euroless

Living the life of an impoverished writer this week has been one of the more freeing things I have done. Living off of stolen fruits and vegetables from the alimentaire shops with open air fruit stands, and the little dried food I had in my kitchen taught me how little money contributes to my happiness and how much it actually detracts from it. Guilt I associate with spending money vanishes with money, and inventiveness and artistic fulfillment precede. 

I lost my debit card somewhere in Paris on the 26th of January. I had $150 transferred to a Western Union, which translated to about €130, which has lasted me exactly 8 days, now, with €20 left still, for an emergency. I owe Sam €35 and I owe a few people €0,5 here and there, for the espresso machine in the student lounge, but I will pay them back as soon as I get my pin number or my debit card, whichever comes first. Having to ration food and alcohol has taught me self control, having to ask myself, now or later?, as I am used to now and later, though the latter has caused me many problems, namely those which are embarrassing and bourgeois. Needless to say, it was good for me.

I have been spending time stressing out about my audition for the Bel Canto program in Florence, Italy. It is a 4 week opera intensive, and if I get in then I am guaranteed the summer in Europe. So far, I have only a vague idea of what I might do in Portugal for two months, as I had planned to rent an apartment though June and July, then go back to Los Angeles, to see my family, then to New York for the fall and to find an apartment and get my bearings on American soil again. I hate to think so far in advance, because I feel that it detracts from my experience here in Paris, but these things need to be planned now rather than later, and once I have my future planned, I can relax in the present, and not be worried about where I am going or how I am getting there. 

I have to record myself singing two Italian pieces, and because I do not have a pianist, I have to do them a cappella or with a pre-recorded tape, which is inconvenient for timing and pitch. The application is $75, and I am afraid that I will be wasting my money, especially if I don't get in. The program costs $6,300 without any scholarships, plus living expenses which I know will be high since I will be there in the summer time and the summer always costs more money. I hate how much I think about money, but if I do not, like my future, I will reach a dead end. I don't know if I want to become an opera singer, either, but for now, it is what I do best and what I have worked on the hardest, and where I feel an affect.

I have been spending more time walking around and thinking, and then writing those thoughts somewhere, as an effect of not having money to spend on extemporaneous purchases. This has allowed me to reflect on the value of money, and delegate where I spend it, but also see where money exists that I have taken for granted, and where money does not need to exist that I have also taken for granted. Parks, for example, have always places that I enjoy going to, but never had they been my preference to a café or two a clothing store. 

I feel disgusted when I think about how much time I spent shopping, not even to buy anything, but looking just because I had the money to look, and the option to spend. I’ve missed so much life blinded by my debit card, burning a hole in my pocket or bag, and I know now that it is a product of my childhood, running from one store to another with my mom whose binge shopping addiction was passed down from her mother, and her mother’s mother, and her mother’s mother’s mother, and so on, and which offer her a sense of security in this world, being able to quantify herself by the clothes she wears and the food she eats and the things she owns. Life is qualified by experiences and memories, sometimes intelligible and sometimes lost in time but always good, even when they are bad, and always more real than anything in a store. Life is qualitative not quantitative, and quality always trumps quantity, especially when it comes to tangible things, because money is an abstract, fleeting invention to satisfy modern man’s need for structure and it has clotted up the arteries of humanity like cholesterol and sooner or later this world is going to seize and die. This is neither good nor bad, it just is, like the fact that I lost my debit card, and what came out of it was worth more money than I could have spent in my entire lifetime. I had heard many times that money does not buy happiness, which I thought was bull shit until I realized it is true this last week. Money cannot buy a disposition or an emotion, and while it can buy things that  may supplant or manufacture that emotion, happiness, it is not genuine unless it is, and happiness by tarte aux pommes is not happiness like spending a day with someone you love or walking through a park and watching life reveal itself to you, and basking in the wonder and mystery of it all.

I saw two pigeons walking in a single file line across the Parvis de Nôtre-Dame and the one followed the other in corkscrew spirals and turns and forks and the two pigeons walked the exact same winding path until they found themselves under a car. I think this may have been a mating ritual.

I sat down on a fence near the Panthéon to smoke a cigarette, and suddenly it became incredibly cold and incredibly windy. I had a difficult time lighting my cigarette, but once I did, I was pacified and I sat and watched as people, probably students, walked about with their backpacks and collegiate glasses. Some people came out of the Universal Studios building next to me to smoke, and suddenly there was a rush of wind and ash began blowing around me. I thought this was odd, I had never had my cigarette produce ash so light that it floated in the air. I looked around, thinking that maybe the people smoking nearby were ash-ing their cigarettes into the wind, and then I thought that maybe, a few blocks away, a building might have caught fire and the ash in the air was coming from that, but I heard no sirens. A man walked past me, and as I was looking around for a fire or a burning bush, this man looked at me and with his eyes only said, “I know, me too,” and I realized then that it was not ash but snow, and I am so ignorant to cold weather having been raised in Southern California that I did not recognize it when it I saw it. I laughed at the situation, and at myself, for thinking fire instead of ice, and I walked away, down another unrecognizable block.

I walked off the subway at Charles de Gaulle étoile and as I walked towards my apartment just off of Rue Mac Mahon I noticed a fervency in the air. The people waiting at the bus stop were staring at the Arc de Triomphe which never happens and a man ran across the street in just a suit towards the arc which I thought was weird, too. A man who walked past me was wearing a royal purple scarf, which was also odd and I realized, then, that the sun had broken through the clouds for the first time in weeks and spring time was coming.

Two Weeks in Paris (so far no quiche)

Listen to this track while you read this post.

I forget where or when I had my first impression of French culture, but I have always admired the French save from the pervasive smugness. I began learning French in 9th grade with the intention of going to or living in Paris. I was born American and raised Portuguese. This experience so far has been more of a "coming home" rather than a "going abroad". Though perhaps I am caught in my own delusions of grandeur.

I always thought about the cafés and vente à emporter kiosques, the late nights drinking beers with good friends at bistrots, making conversation until the sun rises and then post-conversation conversations fueled by wine and fatigue, the memories of which last only a day or two until the next night out. I thought of speaking of love and life and nebulous things with people I know personally, not just through Facebook. I thought of the French I would speak with its messy conjugations and disregarded syntactical rules. I dreamed of the cobblestone streets and the markets that sell fruit not wrapped in plastic, the clubs with smelly people and restaurants with slow table staff. I thought of fortune and I dreamed of breathing the air and smelling the smell of freshly baked baguettes wafting through the narrow winding walk streets, and beaucoup du café. 

I saw a post on a blog called Messy Nessy Chic about week before my departure called "Living the Bohemian Student Dream in 1960's Paris". It detailed, in pictures and captions, the life of a vrai étudiant parisienne. The pictures were of students, not much older than myself, standing in staircases, sitting at desks, organizing jazz records.

"It doesn’t seem like much has changed."

I had forgotten about this article, having filed it away with the other abstractions I read last month, until I sat down to write this blog post. I was reminded of it by a comment my roommate made to me. One Tuesday night, after getting a drink with a close friend, I sat on my balcony and smoked a Lucky. I was content in my faux fur, like a baby swathed in blankets. I began to sing, quietly at first then more loudly. I sang Gershwin and Chopin and once I ran out of songs, I made up melodies. People in the street below didn't appear to notice, or if they did they showed no inclination to participate, though a few of them did look around with curiosity or maybe irritation. I took that as encouragement to sing, and so I sang more decidedly and confidently than I had been before. My roommate came out to smoke with me, and we had a very nice conversation. After that, I went to bed.

In the morning, I was very hungry. I get in moods where all I want to do is eat which will last for days, sometimes weeks. I don't know that I ever don't want to eat. I went to the Marais for coffee and walked around and went into St. Paul Cathedral where I sat and prayed and admired the architecture. I don't consider myself a religious person, but I have a soft spot for holy places, especially those that are ornately decorated. I am in conflict with myself about whether it is disrespectful to do this, seeing as I am Jewish by birth and agnostic by choice, but I figure that it is in the spirit of Christianity to accept any and every person into their home. After that, I went to one of those vintage stores which sell clothing for 1 euro a piece. I found a red white and black nylon jacket there, though I don't know on what occasion I'd wear it. I went and bought a slice of a tarte pistache abricot and sat down to watch the rain and the cars drive by. Behind me to the right was a mother and her daughter, who were speaking in German. It made me think about how incredible it is that words convey so little. I wonder sometimes if words mean anything at all; text can be at times illegible and meaningless. Often I will find myself looking at words rather than reading them, searching for meaning in the words themselves rather than what the words convey, like reading a foreign language. I took the rest of my tarte to go and ate it on the way to the metro Saint Paul.

The metro is very efficient. Compared to the New York subway system, at least. I've heard that the trains in Tokyo are lightning fast, which I imagine is a bit dangerous, but I say throw caution to the wind. It comes in handy when you are trying to get somewhere, though it does not foster that particular conversation that comes from mass frustration. Some of my best acquaintances have been made in the Subway in New York. On my way home from a party one night, I stood watching two rats nibble on some discarded saffron rice in between the rusted tracks. Two students approached me, one disgusted and one intrigued, and we got talking about the pros and cons of living in Queens, as opposed to living in Brooklyn. I saw them around the city a few times after that, and we always acknowledged each other with mutual familiarity. The metro also closes at an obscenely early hour, which in America would be called a ploy to benefit the Taxi company, or federal negligence, but in Paris is simply understood that metro employees will not be made to work overnight shifts. 

Time goes by differently in Paris, also. Where in New York, the mornings were the shortest part of the day, in Paris it is the opposite. I feel as though my morning drags on until the evening, and then come 4 pm it is 11pm and I am asleep in bed. I could not say why this is, if I did I would be grasping at straws.

It is also very cold in Paris, which makes showering difficult because the shower head does not stay in its holder well in my apartment, so when my knees are cold my head is warm, and when my knees are warm, my entire body is freezing. And, because the water makes the cold air even colder, it takes me an hour just to warm my body enough to get out of the bathtub. Then, I take a five minute break in front of my heater to warm the parts of my body which did not get enough heat in the shower, and immediately jump into my bed, which is always icy cold until my body heat warms it from the inside. I really like this feeling, though, I enjoyed the endless hot water in New York just a little too much.

The pastries and baked goods in Paris are more beautiful than the paintings in its galleries and museums. In the window at Fauchon, there is an immaculate chocolate orb, sans scratches or mold lines, almost like it was created on Photoshop and then pasted into the window. The traiteurs and boulangers have created the paradigm of modern decadence. Even the lesser quality bakeries still have pastries on par with the better bakeries in New York. I have been inspired by the bread in Paris, and am baking fresh baguettes as I write this.

I do not have enough experiences yet to amount an objective depiction of Paris, however I have had some experiences walking around the city at night which have been awesome in the truest sense of the word. Paris is not the city I had imagined it to be, as is the case with every preemptive perception, though it has surpassed most if not all of my expectations in ways I could not have imagined. I feel as though I have been here the entire semester already, and it has only just begun.Two Weeks in Paris (so far no quiche)