paris in the springtime

(Paris: my métro entrance, a view from the Promenade Plantée, Notre Dame from the South Bank, Monet's Les Nymphéas at Le Musée de l'Orangerie, paintings for sale, lilac blooming on a typical café, and the best bookshop in the world.)

There is a secret garden in Paris. It, like most secrets, hides in plain sight, and offers itself up as a reward for those willing to look a little harder and in different directions. It is called le Promenade Plantée, and it's on top of a disused suburban commuter rail line. It's one of those things only Parisiens tend to know about; a boy I met in Edinburgh told me about it - he had lived here for five years. It was my first stop today, and as I wandered through part of it, it felt like I'd tumbled into a children's novel.

And then it was down onto street level, and back into the real world of Paris in the spring, which is not really the real world at all. One of the first sounds I heard when I arrived in the city was an accordian being played on the métro as I travelled to my hostel. The first thing anyone says to me without me approaching them first is "she has stolen my heart! What can I do, I have a hole in my chest. I will keep my tears there." This is from a young Frenchman working at my hostel (joking about his coworker, who he swoops in to kiss on the cheek as she laughs), while I wait in line to check in. He's small and bearded, with a nosering, and it takes me five minutes to fall in love.

Paris in the springtime. The air smells of lilac (sometimes, when it doesn't smell of bread or coffee or spices or piss). I have already grown a lightness here. I wrote two poems to day, and a whole skein's worth of diary entry. When I was thinking about Cities of the Dead yesterday, I forgot that Paris is also a city of emotions; London is not. I am beginning to carry my scars on my chest, instead of my back.

city of the dead

A few scenes from around my hostel on the Canal St-Martin, and the jazz band I just came upstairs from listening to.

Leaving London this morning, I felt a surge of pure, dumb fear. It grew as we travelled further and further away, until I was nauseous from nerves. I was scared; I wanted to go home. That was how I knew that taking this trip was the right decision to make. It confirms my suspicions that I was hiding really rather well in London, being numb.

On a hill above the English terminal of the Eurotunnel, there is an giant chalk horse. Later research will tell me it's a modern recreation of the ancient figures throughout the UK, but seeing it, I feel something in me loosen. I think of Rhiannon, forced to tell her tale over and over in penance even through her own sorrow. I take it as a further sign that I've done the right thing.

In West, Jim Perrin says something like "I have come to this place of the dead to be alone with my dead." I think there's a reason I've chosen Paris, one which goes deeper than its beauty and the nostalgia I have of a high school visit. I've come on this trip out of indulgence, yes, and where to go to allow myself to be hedonistic when I can't find a job and I"m sad but Paris? But I realize that I've also come somewhere that in my subconscious is a City of the Dead.

I am very good at running away. Both physically and emotionally, I am a master of distance when I can't cope with something. Motion soothes me, and any writer is able to pull away to observe. In London, in my haze, I was able to hide from the truth by staying busy jobhunting and distracting myself. That's fine, I needed some time of calm, but I can't continue like that forever, just because it's easier. At some point, I will fall to pieces.

(I'm thinking, now, that I was also protecting myself. That I love London, and I live there, and I want to live, there, and maybe I was subconsciously shielding myself from soiling it. I definitely know that I was being very English in my emotions, and maybe there's some culture adherence to it, too.)

When I booked my room in Paris, I was doing it for a week away from the daily grind of fruitless jobhunting, drinking wine and coffee, eating macarons, and looking at beauty. But this is also the first step in my consciously dealing with the loss of my father. In this city that most people associate with romance, but for me is most strongly haunted by the people in its history out of any place I've been, I've come to a place of the dead, to understand the truth about my own dead: that he is gone.

I didn't do it on purpose. But now that I've realised it, I will give in to that urge. This will be a week of indulgences and senses and giving in.

This afternoon, watching the ugly French countryside roll past under the even uglier grey sky, I thought about my dad and all I never got to say to him, all he'll never see me be. And I cried, for the first time since I left Victoria.

here comes the sun

Things that have happened recently:

I met Thom Yorke on Monday. I went to Brick Lane to get a copy of The Universal Sigh, and who was handing them out but one of my heroes? I didn't have my camera, but a guy took a photo for me and said he'd email it. No sign of it yet, but, fingers crossed. Apparently Phil was also there, but I didn't see him.

G and I finally went to Abbey Road on Tuesday, as you can see above. We went to the pub afterwards.

I still haven't found a job.

I cut my hair, died a piece of it purple, and bought a tube of bright coral lipstick. I am starting to make an effort again. I am purposely bringing colour into my life, and going out and doing things other than looking for work, even when all I feel like is curling up on my bed in my pjs and writing now that the words are starting to come back again. I am scared, so scared, but I am ready to try hard, and to work my butt off. At this trip, as well as at writing.

I am reading lots of memoirs and diaries and poetry lately, thinking lots about words and writing and self-definition. Rilke and Nin and Plath. Letters to a sad & panicked young girlthing who bleeds ink.

(Relatedly, Catherynne Valente and SJ Tucker interviewed each other for the Interstitial Arts Foundation, and it nearly made me cry. "Dream big. Make friends.")

The cherry blossoms are blooming; spring is a season of rebirth.

I leave for Paris on Sunday.