Cafe Revelations: Thanksgiving

I didn’t come to Paris to run away. Or so I like to think. It would be nice to have the comfort of knowing I came with no knotted braids linking my naïve heart. But then again, I am nineteen, and the depths of a nineteen-year old heart sometimes are shallower than I remember.

Was the magic in the glances? The quick flutter of eye meeting eye, of the whisper of eyelashes and mirror of color, the sense that there is all apathy and empathy within the glare of shimmering blues or hazels or the coolness of grey.
Or maybe it was within the bâtiments, the curled and jutting balconies with elegant rives and glossy black against sandy stone. Sots of hazelnut, of a rustic ivy, of a faded plaque, statue of Mary solemnly dozing in a cranny of concrete. Doors of etched initials and brick fences and baskets of young flowers struggling to remain vibrant with the cool breezes, stale clouds, the pit and pat of smoky rain. Color against a smothered yawn, a weak pink and orange against a dusting of history.

Or, maybe, the magic was in my fluttering heart.

I did not come to walk down the streets with remorse, with fallen dreams, with hopes that some attention would fall back upon me. I came because there is a sensuality of darkness, of not knowing. The appeal of running away. Of putting expected meetings on hold, of taking the rush of maintaining relationships and tossing it to the sea. It felt beyond good, too good, to step on that plane, to say goodbye.

I know I would not be the same and I did not want to be the same.

I was too expectant, too anxious, too dependent, too hot-headed, too ignorant. I was breathing in life on the hills of my town but with people it was stale. Or I sold myself too much to the will of others.

That is no way to live.

I have sold myself to a selfless love of the moment. I walked through the misting rain, lost, amidst dusty streets and the stale air of cars and laundry mats and pharmacies. Yet. A monastery in the mist. Children on a pile of leaves. The wonderful feeling of being beautifully distant.

It’s Thanksgiving.

I miss my family because I spoke to them. I remember what it’s like to talk with no filter. I’m so difficult with friends, with not peeling back my layers to be completely real, completely relaxed.

But I fear the nothing, the emptiness of others. Being absorbed by their hollowness. I fear losing myself and my integrity when I’m around other girls. I don’t want to lose my personal beat to their stiff apathetic nonsense.

How can I balance it? Dignity versus empathy. Attention is too sweet, even when one can be fulfilled by anything but that in a place like this, when one runs away from the chamber of their heart.

Take the warm voice of a father/owner in a café and take his grey fluff of a mustache and his rosy cheeks and capture it. Capture all.

The flicker of candlelight, warmth of spiced foam, the roll off cette langue, mon sang est tiède avec l’esprit du nature drôle de ce café. Mon âme est en train de d’allumer. Puis-je rester ici pour ma vie?

Fluttering mind.

Playing “Play That Funky Music” with the warmth of a family. The girl is sad over a garcon. They discuss the news, the events of Paris, over wine and coffee and light.

Their words embrace.

 “Bon courage.”

Find the strength to tear yourself from this place; and when you are ready again to reinvent your soul, when you’ve lost all again, when love has fluttered into ash and your pen no longer flows, when your eyes slip closed too easily, too frequently... go back to Paris.

Go back to where your soul burned and you burst from the shell of conformity.

Shy Light

 11/25 Flight from Helsinki to Paris

I am so very deeply in love with the rosy sunset and the awaiting dawn.

I feel the tug of my heart. I didn’t take plum tarts and I feel the regret – pathetic but I know its really just I don’t want to leave any part of that country behind. The people were so kind, the land so beautiful, everything so full of nature and health and life and spirit. The family was just beyond generous, it makes me want to cry. They have seen so many things and places and work so diligently; they are intelligent, cook together, play board games together, laugh and watch Jane Austen and play Seven Wonders hundreds of times and take walks and go to saunas and love their dogs and have such pride in their home and hometown.

They want to share.

I ate so many berries I reeked of them. I wore wool socks and ate sesame seed desserts from Israel and dates and gloggi and plum tarts and avocado pasta – made by my awkward hands – and strawberry cereal and porridge with litchenberries and strawberries and cinnamon and peanut butter pancakes and salads and beet cakes and bean salad and berry graham cake with yellow custard and teas of all flavors and strengths, and vegetarian lasagna at a restaurant with a famous man from Finnish TV and carrot cake with thick frosting. It wasn’t even all the deliciousness of the food and drink – berry juice in the sauna – but the company and warmth and laughter.

They cuddle with blankets and cocoa and donuts at 4 pm when the sun goes down with wool socks and the click of Anne Marie knitting and Sufjan Stevens singing while they cook. Victory songs – Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” – when they win a game. Sarcastic jokes and witty remarks.

Churches in Tampere, a man carrying a fallen angel, Josh Graban piano music, a nativity scene for the young to play with. Locks of love and a Christmas donkey and sheep in a stable yard. Running down slippery steps in the bitter wind to splash in ice-cold waters with the moonlight stretching across miles of pine forests. Sweat and steam and waves of heat, laughing at each other with games of 20 Questions by candlelight and feeling so very not self-conscious.

There is nothing more liberating than that split decision to do the seemingly irrational. That moment when the barriers and claws of your mind are ripped away because the heart finally just wants to be released. And a weight is lifted and you take the next step with a brighter smile and a lighter spirit and you are happy. I didn’t want to go into the lake, thinking it was a ridiculous notion. Then when Juho and his friend Stefan went out running, diving, hollering into the darkness and splashing through waves, I thought of the ridiculousness of my resistance. Life is made up of the moments where we resist and when we release and when we take hold and when we let go. Here was one where I just needed to break away, and so I did. And with a crazed grin I rose from heated wood planks and dripped sweat down onto the warm floor, stepping onto hard damp earth and down into the waves.

The heat, the cold, the numbness felt so alive. And after, how cleansed and renewed and awakened I felt was incredible. I would sauna everyday if I could. And just knowing that that is an integral part of their lifestyle shows the ease of the people, the comfort of this home away from home.

Their bright eyes. My desire for more, forever more words and forever and ever more time.

The language as well. Rolling r’s and long phrases and a fluid gentle rocking of sentences. Like putting sprinkles on a warm, chocolate-frosted gingerbread cookie. Warm, mellow, a cushion. A language sounding in love.

Rolling pine forests and soothing plain chapels and Christmas twinkling light. Homemade and natural always more appreciated. A church built from the rock. Ships in the harbor. The cool, fresh, crisp air. No haste. I want to return to the museums, the cafes, the little boutiques. I want a knitted cap and to cut a pine by the lake for a tree for Noel. I want to play rounds and rounds of board games and listen to Nathan speak to the dogs in Finnish. I want to hike and cross-country ski and snowboard in the mountains and have a summer sauna and eat ice cream and glimpse the Northern Lights.

Nathan mentioned my dad growing mad during an intense game of Monopoly they had played years ago. That moment I yearned and ached for my dad. And seeing Christmas things and smell the cinnamon and tea and coffee and just the spirit of the air made me want my mom’s embrace.

Yet there is so much to see.

To Krakow next weekend, which will be life-changing. To see Auschwitz. To hear the tongue of Irene and nana again. To feel wrapped up in her culture for just a few short days. To see a mass in Polish. Buy my mom something else beautiful.

Then in Paris, the museums, the exhibits, the Christmas market, the music, the dancing and drinking. Nicole to speak with, to hear about the war. To study, to read, to write, to see.

The father next to me rubs his daughter’s feet as she falls asleep, after they have eaten and decorated a doll together. Sweet love. 

I want to cry from the beauty being collected in my soul. I never, ever want to lose a drop.

 

Of course I will be different. I will ache for art and activity and culture. I will ache for new friends in distant places. I will look at a map of the world and feel invincible, capable of seeing and loving it all.

Collected beauty, bundled memories, quiet stars above and twinkling lights below. Tears. God, you have blessed me beyond what I thought was possible. I am yours, and forever grateful.

Love selflessly this breath and this moment amidst the soft blinking away of tears.

Wide-Eyed and Silent

10/27 Jardin de Luxembourg 

I think I have come to desire an amount of solitude that seems so contradictory to what I thought I would be. I wanted before a rich social life – which I have to a great extent almost more than I could dream – and an overpowering love that takes over your being. But I realize, as I ignore the attentions of both friends and male pursuers, that maybe the desires I had were this fake sense of a future security that really doesn’t show my own heart.

I’m grasping this language and this culture and the essence of this place more and more each day. There are old men carrying baguettes, old women with pulled shopping bags and maroon hats, and teenagers jumping over blockades and drunks selling cocaine and those that will not hesitate to say “I love you, Je t’aime” and those in cabby hats and those that frown too easily on the subway or who don’t take a moment to return the smile of a child. There are too many emotions for a place like this. It is as if I am constantly hopelessly trying to swallow.

Perhaps it would be wise to take pieces of the world and encase them in a phosphorescent glass. To let artificial frays catch the light as they soar down from the top of the dome. To create the illusion and resolution of space within. Protect, do not erase. Do not let one piece sink too low. Let no memory fade.

(Eiffel Tower moments)

The moonlight was forbidden, the covers were drawn. An everlasting search for unity denied, perhaps between the two figures fumbling in the dark. Hands jumbled, mouths muffled, warmth shared and warmth taken away and warmth trapped between pleas and apologies, searching for a heart’s upper left curve to borrow into.

Where was her artificial light? Her cool sense of apathetic safety that allures the masses and buries within them a false twinkle of their own? Where were her monstrous curves, voluptuously teasing the banks of antiquity with her nouvelle allure? Where had her peak gone, with Babylon or Olympus? Or had the falseness so disgusted her that she barely watched with an upturned nose?

Seule. Amidst the jumble and cold plastic and ungrateful ground and the shadow of a lover’s hands smothering her conscious. The ache of hollow playfulness, of complicated spontaneity. Of words on her lips halting and ending because the mind is too animalistic for tense and agreement. The harrowing glimpses of past hopeful grazes that were too tempting for innocence and its ignorance within the empty upper left corner in her heart; they came in lamenting waves. Come back, she begs, to her and to him. Come back to mistreated goodness and use her again.

Moping, aching moment. Cozied in my scarf and pen.

10/31 Jardin de Luxembourg, avant mes cours

The most solemn beautiful day. I sat by a younger man who seems so content, relaxed, ease with himself and his plan for the day. While I remain restless and sad, sometimes. I just long for eternal sunlight and my nana’s embrace.

Yesterday. The man who sells candy outside the metro Odeon, unloading his sugary sweet white van with a frown, stacking things just right as they have been just right every morning of every day. He sells to giddy children and old women with no remaining hard candies and couples from all over the world who will share the goodies on the banks of the Seine or in between shops with a feeling of infant excitement, of jumping back to the time when we ran everywhere because there was no need to take Time, but to hasten to it with open arms and gasping lungs.

 11/13 Chez moi

I am drunk off the beauty and wonder of this paradise. Who else gets to be this damn lucky? Too many things to keep straight. Too much that is too beautiful.

I have butterflies again.

The magic of this place is this: every stone speaks. 

Every wave of the Seine carries a story. Art is alive here, music is alive, the language breathes sensuality and vitality. She is alive.

11/19 Barcelona Airport

Something about the homelessness of travel is appealing. Of being bedraggled and exhausted with only a backpack for company. Of feeling a longing for every place you’ve been and every place you want o be in one whirlwind moment as you walk the echoing marble halls of the airport. Always hungry, always thirsty, always a little sick and a little tired and a little anxious for reunions and homecomings against anxiety for the new place, the new tour, the new adventure. Mouth dry and mind drier. People looking distant, solitary and isolated even when with families. Everyone who takes a journey takes it for one’s own.

Muslims praying in Beauvais Airport

Something awkwardly beautiful about the cafes and fast food and stores selling duty-free tablecloths to the apathetic but succeeding traveler. Everything feels like it’s needed. You’re on a leg, not a last leg, but you stand with precaution, searching for utility.

I think some people don’t see the world without the fog of thinking of rest and nourishment.

I will be so judgmental when I go home. Or I will think people don’t know how to live the right way and be disgusted at their life choices. Maybe I’m better with lots of books to occupy this growing mind.

How easy we sleep.

Let Tears March

Mélange

Let and laisse
your things and mes choses,
take and tack
marche and march
the steps of Edith
and feel le sens
d'une ville that seals
un amour in my coeur
et le flight de mon soul.

10/20 Back to Paris from Normandy

We arrived yesterday and I was so afraid, built up with aching anticipation. The lands were as I imagined, the white cows and horses cross green and orange landscapes under a pale blue cloud-filed sky. (Just now in a field, saw two men, one holding back a barking mutt and the other lifting the prize of a rabbit, in the middle of a post-harvest field) Also the rest stops, with junk food and coffee machines and lines for bathrooms and sugary drinks and babies crying or wandering, the smell of gas and al haze of sale exhaustion, truckers and trucks lined and piled all over; it is all so familiar and such a delight. Almost got coffee or treats for the sake of being in a rest stop again. I realize now how they were a part of my childhood.

I could live on the walls of the medieval town of St. Malo, with its seagulls and crashing waves and shops that draw you in with cozy antiquity. These hills, filled with red-roofed homes and dirty play toys and bikes and flowers and the feeling of a comfort, a familiarity. In St. Michel, the monastery and even side tourists streets had the feel of serenity and spirituality that I sometimes find lacking in Paris. I love it all, but I would give up bars and clubs and crowded metros and busy streets for cider in a haystack in Bretagne or Normandy.

I ache leaving it. I think I may belong here, or in a place like this.

I wanted to run from beach to rock at Omaha, but little kids were doing just that and it was moving enough. Calling “Papa” as they dart up the sand in such stark contrast to the soldiers’ torment as they made the same run. In the cemetery, as Arlington, I said sorry. I don’t know why exactly. I knew most should not have died, war is silly, etc. But y apology feels greater than that. That I will never truly understand, that I can only humble myself to a point with learning and listening. That I could never meet their eyes and feel worthy, or worth anything to the level at which they served, the level at which they died. That is what I was sorry for.

A man, Hispanic, marched nicely dressed in brown tailored suit, and saluted and marched away. He might understand.

My tears kept raining down, an uncontrollable shivering sadness into my bones. I missed everyone and everything as if a part of me was being buried in the ground at that moment. A quiet panic.

The rain was a soft patter, the birds a glimmer of companionship. The sound of steps, rustle of my jacket. All calming. Touching the damp cold stone of the crosses, so bitterly solid yet reassuringly so. Everything was just such a stark contrast.

                A rainbow over stains of blood.

The bunkers were just fun, an excitement that video games and movies and my fort-loving self caused to stir within me. I fell in the mud, crept through barbed wire, and imagine the adventure without a thought of mortality. Sun and rainbows shined there too. Just so stark. I felt a fluster beyond content and the sorrowful remorse.

Sitting in a marionette bar, swinging away, drinking games and laughter – I wonder sometimes at my desire for isolation when things can be so joyous with others. But this morning, the walk/jog on the wall, I had to do alone. The sea called to me more than anything, crashing against the hidden causeway, bragging in each crash and pull. The gulls, birds in a swarm, boatmen on an antique ship, the stars and moon slowly giving way to sunlight… a rope tearing me away.

                Hopefully this week will not be too hard with my six euro finances and emotional struggles. I realize how much I appreciate the pure notion of friendship as I stay longer with these people. “I’m glad I met you.” For these friends, these experiences, this city and country and continent.

Friday in St. Gervais with a cloister of nuns, or St. Louis sur l’Ile, amidst a small devout group; both made my heart ache. The church today was so plainly open and awakening with its chanting. I just feel tossed about by people and places and contrasting desires and forgetting and remembering: it builds up.

Yet I know, as I look back upon Italy and Cannes and the month here, I see so much brilliance and light and change for me. I see something beautiful and young – and those things always seem to be looked back on one day with aching delight.

For this week, see art, stay cheap, active, and breathe. Be. Don’t miss too much, or it could overwhelm.