week two
Our neighborhood and the street we’re staying on is just the right shade of Parisian dirty — construction, gravel, graffiti, broken glass, oil stains, cigarettes of beautiful people with sunglasses and leather jackets. Maybe it was naive of me to be surprised to be so uncomfortable during our first few days in France.
Or maybe it’s because our arrival in the UK was so effortless. When we arrived in London, we were whisked away from the airport by a longtime friend and role model who is living in England for the summer. He and his girlfriend travel the world and sing songs together, both of them talented and ambitious with golden hair and flashy glasses. They’re surprised but accommodating when we want to tour the neighboring coast and visit the Seven Sisters, a series of chalk cliffs on the English side of the channel. I feel a strong desire to move my body and hike and breathe air outside of Idaho. We’re all delighted to encounter sleepy lambs and lazy sheep dozing under a tree while we’re on a walk to a crater left by a bomb in World War II, but by the drive home, I’m so tired I start to forget what I’m saying before the end of my sentences. We’ve stayed in this house before. It’s sweet to be back. I pat Precious the free-roaming cat and watch the rabbits busy themselves on the lawn. The day we leave, Joe cooks us a full English breakfast and we all eat together before Hannah excuses herself to digitally rendezvous with her English students, and we slip out the front door.
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We sleep for 16 hours the second night we spend in Paris. Jeremy and I are surrounded by so much beauty and goodness yet teeter on the edge of chaos: gloomy and grouchy with each other, each taking the other’s mood personally. I suspect Jeremy blames himself for not being born French. I feel guilty for being anxious and sad, so I do my best to show (and to believe) we’re not beholden to old patterns and behaviors. We share wine and enjoy cappuccinos and walk miles every day. We shyly talk to bartenders and vendors and I never know if their confused looks are because we’re speaking so quietly or because we’re speaking in a broken version of their language. French is an ongoing battle. I don’t really speak a word more than je suis desole, and I keep freezing and forgetting everything I’ve learned so far whenever someone speaks directly to me. Within a week of arriving in Paris, we’ve found our produce stand and our butcher. Both have windows the size of walls and more product than we have the vocabulary for. I practice small words: chou, oignon, avocat, roquette, un poulet entier. It’s endlessly embarrassing.
At one of the top 50 bars in the world, Le Syndicat, located half a block from our front door, we are finally and directly asked where we come from, how long we’re staying, and what we’re doing in the city. Later, we bicker over the best way to answer these questions. We try to not seem frantic. I think part of me is frustrated for not being able to offer myself or those we encounter a more clear idea of who I am. Despite the language barrier, Jeremy has secured a stage at a restaurant called Verjus in Paris. I am bursting with pride in him, though of course I downplay this and act like it’s normal and “of course you have something like this scheduled, why wouldn’t you?” casual. He works from noon until midnight, I think, so I’ll have plenty of time to fulfill the design requests that pour in from the Co-op. Through the pride is envy or maybe melancholy of another type. I’m still insecure at heart. I foolishly begin to think I’m failing at some essential thing. I miss my therapist. I miss my progress. My photos start to feel extremely flat and boring, and spending time looking at art and photography books in the Taschen bookstore doesn’t help. I don’t want to write, and I don’t want to talk. I’m not ready to say very much about that feeling just yet, but it’s there and I resent the entire idea of being myself. I still push away thoughts of impending death. It’s still exhausting. I try a distraction: I don’t have anyone to photograph so I photograph myself.
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Mixed with all the adjustment are moments of glory and joy. I find a store that makes me think of Angelene, terrariums sweating inside bell jars ranging from 12 to 36 inches and lining the front window. We visit the heavily-guarded and recently destroyed Notre Dame. We bask in a spring thunderstorm, take photobooth pictures at a modern art museum, and lust over Japanese design books. We navigate our tiny kitchen to eat cured meats and tiny oranges, we listen to jazz. I watch the neighbors across the courtyard of our apartment complex, their windows an odd mirror to my own. (One man near a rack of uniform jackets, on his computer every time I look. Two women living and showering together with matching pink towels. A home containing a family of three.)
We eat fois gras and duck and burratta and cabbage at Clown Bar, the beautiful restaurant done up in Belle Epoque decor so iconic it often shows up in Paris architecture books. Meals together are our love language and safe space. There’s no one I’d rather sit across from. Clown Bar is no secret. The New York Times and Eater frequently recommend it, and honestly the interior is stunning. To me, however, the bar is uncomfortably quiet. It was once a well-frequented watering-hole for the nearby winter circus, and legend has it Toulouse-Lautrec spent hours chest-to-chest with its zinc bar, but now it seems almost too revered to be easy-going. I selfishly avoid ordering the calf brains everyone considers essential - I’m comfortable enough with my favorite food being bone marrow to admit I have no interest in eating brains.
Last year, when I was visiting Paris for the first time, I sent my mom a photo of the Eiffel Tower. She said “I hope you see it so often it becomes boring.” I’m far from that, but I hope to get there someday too.
