This is not about 'making it'
I ran away to Paris and ate bread alone then wrote a list
“Une femme sans amour, c’est comme une fleur sans soleil, ça dépérit”
(Transl: A woman without love is like a flower without the sun, she will wither)
This is a very brief story. I don’t like to make short stories long by describing everything because even now just saying Paris and reading the quote above, I am sure you my dear reader have rendered up images in that sweet brain of yours. For some months there was some fog in my apartment. I thought that perhaps the transition from winter to spring was just more brutal, that when the sun would come more often it would all clear. But fog doesn’t work that way. Nor does sadness that settled before you could really brush it out. The 24 hours before that plane ride from London to Paris was perhaps the quickest I moved.
Months of work had piled and I was dreading my sleep every night. Not because I didn’t need it but because I felt ill thinking about the work waiting for me on my desk the next morning. It usually falls under the same months every year. March through May are always the months I lose track of my days, but simultaneously count every second passing. The closer to May, the less sleep I would get, the more agitated and less lucid I would be. There was also my birthday right in the pit of April, mushed between two thick slices of dreadful months. I had no time to celebrate my birthday, I didn’t even notice it had arrived until six pm and I was running for the train. I was too busy to make plans or respond to a phone call. I did treat myself to a pack of cigarettes and a book to read in silence, I believe its one of the best presents I received.
But amongst that whole ordeal, there was one thing that made me forget it all. Momentarily breaking the reality for me, transported to a brief forgetfulness. Adam. Adam made my coffee, and I simply enjoyed soaking in his presence while I worked. And I worked very much. The coffee shop was down the street, hardly a minute walk from my apartment. It wasn’t platonic or romantic, it was delusional and a fantasy. That is all I wanted it to be. I liked the way he smiled, his teeth so straight and pearly white. Dark hair. He wore a baseball cap while making coffee and had a wide set of shoulders. He smiled at me, he looked at me, we had moments of awkward laughs. It made my work more interesting because I liked looking up to see him there. I didn’t imagine going on a date with him or confessing that his smile made my heart burn a little. I just wanted Adam’s presence without the intimacy, and without the very real confrontation of dreaded feelings. I was too burnt to feel now, and so I never made a move nor did I think I ever would.
I got my Sunday coffee like usual. That morning he was less bright-eyed, but I had no reason to ask what was wrong. Towards the end of his shift, a red-haired woman kissed him in front of my table. I watched them smile, and she walked out. I wasn’t heartbroken because I didn’t have any real heart for him, but the fantasy shattered. And with it, the months of burnt baggage came rushing down. I walked to my apartment once the night settled and fell on my bed, looking at the ceiling. The brief momentary smiles, the jumbled up stomach and bright laughs were gone. How dare he take that away from me? After what I’ve been through, after the agonizing months of work and stress?
I woke up the next morning at 5 am. I opened my laptop and booked a flight to Paris that day. I packed everything in a tiny suitcase, I wore my shoes and put my hair in a neat bun, I watered my plants, and I started walking to catch the train to the airport. At the train station, as I waited for the screen to announce my train’s platform, I saw Adam walking to the coffee stand. We looked at each other for a second, and then I wondered if this is the universe playing tricks on me. I felt it, in my stomach, the same feeling I felt on his shifts when he brought me my coffee, only it was tainted now because he had someone waiting for him. I no longer had him to look forward to.
I will forever be grateful for that balcony and window. I couldn’t imagine what life was like before standing outside with my coffee and bra, or sitting there at night drafting a poem. That balcony healed something in me, I considered staying in all day just to watch people and drink. Split cheese. Rip bread. Read. Play music. I couldn’t spend a moment in bed, the window and breeze was so tempting and Paris was always awake for me. I wanted to scan a page of my journal with a list of Paris thoughts, but my handwriting is barely legible. I will write it instead:
The idea of ‘making it’ is really just a set for failure in itself. If your art finds the right audience only after you’re long dead, it still would be art and you still would be the artist. I suppose fame is what we look for, but fame is the aftermath of art not the pillar of starting. I think stripping the timeline makes the art more enjoyable. Jonathan Larson dying just before his first show always tormented me, but I think the world has a way with things beyond our control. So how confident are we about ‘making it’? I would say our chances are just as unpredictable as the missiles flying all over the world right now. Maybe making it is about actually making the art, maybe that’s what it means and not the fame, glory, or tangible applause.
Missing somebody is really the only feeling we have that is dependent on another feeling. Missing is not a neutral emotion and it isn’t necessarily always yearning. Good song, good missing. Bad song, bad missing. Agitated, angry missing. Frustrated, tearful bread-ripping cursing missing. Out of your comfort zone, kissing a stranger in Paris missing. Ovulating, short dress push-up bra distraction finding missing. At a wedding, drunk dial missing. It’s never just an ‘I miss you’. So don’t trust yourself when you miss someone while you’re crying. Wait until a better day comes along and just miss them then.
Reading is more romantic in Paris. Because you look up and there’s always a stranger reading there with you. It feels oddly intimate.
Cigarettes feel a lot less cancery
I’ve always been a ‘let it go’ person. In Paris I think that has been a more permanent philosophy. Letting go is instilled in the French way of living. They talk for hours while they let go and smoke. They don’t dress extraordinarily well, but just enough to show they care. Just enough to look put-together while letting go. I lived across a building and watched people like an owl when it was night-time. There was a middle aged lady with a gray bob, under her a twenty something smoker, under that a cat lady who only opened the balcony to let her cat out. They drank wine every night, but they let go while they drink. Maybe that’s why it’s freedom and not alcoholism. You need to let go of the sorrow and the cup as soon as the drink is over. Then you crack open a bottle the next night, having let go of the old one.
‘Et moi, et moi, et moi’ by Jacques Dutronc was playing on the radio. The cab driver was a thirty-something French man who carried my stuff. “Seeing the eiffel tower alone?” he asked. “No, friends” that was a lie. He looked at me and smiled “Maybe next time you come to Paris it’d be with me”. He flirted the entire ride to my apartment, but never asked me out or really offered his number. It was a nibble. I liked it because it ended. That might spring questions of my fear of real intimacy, but I liked that the flirting was genuine for that moment and it ended when the moment was over. He still carried my bags when we reached.
I like the way they say ‘pas’, a word to mean ‘not’. But they say it with a strong pop in the ‘p’. Like they really do not! I just think that’s how the word is meant to be pronounced.
Maybe our biggest fault as human beings is needing to understand the person we love. Why they do the bad and good, why they are humanized and wired this way. But some people are deeply afraid of being understood. If you understand them, then they cannot be in control of their own behavior anymore. Perhaps letting it boil over and spill is more organic. Maybe understanding why they don’t want to be understood is important too.
I don’t care for French food. Maybe I just was too wrapped up in the ordeal of my own world that I couldn’t appreciate the food enough, but I’m still going to go back. I’m not done with Paris, not even a little bit. This was a few days of coffee sipping and undressing with the blinds wide open, not the whole story. I need to go back.
There will never be a feeling like seeing the Eiffel Tower. I don’t care if I sound like a cliché, but it’s a sight you cannot get elsewhere. Maybe in Vegas, but not as good.
Garlic. I like how much the French love garlic.
As a chronic crush haver I really relate
I can get drunk on your writing.
On another note, you don't have to care about French food until you want to drop a bank on an exquisite French restaurant. Baguette and cheese wirh wine by the small balcony are more than enough.