Reflections and Transparency from a Particular Angle

The first thing I notice is that my hand no longer cramps when I write. Already a good sign. I haven’t used a computer in a week. I had email to my blackberry disconnected. It’s a small, subtle liberation. 

France is where everything happened for me, where everything began. Love. Music. The two most defining aspects of my life. As if I had never lived a day before the age of 19, when I was shipped off to Tours with 20 some odd girls. And even now, a part of me wished I had chosen Tours, instead of Paris, for this trip. Perhaps because Tours is a town that opens its arms and lets you in –les sandwichs, les tartes, les patisseries – everything larger, warmer, more filling. I imagine it a bit like the Midwest, where I have never been, But Paris I return to time and again. I am forever chasing her. I cannot let her go. 

~ 

Each time in Paris, I become something of a nightcrawler. It seems I am always making my way out of the apartment when it is late and dark, haunting the streets of this city at once luminous and terrifying for being unknown. Days I am epuisse, having lost all steam and inclination to take advantage of the museums. I prefer to walk the long and winding streets where you can remove yourself just barely from the city’s chaos and speed. Where suddenly, when you have walked a good stretch, you find the Patheon, or the Notre Dame or the Tour Eiffel revealing itself to you at a particular angle. And for a moment you think you have it all to yourself. 

Nights I spend in the homes of friends, drinking and eating food that tastes too good for my consumption. I quite literally feel I’m not worthy of it, the smooth, light wine (excepting the heavier Bordeau), the boeuf cru, melting on the tongue, the vinaigrette fresh, the marvelous texture of the cheese. And so France, even in this most basic, superficial sense, resigns me. Requires that I know my limitations, my inadequacies, the sheer inability of myself and my country to produce this glory of gastronomy. I ask for the salt, pepper, ketchup and I become immediately, transparently American. (Almost in reflex, my ego counters to inquire if I care). I am unable to consume the food so fresh, so good just as it is. 

I feel still less worthy of Paris when beyond the safe enclave of my friends, where women and men rush by me, dressed with exquisite, impeccable taste. There is something so conservative about the style, cuts and colors of dress. As a French friend notes, “ca laisse tout a desirer.” I make a mental list of all qualities conspicuously absent: tans, cleavage, bare toes, bare legs. Though I love my bright colors, patterns, jewelry, I would give anything for this confiance corporeal, to reveal nothing of myself and provoke nothing toward myself. To offer more attention to the sheer fabric of my clothes and less to the protrusion of skin and curves. 

Nowhere do I feel more alone than in Paris – alone in that empowering, all-conquering way. The cafes designed for this esprit du flanneur, the observer and not the actor.   In New York, I am always acting, making things move, shake, happen. But here I am alone also in an entirely base and unsentimental way. I observe couples, their tiny apartments, showers, and sinks, I overhear them mutter and bicker quietly, hardly in objection, almost in tribute to communal existence. There is nothing, no one to threaten their shared life and understanding. And if there is to be temptation, the French have conceived the appropriate response, meetic.fr, where married men propose themselves to single women about my age, unabashedly, hedonistically, much like all things French. Meetic: I see it written on the covers of magazines, and murmured in the cafes. Meetic. A secret shared of which I am not a part. 

~ 

On the last night of my stay, I attend a wedding, my reason for returning to France, (though I certainly would have found others for lack of occasion).  There is champagne and pate, toasts proffered to the rapt attention of the guests, young men with never-ending not even fainly intelligent jokes about Americans and women, and particularly both. I observe the women to my left and right, their perfect hats—I had bought one, but it was far shabbier, and folded oddly in my suitcase—their taffeta and silk cocktail gowns that seemed tailored to their small figures. “Americaines, I offer wryly, ca rien a voir. 

I loosen up finally when the dancing begins toward midnight. The songs, all American disco, and not my taste at that, transport me to the familiar. My eyes alight, and I begin to twist and turn with full abandon. I leave by 3 a.m., with sore feet, suffocated by smoke. 

~ 

I chose to leave this life three years ago—the strangeness and adventure of it, the privileges and sacrifices. I become, not easily, but finally, a creature of comfort. I return to New York, to what I know, but also to a place of infinite discovery. In this city, my own, there is nothing I cannot do or have or be. There is no restriction, no bounds. My conversations turn inwards –I plump myself inside and out. And remember, with remose, how I am in France, always a bit crevee, my clothes hanging off me, my mind sharp, my eyes are sallow but clear. I turn outwards. I begin to notice. I see what it is I want, acceptance, unity, confiance en soi-meme, and must struggle for it. I am obliged to act as a part of a community, not merely as an individual—to respect a common set of values and certainly a common language. There is a duresse inherent in this for the American foreigner. I wonder: does my life lose value without it, without this ardor and often strife? In the limitless city, in the company of so many friends and family, how exactly am I to be pushed beyond limits, beyond capacity, or simply toward “the beyond” as the philosophers of my adolescence, Blanchot, Levinas envisioned?  

~ 

There are no mirrors to be found in France, not in the tiny apartments and bathrooms, not in the eyes of my father, my mother, my friends. Reflection is thus abundant and pure, without conceit.  I remember, only distantly, the house of my childhood, a house full of mirrors. It now seems irretrievable, worlds away. The city of my adulthood, a looking glass, the depths of which never I could never plumb, the seer herself only partly disclosed.