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.
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.
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