10/8 ::
The
magic of this city makes me want a thousand cups of coffee and a thousand pages
to fill with what life is and what it is not and all that should be
immortalized within the pain and missing and regret. 10/13 ::
There’s a magic in
people that I wish we all realized. Beauty is a mother who is young and her
little boy sleeps on her lap. Or kids throwing rotten apples from the haystacks
of Monet down into a square. There is magic in flowers that bloom a thousand
fiery shades with not a hint of dullness. Magic within repose. Within the spin
of language.
The fizz of the cork,
sugar on popped corn,
wood and spice and sting, warmth of the hearth;
sifting
wisps from mugs and cakes, the crackle of leaves, the appreciation of a friend.
10/14 :: Lutecia Arena (ancient Roman stadium)
Within the beginning of a century, within the tearing of calendar pages and
scribbling of corrected dates, within the click of every clock adorning each
wall, there is an impossible pause. A hush, a slow rush of twisted space that
lingers and flickers before the world continues its spin. We love this moment,
anticipating it each year, parading and caroling and traveling to be with those
who will appreciate the inconclusive pause. It is anticipated by the expectant
nothing, and leads to following nothing.
My journey is to find this
moment, the inconclusive impossible inconceivable pause, again and again and
again. Maybe if I acquire enough of the false tricks of Time, I will find myself
with a paper link of truth behind me. A trail of fullness. A fulfilled and
honest passing of Time.
So toss the clock, burn the
papers, use up the ink in questions and thoughts. For to be within, I believe
you can only venture alone.
10/15 ::
You see the
magic of each street by staring at just one. If you want to see Paris, look up.
10/17 :: Vegetarian
Indian restaurant (favorite dining spot in the city)
I want to burst. There is so
little time and I need to stop being so overwhelmed by the threat of it. I am
in Paris and I feel like it is the sand of times of Egypt slipping through my
sweating palms. What am I to do but go on my own when that is when I feel most
content and most alive in this city of too much, city of art and love and
family that smothers me whole? I want to feel as if I am not the only person
who just wants the here and now and not anything from the US. Paris is about
getting take-out and being a pig outside Notre Dame. It’s about getting lost
and looking at clothes you can’t afford and eating food you shouldn’t have paid
so much for and listening to jazz and violins and sitting in churches and
hearing children laugh and getting drenched in the rain and losing track of
money and time and hearing stories in 50 different languages and seeing people
be people because we are all just wandering unrequited lovers and we all can
love like a child does and sing like a mourning dove and simply be in this
spinning universe something stable and true and beautiful. Our lives are
sometimes luckier than others, longer, richer, funnier, fatter, lonelier,
loftier. But there is always someone who has felt the way you feel. Someone who
knows this ache or that tear and can feel it resonate in their soul the moment
they meet your eyes. There’s a reason why our eyes refract light; to shine our
souls into someone else’s, to find understanding. Artists are those who are not
afraid to bruise and bleed and go insane or sink to depression or collapse into
poverty for the sake of revealing this human link. They find the base we can
all relate to, the things that make us one. It is all within hope, despair,
love, isolation, and death. I would say faith is one as well, but I think
faith, even though it is beyond real to me, is a mix of hope, love, and death.
It combines all of those into a flood of confusion or enlightenment that most
cannot grasp in their lifetimes. I don’t know how I know my God. But I do know
Him. And so I am content.
I can’t stay straight. Smoke
fills my lungs, too many desires and despairs to handle. I cannot handle
poverty despite my love of ease. I want things, unfortunately. It makes me
ache. I want to love selflessly, to not desire the food and cigarettes, the
treats and drinks, the concerts and clothes.
How will I leave this place? Go
to a place where I cannot walk for miles and see these people from every age
and feel the buildings and streets whisper their history? Where I cannot feel
history ache to burst from within, where I feel close to every soul and my own
soul and want to just run with aching limbs and let air be my lover if nothing
else? Let this city trap me within its perfumed velvet robe and trap me in the
cloistures of a sepulcher of the past. Time does not exist here. It is a line
of continuous and endless possibilities, of roses that do not wilt, of cups
that do not run dry.
Comfort in anonymity. Comfort in
my coat and scarf and pen.
I am not the same as I was a
month ago. I have come to appreciate my body’s strength, my mind’s keen
attention, my heart’s ups and downs. I have come to see the me that I want to
be, the right me. The one that does what she wants, sees true intentions, is
not petty nor vain nor tired nor sore. I pray and wirte and wander and drink
and read and observe and learn. I want to feel a violin resonate at my chin
again, so badly. I want to listen to every piece of Brahms. I want to write
each day without bias but with soul. I want to write for others and not myself
– a very challenging notion. I want fluidity in my soul and body and to see
every painting and sing every song. I want to love under a canopy. I want to see my ancestry and speak and
understand each language so that I can get more of humanity within my grasp.
A backpack and a dream.
Time to see friends. Time to
climb out of solace and into smiles and stories. Hopefully I can impress with
just being me, backpack and poverty and expatriate and all. Let’s go Hemingway.
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