never seems to turn out the way it sounds here. It came in a short white cup, stained with previous espresso so the inside was a caffeinated beige that made me think of weathered intelligence. Intelligence of experience rather than books and numbers. Learned without the onset of learning. Just poof, suddenly you’re fifty-four and stained beige, not knowing whether you prefer to be a bright white instead. I sip my coffee. I leaf through the pages of my journal.
April, 2020
Nothing holds my thoughts more than the birds that fly into the wind. Naively, we watch them and giggle as their seemingly failed attempts against the wind bear no fruit.
Again and again they leave the safety of the branch and outstretch their wings in the storm. Again and again they are pushed violently back to where they came.
It isn’t so much the hollow struggle that grasps my attention, but in the very instant they tilt their wings just so and begin to glide into the wind,
relaxed, forced, propelled on to their next destination.
In just that moment I recognize it isn’t a hollow struggle at all. They, the birds, recognize their tools. Their gift of wings, of pointed eyesight. And instead of fighting,
they utilize.
Nothing is more captivating than this bird fighting against the wind, because
you very well know they are trying to get somewhere. It takes just an instant to realize that somewhere is someplace else entirely, somewhere you can’t yet see. Somewhere with the wind.
The coffee burns my throat on its way down, finding its place deep in my belly where it cools. I take another sip, raise my arm to the waiter and ask for L'addition. He scurries inside. If I had been at the Cafe de Flore an hour later I would have been lost in a crowd of arms, hidden by a thick veil of tobacco and haughty French. Lost in Paris. Though there isn’t much to mind about that. I’m sure you in particular would agree, sometimes being lost somewhere else is better than being found at home. There’s a jaded feeling that more is happening when you’re lost. Sweaty palms and an innocently raised heart rate. Not nerves, but eagerness. Moving unperturbed through a crowd is a practiced talent, one I have now mastered. I pay the check and walk my way down Boulevard Saint-Germain toward the Latin Quarter.
It’s been raining, the cobblestones are wet and my boots clack against them, sounding of metal. I’m a seasoned Parisian now, I carry with me my fishhooked umbrella, noir, bien sur. I wear a suede tan coat with faux fur on the inside, it reaches just above my knees. I have a cashmere scarf now, and I tuck it into my coat. I often wear black pants and shoes, so you can imagine me in that if you’d like. I am always armed with that week’s novel and a notebook, (and a pack of cigarettes). I prefer to walk on the left bank, unless I find myself up in Montmartre. Maybe this side is more niche, a plush amount of art studios, petites boutiques I can hide in. Mostly I walk these streets so that I can imagine my favorite writers strolling past me. I visit Hemingway, Sartre and Beauvoir, James Baldwin, Camus. Fitzgerald. Wilde. All while never leaving the street. I run through their words in my head, tossing phrases in French over my tongue, and sometimes I find myself on the most serious of topics. L’Imaginaire, Les Mots, Les Langues, Le Néant, Décès. I’m reminded of a young Andy who also walked the cobblestone beneath me, maybe with steadier steps, a hat, and a young femme francaise draped on his arm. I am reminded of you, also. Mostly in the sense that with everything I am reminded of you.
My mellage of blonde hairs get poofy when it rains. I scrunch my nose like a rabbit, in order to move my imaginary glasses up to the bridge of my nose. When I laugh, I cover my mouth with a dainty hand, in order to hide my dead front tooth I lost while rollerblading as a teen. I sometimes watch Notting Hill alone in my apartment and cry, because all anyone really wants is a Hugh Grant.
I stop walking at a cafe just outside La Fontaine Saint Michel, rightfully named Le Depart Saint-Michel. My table sits among maybe twenty small tables for two, under a green overhang. I order an Irish Coffee, avec chantilly, without hesitation. It comes out with cream spilling over the sides, making the saucer sticky and sweet. I like to sit here just before 21:00, when the metro is bustling and the street performers begin to warm up. Notre Dame sits just a head turn to the right, across a small branch of La Seine, and a monstrosity of aggressive French chauffeurs and tourists clog the intersection. I sip my whiskey. I am completely relaxed. I have a ten minute period of thought so I open my journal and turn to the most recent entry.
I often think if you had been I, you would be doing the same as me. With some subtle discrepancies, but our truths would be the same. Therefore, I often think---Je pense souvent---that as I’m walking I’m not only walking for me, but for you too. Somehow I feel that your knowledge has flooded me as well, and I’m living a single life but with many more lives behind me. I feel I owe your knowledge all that I’ve got, to live exhaustively. Because though I have many lives behind me, I only have one before me and I must do what I can with that. Sometimes this feeling manifests itself in guilt, guilt of what? I haven't yet considered. Perhaps it’s guilt over what I have found true, for however much weight can be put on the word.
Then I’ve written,
The longer I’ve lived the way I’ve been living, the following have proven to be true…
What follows is not necessarily a list of things, but rather occurrences that become a continuous train of thought for me. You could say these occurrences have common themes, but I tend to avoid Universals such as Good and Evil, Ethics and Morals. Universals are already labeled and defined, therefore I deem them messy. For something to be given a name and definition it must have a commonly-shared experience. And once something is considered common, it loses its particularity, making it difficult for me to address. My list is a search for the absolute truth through particulars; they are the most interesting to me. But, language has its limitations.
Bob Dylan once said:
I just know in my own mind that we all have a different idea of all the words we’re using...Like if I say the word “house” we’re both going to see a different house. If I just say the word. So we’re using all these other words like “mass production” and “movie magazine” and we all have a different idea of these words too, so I don’t even know what we’re saying.
Or, if you want a more confusing example, Foucault said:
The general idea is no more than a particular idea serving as a sign for other particular ideas.
So, what I mean to say is that in this recent journal entry I have attempted to attack feelings which would normally be described using Universals, but I’ve found Universals too limiting for my exploration.
I would like to share with you my first truth on the list:
The longer I’ve lived the way I’ve been living, the following have proven to be true...
Coming home is the only place I feel fully confined to a role. I have to be 100% something, 100% of the time. It’s obscene. Once I leave my home in Europe I slip into an old dusty costume that lacks breathability. I think the concept of time is mostly to blame. Over the course of a year I might get a couple weeks at home for every six months away. For two weeks I am forced to embody what other people remember me by during my six month absence, forced to hold true to expectations. I am forced because time limits my role. During those two weeks, I exclude the complexities of my growing personality--the new additions to myself--because I don’t have the time to present them valiantly. I don’t have the time to unzip my costume and let my naked skin breathe.
While on paper this reads quite tragically, but the feeling of it is in fact liberating. Playing a role allows me to slip into the theatrical--the unseen--a space where I can do the outrageous and then turn away. Step on a plane; then off it. Slip out of my clothes. Shower. And leave my skin naked.
Everything there is just words I read on a screen, transmitted through time, across a certain designated and manipulated distance.
In the Latin Quarter there is a boutique I visit, owned and run by a middle aged woman. The clothes are chic and simple, of my taste--made with light, comfortable material, both bold and bland. I walk into the boutique, it smells of potpourri and expensive floral perfume. I’m looking for high waisted slacks and a matching blazer. I want the pants tight so I can expose my strong legs, and stretchy so I have room for a chocolate mousse or two. I want a blazer with one button, which I intend to leave undone, in order to expose my Nirvana t-shirts I will wear underneath. I choose two options, the woman takes my sizes and leads me to the dressing stalls in the back of the store. I take off my clothes and stand devant le miroir. I’m always the lone shopper here. Sometimes she has a friend in the store with her, who brings coffee and they seem to gossip and laugh.
I pull the velvet curtain closed as much as I can and slip my feet into the slacks. I put on the blazer over my bralette and step out into the store. I look at the woman, her cracked lip stick smile widens and she places her hands to her cheeks, brushing her faux blonde hairs away. Tres jolie! Mais.. She comes to my side and searches a nearby rack of miscellaneous custom vetements until she chooses another blazer. It’s softer in fabric and fit, the matte black is contrasted with a silk collar and a brass button. J’adore! I say. She takes what I’m wearing off my shoulders and I slip into her pick.
It hangs off me delicately, like a silk tapestry, just brushing against my chest before it flows down to my waist. The woman places both hands on my shoulders, C’est tot! And by her gaze into my mirrored eyes I receive a dose of love I’m familiar with, one that I miss while away from you. It feels similar to the proud mother’s hand on my back, but there is a complication to it. There is admiration and excitement in this love. Love that embodies trust, however illy defined that word may seem. It is a love that manifests in me as both a tranquility and a motivation. It isn’t a feeling of knowing I have something to prove, or knowing that I must complete my goals---instead it is the sanctity and understanding that I am already well on my way to becoming something. There is peace in that. I leave the boutique without the blazer, but with exactly what I came for.
Happy Mother’s Day today and everyday.