The pull
I wish I could write about New York City. I wish I could describe the feeling of walking alone down 2nd avenue in Midtown to SoHo on an afternoon when the leaves are just starting to turn from green to orange. I wish I could tell you what it’s like to sit at the fountain in Central Park and witness the entire world in an instant. I wish I could make you feel the energy that vibrates through every seat in town at the mere mention of the Yankees, or that you could know through my words the breadth and distinction of Grand Central Station-- how it is so dynamic, so magnificent, standing before it is like breaking down and falling into yourself over and over again. Fractals. A body reduced from flesh and blood to particles in motion.
I can’t write about New York City because I’ve lost myself in it. A world I was so sure I would drink in and bleed has stolen me, broken me, divided me, and now I’m tethered to the gravity of something so sublime I'm afraid to touch it. I don’t want sleep because sleep means loss. I can’t sleep because I no longer exist. When I do sleep, it’s the best sleep I’ve ever had.
“Are you going to write about the trip?” asks my host, every time we kick off our shoes. She is a commandingly sweet Russian with red hair, red apartment accents, and the most infectious laugh I've ever heard. “Are you going to write about the trip?” she asks over foie gras, roasted duck and hunks of ricotta swimming in truffle oil, birch trees sprouting from golden walls in the periphery. “Are you going write about the trip?” she asks between sips of heavily poured meritage, gin, riesling, moscato, coffee.
I want to, but there’s neither rhyme nor reason to springboard from. How can words describe a scene missing a definitive feel, like the rhythm pumping under the streets of Tokyo, or the punishing, confused loveliness of Paris? New York is too fast, too changing to immortalize. Remembering anything the way it was when I experienced it would be a misrepresentation, and I can’t bear to lie. I can’t bear the possibility of my words adding to a whirlpool of tired stereotypes.
Tomorrow I return to San Francisco where there is more love for me than I deserve, and I know that I’ll feel comforted. But I also know that there will be a deep and inescapable ache for this city, and that I’m going to spend every minute doing what I can to get back to it.
Cannes
Angela and I are back from Cannes. This time there are no words for everything I saw, no words for everything I felt. Luckily I have heaps of bad quality footage, Windows Movie Maker and John Mayer.
Between cities
I'm writing this entry on a train ride from Paris to Cannes. Angela and I are attending this year's International Advertising Festival for work. Well, she's here for work. I'm here because I couldn't pass up a trip to Cannes (and my birthday is this week).
Right now I'm thinking it's a shame trains aren't used as much in the U.S. as they are in Europe and Japan. There's so much to like about ground travel: the generous amount of space, being able to visually absorb the quiet spaces between thriving cities, the hum of wheels turning on tracks. No flight attendants.
About an hour into our journey we made our way to the cafe to get some snacks and ended up sitting next to a young man whose popped collar, teeny leather purse and smug expression lent the impression that he'd rather be left alone. Of course, he exploded into a million stories about his experiences as a lone traveler 5 minutes later, pulling out his beat to shit passport to show us his country stamps and everything. Angela seemed less than amused, but I enjoy meeting people who are as excited as I am to see for the sake of seeing.
At some point, after tales of Tunisia and Thailand, we got into the basics. Ramsey, 24, was born in Cannes, but moved to London (where he sometimes works as a chef) because he was tired of running into the same people over and over again. When I told him my name his face lit up like a Christmas light and he said, "I live in Chelsea!"
Meeting people who aren't bound by much of anything always tugs at my insides. As much as I love and depend on the support and familiarity that comes with home life, I think a small part of me will always need to know that, if I want, I can shed what I know and just run. That I can come and go and find and be anywhere.
The sun is starting to set now. White cows are zooming by. Clair de Lune is in my headphones. There is a man on this train that won't ever forget my name. Soon I'll be eating sunlight and celebrating life with one of my most favorite people in the world.
In this little moment, I have no complaints. Can't beat that.
The words she knows, the tune she hums
Angela and I fought on Gchat yesterday. The argument went back and forth long enough to reach out and touch the desperate territory you fall into when part of your mind sadly and quietly wonders how you'll survive without this person, while the rest of it freaks the fuck out and makes you scream.
It was put on hold then, and when we finally came back around to talking she had purchased me a rose and I had written her a love letter. She came home with kisses, and we spent the rest of the evening working side by side on our laptops. At some point we got the pee chills within a minute of each other. Gaël arrived shortly after wearing an African mask from the Ivory Coast that smelled of smoked fish. He danced a little jig and we all laughed.
I love re-realizing that I can't live without her. Not ever.
Meanwhile, I've gotten over the mysterious flash-flooding. Not going out because of bad weather would mean missing things like the country club we went to over the weekend to watch Gaël and his friends play tennis. He brought his cousin Saruja, who is like a glowing ball of magic love and happiness, and afterwards the owners held a cozy dinner party for us in one of the unoccupied rooms. The plates of food seemed endless, and at some point, after we'd drunk many glasses of wine and discussed the fundamental differences between team vampire and team werewolf, someone brought in a tray of vanilla pudding cups and a tray of chocolate pudding cups.
I was worried that I was the only one lame enough to make the connection, but a few seconds later a photographer named Julien pointed to the desserts and asked which monster I was. I picked vanilla. Also, he later told Gaël that I'm beautiful, and that's a really cool thing to hear coming from a photographer, so, you know. He gets all the points. Ever.
Presently it's 3:30am. Normally I'd be worried about how I'm going to manage waking up for work tomorrow, but all I can seem to think about is how it suddenly feels like there just isn't enough time to soak up everything Paris has to offer.
A story about how we failed to attend a life-changing party
During my first week in France, Gaël told me about a party that was to be held in the Catacombs in June. My initial thought was that he was inviting me to hit the sauce with a bunch of skulls, but it turns out the ossuary only makes up a tiny portion of the underground mines. The rest of the network runs like veins underneath the south of Paris, and is a hot spot for parties of the secret variety.
Last Monday he threw in a few extra fun facts, like how I'd need to wear clothes I didn't care about because the trek to the party room, in addition to being illegal, would be through knee high water and pitch black god awful darkness.
It probably sounds like I'm complaining, but when you're 25 and someone tells you to that you're going to have to dress your worst so you can clamber blindly through a system of underground tunnels that will eventually spit you out into a Parisian rave, it's kind of really fucking awesome. So when Gaël showed up on Friday afternoon with a bag full of galoshes and headlamps, Angela and I were like, This is really happening! Suh-weeeeeeeeeeeet!
We started the night off by meeting up the rest of the party at an apartment near the entrance. The place was packed, but the host made sure Angela and I had wine while Gaël's friend from Guadeloupe took care of the music.
Here's the part where I go on a diatribe about how it never ceases to amaze me how far a reach American culture has. Every time I heard some forgotten rap song come on in a restaurant or shop in Japan (or that one time when Usher was playing in the background of a monkey show), I couldn't help but smile. Amidst the batshit insane fashion sense and the ridiculous obsession with Disney, a sprinkle of good ol' American hip-hop was like a head nod from the homeland.
I expected something along the same lines to happen here in Paris, but it threw me for a loop a couple of weeks ago when Angela's co-worker put on a Boney M track I hadn't heard in ages. And okay, they're German, so it doesn't really count, but seriously? Since when do 21-year-old Parisians that allegedly *just* lost their virginity a month ago listen to old Boney M tracks? Oh, and let's not forget to mention how the same dude kept mixing up The Beach Boys with The Who, which is so mother fucking ludicrous it's adorable and I love him forever until I die.
Anyway. At the pre-party for our Catacombs adventure (an event Angela kept referring to as The Party That Will Change Our Lives) Gaël's Guadeloupe friend put on some old staples: Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Biggie. He knew every song by heart. He had the gangster lean down perfectly. He grabbed his chin like a pro. And then, like a juicy cherry on a notorious cake, he started throwing up the infamous West Side hand sign.
No, I'm not joking.
(Meanwhile, a large-ish poster of James Dean hung on the wall behind the couch.)
Angela and I hung around the apartment for a couple of hours, shooting the shit while Gaël continued to vanish, each time reappearing with a new friend. Turns out we were waiting for our Catacombs guide -- some mousy dude that smelled of latex -- and didn't start making our way to the secret entry until sometime between 11:00 and midnight.
Angela and I stomped alongside the herd in our green galoshes while all the other girls walked lightly in their stockings and flats. I smiled to myself when I imagined how they'd shriek once they realized we'd be walking through water, but our guide never got us there. The people that tried to go into the entrance were chased out by the cops, and by the time we realized all hope was lost for entering in that particular neighborhood we were all too sweaty and tired to find another door.
Disappointed, we walked into the metro station without paying (we'd rebel somehow, dammit!) and the guy that lived in the pre-party apartment plugged his iPod into the speaker he'd brought and started blasting music and singing. We all followed, a line of 30 or so rejected Catacombs goers, and I just had to laugh. No, we didn't get to rave underground, but here we all were, heavy with liquor, tired, and making a scene in the middle of the metro station like proper youth.
By the time we got off the train we'd lost most of the party. Angela and I sat against a metal fence while Gaël and friends figured out what they wanted to do, when a group of 50 or so people dressed in orange shirts and rollberblades suddenly skated by. I told Angela how amazing and nonsensical all these sights were, and she shook her head and laughed at me.
We all finally fell into bed around 3am, and slept in the next day until after 12. I woke up sick, which is the second time I've come down with something in the last month. This worries me. I told Angela I felt like dying, but she just responded with, "You always feel like that in Paris."
Considering everything I saw during our Catacombs adventure, our day in Disneyland Paris, all the tiny cafes and shops we've been to... I'm going to have to happily disagree.
Dans Paris
Paul: I think we grossly underestimate our sorrows, in general. We always die of sadness, actually.
Alice: You mean sadness is put inside us at birth?
P: Yes.
A: Like eye color?
P: Exactly. That's why it needs our care, but others can do nothing. No one can do anything about eye color. Also, I think it would be fair to let you take care of your sorrow alone.
It’s delicious here
Paris likes to pluck things right out of my imagination and make them real, like this cozy cafe in the middle of a used book shop:
(click it, it gets bigger)
Strangers browsed around us as we dined, and halfway through our red wine and vegetable soup Angela glanced to the left and found both the diary of Don Juan and a book about a depressed photographer whose discovery of a baby troll turns his life around (coincidentally, the photographer is called Angel).
After lunch we walked all the way home to make up for having spent the previous night eating and drinking until 2AM. Angela's co-worker Jérémie hosted the dinner party at his apartment -- a sizable place for a single person living in Paris -- and I immediately fell in love with the mix of stone walls, hardwood floors and Pink Floyd posters. We started the evening with happy-tasting white wines, moved onto spicy reds when the lasagna was ready, and coupled fruit salad with something heavy and sweet (as well as a glass of champagne).
Not bad for a 21-year-old, ey?
More friends and friends of friends showed up as the evening wore on, some that spoke perfect English and some that didn't speak much at all, as well as another expat from the US (we bonded over our kinship by impersonating rednecks, naturally). The conversation was nice and easy in spite of language barriers, and at the end of the night when it was time to go, I was reminded of my last evening in Japan.
After 3 months of asking my friend to translate the Japanese world to me, somehow I ended up at a Turkish restaurant with a bunch of strangers from places like Switzerland, Germany and Singapore. Our table looked like a United Nations meeting, but we all found some way to communicate, to share stories from our respective parts of the world. This is going to make me sound like a big hippie, but I remember thinking, life doesn't get better than this.
Similarly, Angela's friends have all been really good about speaking English when I'm around (sir expat even translated the bits and pieces of French that found their way in), and I can't describe just how grateful I am to be included in this way. Japan forced me to realize how it is to be surrounded by a language you don't know... even in Tokyo where the population density is suffocating, it's easy to feel completely alone when 99% of the conversations around you sound like gibberish. I explode with gratitude every second I don't feel that way here in France.
A little bit of this and a little bit of that
Today was the first day Angela and I had to ourselves since my arrival. We woke up to the first sunny day in weeks, had eggs and coffee for breakfast, and did the morning chores while Adele played in the background. This included moving the plants out to the balcony for some fresh air:
Later in the day we took the metro to République where we met Angela's friends for lunch, browsed expensive clothes and discovered Le Petit Prince pajama pants. I will probably go back at some point and purchase them.
Again, there's nothing crazy to report. My head isn't spinning in circles like it was in Japan, probably because the French alphabet is the same as the American one. Instead of thinking things like RED MEANS BAD, I'm here trying to recall all of the French I've lost since college. It's been slow going, but things are coming back. Today I remembered the word for next (prochaine) and last week a woman came up and asked me if there was a post office nearby and I understood her. I couldn't help her, but dammit, I UNDERSTOOD her.
Other things will take getting used to as well, such as the amount of beautiful men (seriously, it's unnatural) and the speed in which people walk. I spent most of the day two feet behind Angela, inhaling her second hand smoke.
This is a good place to stop. Not because I want to leave you with the mental image of me and cigarettes, but because Angela is trying to convince me that snuggies are good for the universe.