final

I opened my windows and looking out into the grey city I smoked a cigarette. The cars moved with the glacial torpor of an early winter morning, and soon the wind chill made a tourniquet around the tip of my nose and fingers. A suppressed shiver ran up my neck, turning my stomach. The cold was no longer shocking, but its effect was not diminished by its extended presence. I wrapped my jacket tighter around my arms and threw the last drag of my cigarette over the balcony.

I had to sit in front of the heater for a few minutes before going to the kitchen to make coffee, warming myself slowly. I got dressed quickly and went outside with my new shoes, holding my umbrella overhead so as not to bump into fellow pedestrians. The security the umbrella covering my head provided was waning, and I could tell that the nylon cloth attached to some flimsy spokes would no longer protect me from the torrential downpour which was beginning now. It felt more of a burden to carry around this artificial appendage than to keep my hair dry. I threw the umbrella in my bag, and wondered if I should just throw it away, but decided to hold onto it. I ducked into the metro and felt the rain follow me down the stairs, threatening to wet my heels, but I was tucked away and safe inside.

I boarded the train and took a seat on one of the three chairs facing south. Across from and facing me was a man and a woman, both were looking straight ahead, acknowledging each other by ignoring each other.

The stop where I was to transfer came quickly, and I followed a young man out of the train, following him in line with the few other people heading towards the exit. I turned off to the tunnel which led to my next train.

In a dream, I was in a crowded room, it was dark with a few strobe lights going on, and in the background I could hear thumping music, but my ears were muted. I walked towards the light coming through a small window at the top of a wall, through the sea of people, and arrived at nothing; when I got to the window it was 100 meters off the ground. I reached my arm towards it, and felt my fingertips touching something sticky and flexible. I realized I was inside a giant bubble. I held my breath for a few minutes without struggling for breath, hoping to float to the window, but someone knocked me over and the air fell out of my lungs. I could not get up for a moment, but when I did, a handsome climbed out of the crowd and pushed me back to the ground. I lay on the ground crying, and my tears began to fill up the room. I floated to the top on a wave of my own tears, watching the dancers struggling to swim, drowning in a pool of their own vomit and sweat. As I got closer to the top, the window began to grow until it was the size of the stained glass rose at Notre-Dame. Finally, I arrived at the window, which had no glass and I, in my bubble, slipped easily over the edge into complete darkness. I woke up momentarily and fell back asleep to a dreamless night.

I walked to the park this morning to get some fresh air. I was feeling sluggish and tired by the time I got there. I lay down in the grass in the bigger part of the park and watched as the clouds drifted past, some bigger than others, some smaller, some more opaque, some wispy, some clinging onto others, all moving at the same speed. There were people all around me but I spoke to no one; mostly runners and nannies. A man approached me for a lighter, and I let him use mine. On a bench next to me, there were two young men exchanging stories. I listened to their conversation, keeping my gaze fixed on a barren tree in the lot across from me.

I opened the window to another gloomy day. There was a snowstorm in New York, though apparently a mild one my mom told me. It got very cold suddenly, and I was sitting smoking a cigarette on in islet separating two, one-way streets. I saw ashes floating in the air, and a big gust of wind brought more. I tapped my cigarette with my index finger, the ashes remained stagnant. A man walked past me, we made eye contact for a moment. I realized, then, that it was not ash, but snow.

Winter was joyless.   

I got off a bus and made my way up a small alleyway, thinking I would find myself nowhere I had been before, but instead found myself in a familiar public square. It was a Friday, and they were hosting an open air market, the same one I had gone to with my cousin a few months prior. Many parts of the city revealed themselves to me in form of memories, those of family vacations, of art I’ve seen, and of dreams I’ve had. I decided not to go to the museum this time, there were several travel groups outside and I did not want to bother with the noise and distraction.

I ended up finding a cute store which sold used clothes, books, furniture, and had a gallery downstairs. I looked around for a moment, saw some cute things, then left.

Henry James says in his chapter The Velvet Glove, about his young Lord:

It was easy because the presence before him was from moment to moment referring itself back to some recent observation or memory; something caught somewhere, within a few weeks or months, as he had moved about, and that seemed to flutter forth at this stir of the folded leaves of his recent experience very much as gathered, faded flower, placed there for “pressing,” might drop from between the pages of a volume opened at hazard. (The Velvet Glove, 143).

He goes on to criticize the young Lord’s ineptitude and transparency, and his manner of, “having too much imagination,” (143). Like the young Lord, Paris is an open book, with pressed souvenirs falling from between its pages. 

I walked to the backside of the museum to admire the facade, then past the café I had gone to with my cousin, then past the music store where I bought my guitar, then past the tobacco shop where I bought my stamps, then past the fountain where my class once met, then into the metro. Edith Wharton says in her A Backwards Glance, “my thirteen years of Paris life were spent entirely in the rue de Varenne; and all those years rise up to meet me whenever I turn the corner of the street,” (226). This is exactly how I felt walking there. All the bad — all the good, it is not the nature of the memory, but the memory itself which is pleasant, an apparition of a familiarity, a home within itself.

Henry Miller, in Walking Up and Down in China, observes all of the people on 42nd street, “smiling through life with that demented, glazed look in the eyes,” characterizing American optimism as glassy eyed - an evasion of reality, a fake, a color copy, out of touch with reality. Their, “beautiful white teeth,” compared to the beautiful white Haussmannian buildings, while the French are fixing their façades, the Americans are fixing their teeth. Paris does not smile because it makes things run more smoothly, it smiles because it is beauty - “the gnarled stump of an old redwood, solitary and majestic she stands…soft, gemlike, a holy citadel,” (391), but even that is a Paris displays its scars, its past; she wore no braces in her youth, but did get a facelift in her later years - which shows. Paris is every part, “you have forgotten…rain is softly falling, [and] suddenly in the aimless wandering you come to the street through which you have walked time and time again in your sleep and this is the street you are walking through,” (396). 

Every street is forgotten, and yet déjà vu. Every block is unfamiliar, yet familiar all the same. A turn, whether right or left, becomes a straightaway, heading in the same direction from whence it came. Paris’ fine façades are masking the deteriorating interior: courtyards overtaken by vines, paint peeling, time and space reclaiming its property. Miller says it is when we no longer fear life and its inevitable end - when we embrace the vicissitudes of life, the ebb and the flow - that we will find freedom from the hellish torment of life. 

When the tourists came, the city changed. Gone were les parisiennes, replaced by the Germans, the Italians, the Americans, the British, the Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Brazilian, etc. Paris is a private city, then one day it is not. 

Paris in tourism season was like Disneyland. Photography World: Irving Penn’s world of petits métiers, August Sander’s petits observations, Cartier-Bresson’s petits moments. Ennuiland: from a friend’s apartment in Montmartre, I see a line cook standing outside smoking, wearing all white against an all blue building, against an all blue sky. He’s always out there smoking, it seems. Victoireville: The soldiers in the Marais walk with their big guns, big muscles, big boots. Saint-Salope: the whores in Saint Denis stand in the sex shop doorways with their plastic shoes and ill fitted tops.

In a metro tunnel, I encountered one of those six-piece bands with the trumpet case filled with money and C.D.’s. They smiled at me as I passed, and I wondered if they remember the time I stopped and gave them money a few weeks ago. I imagined that they did, or else why would they be smiling at me?

I exited a park, then walked down to the river shore. I took a spiral staircase to the barge, and stopped for a moment to sit on a log. Across the river from me, two men were playing music, a guitar and a trumpet. I sat listening to their music for a moment, then walked towards a green patch on the riverside. An elderly couple walked past me, elbows linked, eyes tracing ground. It was a beautiful day. I watched a boat pass under a bridge, its passengers waving to the people on the shore. I waved back, and the kids started waving faster, more frantically.

I walked towards an open gate, I didn’t enter, but peered in to see what was hidden. Cement brick, parked cars, cobblestone, nothing out of the ordinary. I walked away feeling less discontented. I forged onward, searching for life, finding a prop warehouse, and a hair salon for people with dreadlocks. Five faces with similar expressions and identical hairstyles turned to watch me walk past the window. They all seemed to be wearing yellow, green, and red.

I watched as a large van parked in a tight spot outside my window, the driver’s daughter screaming directions in Russian. He had to ask someone in the hair salon to move his bike, and the man came out and happily did so, waving goodbye as he walked back into the shop to finish his client’s hair. The driver got out of the car and gave his daughter a hug, and the walked down the street smiling, hugging each other from the side.

Paris is a kodak moment.

James says, “if he had imputed to them conditions it was all his own doing: it came from his inveterate habit of abysmal imputation, the snatching of the ell wherever the inch peeped out, without which where would have been the tolerability of life?” (147). It may be that Paris is no more than an inch, but without the rest there is plenty of room for imagination, and imagination, James argues, is the “tolerability of life” - a way to tolerate life, and the part of life which is tolerable.

Fiction is the reality we live in. In order to survive, in order to prosper, in order to live happily, in order to not cripple under the pressing weight of a fear known to all of us as uncertainty, in order to control, in order to educate, in order to escape, we have invented fiction. If nothing exists, fiction does. Death may be a respite, but even then maybe not; it is uncertain what will come of you when your body dies. Nobody has an answer. There are answers posed, however, in fiction. Through analogy and metaphor, everything can be symbolic if it’s true and well written.

I met up with a friend of mine from New York who was in Paris when I first got here. He asked me what I’d been doing in Paris, I told him I had been walking around, getting lost. He said good, and that was exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

I got lost on every walk I took, so predictably so, that I stopped planning actual directions and instead gave myself a time frame and a general area to explore, with the hopes that I might find some landmark, with no intentions or expectations. I was able to rely on the metro system: a station every few blocks or so, a security net in case I get too lost to find my way home. My intuitive sense of direction, which normally guides me in the right direction, went completely astray, every turn I made took me deeper into an unknown area, every desire brought me further from comfort.

I took a walk in Montmartre just a few days ago. I bussed my way to the back of the cathedral - Marie 18 - and climbed up from behind, through the winding streets, past the cathedral, past the Dalí museum, past the cafés and tourists, then down a flight of stairs on a hill, past the cathedral, past a row of restaurants, some souvenir shops, past the funicular station, down the hill leading to Pigalle, then I took the train home. I had gone in search of a sweater but found nothing and instead took a whole roll of film - 36 photos. I did not get lost.

religion in TSAR

Voltaire said of religion, “ce système sublime à l'homme est nécessaire. C'est le sacré lien de la société, le premier fondement de la sainte équité, le frein du scélérat, l'espérance du juste…si dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer,” (Trois Imposteurs, epigraph). 

(This sublime order is necessary to man. It is the sacred thread of society, the cornerstone of holy equity, the criminal’s impediment, the hope of the just…if God did not exist, he would be invented.)

This may be bullshit to the atheist/existentialist. In this modern, secularist society Doris A. Helbig  speaks of, nothing is scared. This can be taken figuratively and literally. 

The Godless are a proud, dogmatic people. They reject systems of oppression and mindless deification, and when they are tired at the end of the day, they turn to their vices, which in turn, turn them. Brett’s god is tragedy — she creates these lovers wherein she can reaffirm her pain. To feel the pain of misfortune is to be a victim, which is to martyr one’s self in the face of a disillusioned reality. 

Atheism is a religion, godlessness being its god — science, which is intended to disprove god has become in itself a religion. 

Spinoza said, “God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things,” meaning he, or the idea of god, exists inherently in everything, and is the mystery in its existence. 

John Lennon said, “I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.”

“God” is a figment of life — necessary for the well being of man and for the resolution of life. Which religion this god belongs to is null, but the idea exists outside of religion, in all facets of life. 

—

I feel like there is a big misconception when it comes to the idea of religion. Many people use religion as an excuse to disregard human decency, or to shirk the responsibilities of living in a society where responsibilities are currency, however these paradigms are exceptional and rarely seen in godly people. In fact, I think this kind of behavior is significant of a lack of god, in the form of a a lack of appreciation, and a lack of humility.

There is little to be said for those people who do not care about the nature of our world, but instead care only about the nature of their god. They pry into each others’ lives, act victim and play out roles which they believe to have been granted to them by social or communal expectation. The “church society” lives in a bubble, unawares of their self-inflicted damage and ignorance, happily carrying on the routines and rituals of their proxy religion. 

This is neither to condemn those religious people, whose idea of god is treated almost ironically as a being more elevated than themselves, but to suggest that there are differences in the types of religiousness that exist, not just in religion itself. In fact, I would argue to say that all religions are nearly the same in one way or another, being that they all stem from the same universal truths which guide us in our humanity and in our morality.

Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky were held in a debate in an auditorium, whereabouts and when I forget, but it’s on youtube somewhere lost in the internet-web-sea, where they were essentially arguing two separate points which led to the same conclusion: there exists a sense of universal truth which is reached either through external influence or inherent knowledge. 

This idea of god is the one that I am speaking of — a collective consciousness, or a self-less-ness, meaning not that the self does not exist, but that the self is not alone, nor is it ever alone, because even in its moments of complete and utter solitude, it still has itself with whom it can speak. This is all very confusing, I am sure I do not completely understand that which I am trying to convey, but I am grasping at the straws of an idea which will be fully formed with more research and experience. 

I do not wish to ascribe myself a religion, either, because in doing so, I will have lost whatever mystery existed in my own unlabeled religious affiliation. I do not preclude the possibility of god, though I do not think god and God are one in the same. I think organized religion is a crime against free will and liberty. I think religion and faith is a necessary evil. I have not decided if these opinions are firm, and I will further update with any changes. 

Meditation

I suppose since I am posting this after the deadline there is no credit involved, however I feel that I should post regardless because it is the right thing to do.

Before reading this 30 paged article, I had been studying a lot of Buddhist history, ideas, boddhisatvas, etc., for a project on the Bodhidharma. This was not the first exposure I’ve had to buddhism, however I forgot, or something similar to forgetfulness, the benefits and drive for mindfulness which I had become invested in some time ago. Following a stressful 24 hours this was exactly the change/reminder I need(ed) to restart myself into more satisfying/gratifying headspace.

The walk I took was difficult. I was losing my balance, literally and mentally, more often than taking a step I was falling, supporting myself by the walls of my hallway. I recognize the symbolism in this. After some time, I realized that the thoughts I was having were simple, very simple, and soon  resigned to allowing them to pass through without analyzing their context or origin. Then, as I noted each action my mind and body took, I began to recognize that they were ordering themselves into neater/less hectic/more organized patterns. Eventually, I was able to recognize only one at a time, and soon became objective in my recognition and labelling of them. I feel now, even hours after the walk, more sturdy minded and present than I have in a long time. Of course, this I that I speak of must be analyzed, broken down, and eventually filed away, just as my other categorical thoughts have been done, but for now I refer to myself as existing, despite it being the cause of my dukkha. 

Further into the walk I began to experience thoughtless mindfulness, occasionally stopping to recognize a passing memory, but overall feeling much more in touch and aware with the physical reality I was experiencing. In this walking meditation, I realized that my reality is often blurred and/or ignored by thoughts which are analogous to pinched nerves. Meditating in this way is a brain massage; in identifying, locating, labelling the knots, the muscles relax and are work more easily, without hindrances or self-awareness.

This meditation has reminded me and inspired me to continue with this feeling. It is simple, and with effort and practice and time it is easily mastered, and wholly fulfilling.

TSAR #2

While the experience of war is unprecedented, and only by veterans can it be truly understood, it is a universal constant. Chaos, disordered energy, which provides a firm opposition to the cosmos, being that neither is able to exist independently, is at the root of conflict. War is an misplaced outlet for human agression, a competition for supremacy and ultimately evolutionary advantage, a cry for reconciliation, ad infinitum. War is in everything, and everything is in war, There has never been, and likely will never be world peace, and this is the true state of nature. Destructive as it is, war has the regenerative ability to reunite, reevaluate, and rebuild broken structures. Cruel as it is, war is the flame which consumes the phoenix before its rebirth.

I can’t say for sure whether I agree with William Adair’s observations about the allusions to WWI via food related scenography. Thorough and well argued, I don’t hesitate to buy his argument. However, seeing that the novel takes place in post war Europe, mid 1920’s, Hemingway having been a veteran himself, it is not a stretch nor a surprise that Adair was able to identify these hidden allusions to war in the writing, thus posing the question: what does that implicate?

In coupling food with war allusions, Hemingway is drawing a comparison between food and war; its primal nature, its universality. Foods are the raw materials which fuel life on earth, an organic material taken from nature, to provide energy to other organic material. Food is an embodiment of the cycle of life — no food has the intention of being food, and is not called food until it is killed and eaten, just as soldiers are called war casualties when deceased.

A carnivorous entity which feeds on human spirit, and in taking millions of lives and leaving them to rot with the rest of the destroyed, war, too, is a sentient being, with a voracious appetite and violent intent to keep itself alive. It seems counterintuitive, knowing the full extent of it’s damages, that we would have continued to provoke and and honor war. So, either this destructive force is essentially beneficial, even in the face of its deleterious effects, or it is forced upon us, by Mars, or by habit.

Catacombes/Death/Montmartre Cemetery

Tandis que je sois assise dans ma salon, je me trouve orientée vers le soleil. Où que je trouve la << fleur éphémère >>, qui n’a pas de souci, ni peur de mort, d’une beauté universel, je trouve la mort, même hypnotisant. Il faut toujours souvenir la mortalité, sans tomber inconsolable. Ça y est, il est dit, où on peut trouver la vie. Quand la mort ne me fait pas peur, je n'aurai pas d'aucune souci. C'est eux qui vivent encore déjà mort qui me fait peur -- pour qui, j'ai rien que la pitie. Je n'avais jamais aperçu que la zombie est un metaphore depuis aller aux Catacombes. 

En plus, je suis allée à la cimetière de Montmartre pour un après-midi légère, jusqu’à côté de la metro Gaîté. J'y avais écrit le suivant: 

Le train est arrivé comme un vaisseau spatial, le bruit des annonces dès train était 

assourdi par le cabine ci-joint. J'avais imaginé que les gens, en descendant du train, 

seraient habillés aux scaphandres, et marcheraient si lourd et si lent que les 

astronautes. 

C’était ma première impression de la ligne 13. 

Je suis descendu du train à Gaîté. J’ai marché jusque autour du quartier avant que je 

suis allée à la cimetière. C’était calme et tranquille, le visiteur ou visiteuse n’apparaît ni 

souvent, ni jamais. Les arbres étaient libre, en atteint du ciel, sans souci, sans peur de 

mort, d’une beauté universel. 

C’est poétique: entre les tombes il y avait des arbres, des fleurs, et des insects. C’est un 

rappel de la continuité et de la certitude de la vie: que la vie n’est pas faite pour vivre, 

mais pour le sort de la mort, pour continuer la cycle de régénération. Il faut qu’on se 

demande si les arbres sont fait des cadavres, voyant que la terre en est plein.

Est-ce qu’on vit pour mourir, ou meurt pour vivre? La mort m’amène un confort comme 

je promenade entre les chemins étroits, flanqués par les arbres, et les hommes 

disparus. Je continue de marcher, mais je ralentis, promenant d’un rythme soutenu, 

avec prudence de ne pas éclipser l’homme devant moi. La mort n’est pas triste ni 

condamnant pour moi, mais libérant. C’est le terminus, l’atterrissage, l’appareil qui 

rapport la charme de la vie, sans qui nous ne nous comprendrions rien de la préciosité 

dans les moments si ardu et si laborieux. J’attends la mort comme j’attends rentrer à 

New York: avec patient anticipation.

Tandis que j’écris ce pièce sur la mort, j’ai reçu un email dès Uniqlo, un publicité pour 

une robe nouvelle de leur collection d’été. L’amour, la mort, c’est quoi la difference? je 

me demande (au moins phonétiquement, rien). Je vous donne une liste des citations 

dès À Bout de Souffle qui parlent sur ce sujet:

Quelle est votre grande ambition dans la vie?

(et l’homme répond:) Devenir immortel et mourir.

(on peut en lire plus ici)

Ces hommes enterré étaient des humains magnifiques, et puis, à présent, ils sont des 

souvenirs d’une generation passée. 

Une amie m’a demandé de quoi je regretterais si j’aurais dû mourir demain, mais le 

réponse que je l’ai donné n’était pas authentique, et je ne peux pas encore trouver le vrai solution.

La cimetière de Montmartre est belle.

Il y a aussi une sensibilité très bizarre de l’idée de la cimetière. Son facticité la met dans une catégorie comme la reste de Paris: faux. Même que la fine art est appelée l’art plastique en français. Il reste qu’il n’est pas l’incapacité de comprendre (ou prendre soin) de la différence entre vrai et faux, mais une préférence pour la synthétique, et pour la perfection à la clé. 

L’idée de la mort peut souvent inspirer la motivation de faire quelque chose d’importance. Durant la cherche pour la perfection, ou la travaille qui la suite, on trouve quelques leçons et on gagne quelques experiences qui font l’âme. Autrement, s’il il n’est pas la vérité qu’on cherche, on peut voir le version synthétique à la boutique. Ce n’est pas encore le chemin qu’on cherche, mais la destination. De cette façon, on ne cherche plus la vie, l’amour, le voyage, mais la mort, le destin, l’amour. La vie n’est pas le moyen de la mort, la mort est la catalyseur de la vie. 

Aux Catacombes, c'est la même idée sauf que la mort est affichée sur les murs, ayant l'intention de décorer ou de adoucir la mort. La homogénéité de la mort se fait aplanir les niveaux de la société, des structures inventé par les gens avec la pouvoir des armées et la dominance des hommes. Dans la cimetière, les visiteurs font le promenade. Il y a quelques gens âgés, qui pleurent par les morts, mais même pour le vie passante, qui est toujours en train de se terminer, mais pour eux, plus tôt.

C'est ironique que je ne peux pas trouver une fin pour cette expo, mais enfin, il n'y a pas de terminus. La ligne continue jusqu'en retour, en commençant de la route encore.

TSAR pt 1

The Sun Also Rises’ Paris is one of a changing landscape: a Paris which had not previously existed and does not survive today. The book is an expatriate encounter with foreign identity, and with American identity. 

The review written by John Atherton asks whether The Sun Also Rises might be more of a Masquerade to Jake’s Paris, a hidden treasure map, where the gold is buried in the experience of looking. The hyperbolic nature of its characters feeds into the mythos of Paris: La Ville des Lumières, which shine when allumé, and blind even those who know their way around the city by heart. My lived experience is not far from the one in The Sun Also Rises; in Atherton’s itinerary, the reader is the tourist, the characters, then, pseudo-tourists, being neither French nor outside of the story. 

Hemingway’s curt voice leaves nearly all of the story up to the reader’s imagination. Paris is a subjective experience, like a belle esprit whose power allows her the ability to manipulate her victim’s perception, not too unlike Brett.

The idealism in the tense un-sexual relationship of Brett and Jake objectifies the hard-boiled masculinity, a term invented by Jack Doyle to describe the man whose interior is as tough as his exterior. Oddly that F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the symbolism of an egg in his The Great Gatsby, after having been in Hemingway’s company, no doubt. 

Joseph Doyle, an English heavyweight boxer whose career as a boxer ended in 1933, whereupon he travelled to America to pursue a career in Hollywood; his alcoholism and gambling problems bankrupt him and seriously damaged his health and he died in 1978. This commonality between Hemingway and Fitzgerald and boxing and Jack Doyle reveals a little of the easily permeable barriers between social groups. 

This hard-boiled masculinity is basis of his character Jake — undaunted, tight — all adjectives to describe the ideal masculinity of the ideal Hemingway-ian hero. The whole books gives the impression of being hard-boiled, its characters, plot, vicissitudes all pre-planned and under control. The conversation in the book takes on the quality of the vaudeville act Abbott and Costello’s tightly controlled comedic dialogue. 

More later. 

Rousseau