Allow me to describe, from the broad to the specific, the details of my life as it exists during the very moment I write these words: It is a cool, windswept night in Paris, France. The breezy air buzzes with the tinny growl of passing vespas while the smell of cigarettes permeates our windows and the corner cafes are lighting their charming windows to solicit visitors for an evening snack the type of which I do not feel cultured or informed enough to guess (so far I’m the only person I’ve seen actually eat at breakfast. I wolfed down a huge omelette du champignons while everyone else prepared for their day with nicotine and espresso, so I really have no idea what’s appropriate). I am in a quaint hotel nestled in the crosshatched streets of the 11th arrondissement; outside my door the walls are split with deep cracks that lead down like funneled rifling into a dark spiral staircase that is a favorable alternative to the drawer-sized elevator. I’ve just finished committing caloric mortal sin at Au Metro Café, an establishment recommended at random by a dapper French septuagenarian who felt that I looked hungry and confused. The walls in the room are white and sparsely decorated; one painting depicts a disjointed collage of dusky pink provincial images of mills and flowers and dancing farm children carrying picnic baskets and wearing frayed knickers. Bruce Springsteen’s harmonica liltingly carries my mother to sleep and next to me is my dictionary of dirty French words and a bag containing the sundry items I felt were necessary to carry on for a year abroad (shoe trees, teacups, and other items I use to demonstrate my heterosexuality.) A few blocks away is Paris’ murky green aorta, the heartbreakingly beautiful River Seine, and a few blocks in the other direction is the inviting cerulean door of my new home for the next year. Welcome to the blog.
Tomorrow, Never, or Friday is less of a philosophy than I will inevitably explain it to be. Ask me about it, and I’ll tell you it demonstrates my views on time management and the delicate, ever-changing nature of the unpredictable world around me. That’s mostly crap. The truth is that it’s something I said one time about a paper. Someone asked me when it was due, and I had no idea, so I said, “I don’t know. Tomorrow? Never? Friday?” I identified with the phrase, which I found self-satisfyingly hilarious, and it’s been something of a tagline ever since. I always said I would title my memoir “Tomorrow, Never, or Friday,” but I am not a person worthy of or patient enough for a or concentrated enough for a or interesting enough for a or capable enough of legible grammatical organization for a….book deal.
Anyway, here I am. Brief recap for anyone who doesn’t know the broad outline of my recent life (as if people who don’t know me stumble across a blog about Paris and decide to read it….((you can find the same outline on my other travel blog, www.sanfranc1sc0.blogspot.com)) (((I recommend that one)))):
-High school (not my scene)
-College Applications
-Acceptance to NYU with participation in a freshman year abroad program
-Summer of thinking about what to pack
-Approximately 31 hours of processes related to actual packing
-Flight
-Arrival
-Blogging and extensive (excessive?) dealings in the world of parentheses
My mother and sister and I set out from Stratford (known as the Paris of Jersey) some time long, long ago through the hazy layers of jet lag and time zones that cloud my tired eyes, and after a series of nervous events that ranged from near-OCD list checking to a charming gas station fist fight to forgetting and consequently retrieving retainers…we got to PHL. Without delays or issues the lack of which were undoubtedly related to Maggie’s US Airways “Gold Preferred” Status, we boarded the flight and passed seven hours which felt more like three or four.
I had no immediate culture shock symptoms because I’ve already seen Charles de Gaulle airport, but it did take a few minutes to realize that the hilly, cushioned walkways and system of plexiglas tubes coupled with the angular beams and modern layout of the airport feels like what I imagine would take place somewhere scattered across the landscape of a vacuum cleaner’s subconscious. I made sure to quickly assert my American nationality by fumbling with my gum and accidentally dropping it onto the floor before throwing it out without a wrapper into a trashcan.
The swarthy, ponytail-bearing driver of our shuttle held our last name scribbled on a whiteboard and greeted us awkwardly. He struck me as a Fernando or a Fermin or any sort of inappropriately suave name beginning with the letter “F”; he was dressed smartly in creased black trousers containing some element of swishy nylon, a racecar jacket with button cuffs with his company affiliation, PariShuttle, printed across the back, and slick black boots with the diagonal layered ridges one sees on the shoes of many a Frenchman. He made it work. His most immediately evident vices were his ripe body odor and his nervous laugh, but I have no qualms about the job he did; Fernando drove us to our hotel with all possible efficiency while we listened to French pop music on the radio (interesting that much of it sounds like it may have been composed by Bach but sung by Enrique Iglesias.) We tipped him generously because we felt a magnanimous American responsibility.
I’ve heard Paris described as “New York on crack,” but I couldn’t disagree more. To me, it is more like New York’s much older brother who hints at having gone through a cocky, gregarious phase but now makes a lot of money at an important office job that has become mundane despite its impressive nature. It is a mature metropolis with clean highways and brilliant simplicity shining all over the streets; public toilets are an example of this. Toilets. Something everyone needs and will always need but my advanced civilization seems to have forgotten in its eager and rapid climb to greatness. In an American city, public bathroom options are limited to hunting for construction site porta-johns, sneaking into Starbucks and buying something to get the key to go to the bathroom, or simply going home. In Paris, there are bathrooms. Everyone talks about the fantastic features of Paris as being the artful pastry shops, the breathtaking architecture, the personal identity of every establishment, the lights on the Champs Elysees, the beautiful women, the romantic atmosphere, and most of all the un-fucking-believable food. That’s all there, but I like the toilets.
We couldn’t check in to the hotel for a few hours, so we jammed our cargo into a small closet and walked to my residence, an apartment building called Les Estudines. Along the street leading up to it were more places to purchase rotisserie chickens than I could ever want, let alone need. I already plan to buy one approximately once a week and feast on it like Hoth’s cave-dwelling abominable snowmen throughout the next seven days, deriving any kind of recipe possible to finish every single part of it. If necessary, I am prepared to happily gnaw on chicken bones for a matter of days in order to afford EUrail tickets (travel around Europe is a big goal of mine and one of the foremost reasons for this blog’s existence.) Under these tantalizing cases of poultry slowly turning like Burlesque dancers to show all the details of their sweaty golden skin lay beds of potatoes content to bask in the fire and adoringly catch and imbue themselves with the falling juices. They are not bottom feeders or lazy peasants; they are a quintessential slice of the Parisian window rotisserie ecosystem.
After seeing the residence came a great deal of walking, which passes quickly because of the lovely scenery and accessible, pedestrian-friendly nature of the city. We strolled all the way down Avenue de la Republique and the posh rue de Vieille Temple, eyeing shop after café after shop after café after shop after café after dry cleaner; every block in Paris seems contain its signature essence of lazy civility. We arrived at Pont St. Michel and Ile-de-la-Cite and saw a gypsy get arrested at Notre-Dame. We navigated like hungry pirates to the fabled “The Panini Stand,” a cart full of delectable sandwiches in the Latin Quarter on Rue de Buci touted by my pseudo-uncle Dr. James Metz to be the best thing in the whole wide world of everything. In regard to the 3-cheese panini, he was right. The idea of melting grated mozzarella cheese and eating it between bread has often occurred to me and the other members of my immediate family and social circles, but the brilliant notion of melting camembert, Roquefort, or chevre (or whatever else was in that seraph of a sandwich) only presented itself to me earlier today.
Throughout the day, I struggled with finding the indifferently arrhythmic French swagger I sought and acquired to the point of being mistaken for an Englishman (good enough) last time I was in France. My high school French teacher’s educational philosophies have made me a very good reader of written French, a somewhat skilled listener of spoken French, and a relatively pathetic speaker of French. I can formulate fluid questions with a decent accent like “How do I get to rue Oberkampf?” or “Can we have more bath towels?” but every time I am answered and understand, I, unaccustomed to long exchanges, secretly hope that the conversation ends. Often it does not and I have to surrender to the inevitable English that follows my confused face and fumbling attempts to resuscitate the conversation.
As the day wore on, I became dead tired. My reflection in the windows of the metro conveyed an air of midday intoxication, and when we got back to the hotel, I passed out for a few hours. I eventually awoke feeling much better and ready for dinner, which we had at Au Metro, the place I mentioned earlier. I ordered a millefeuille de saumon, which turned out to be a titanic column of diced boiled potatoes covered in thin pieces of smoked salmon filet and coriander crème. It was phenomenal, and I ordered my first ever legal drink, a bottle of 2006 Chateau Tourbadon Saint-Emilion Grand Cru. I found my French improving with the setting of the sun and the consumption of wine. That remark is in no way playful or sarcastic; when I lived in China it took almost a whole summer to find out that the ideal conditions for “apparent” fluency in Mandarin are to be angry, brash, and annoyed. Each language, I find, is like a part in a play. To speak a second language is to play a character, and I consider myself a budding method actor. There are conditions under which different languages just flow more easily, and I discovered tonight that French happens to roll more sonorously from a wine-soaked tongue.
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