Month: April 2024

There is a feeling that many of us are here for the same thing. We can’t say quite what it is, but we know it must be here. Sitting in the park with a notebook, pushing the stroller with an open paperback, cutting through dense crowds with a camera slung around the shoulder. Where is it? When will I find it? Do I let it come to me? Do I even know what it is? 

It’s some sort of communion. Communion with God, with the earth, with spirit, creativity, the souls of those who traipsed through these streets centuries ago. We came here because we felt something tugging while we were at home, and it seems that people have successfully found whatever that thing is while here, or because of having been here. 

Me, I’m having trouble seeing and hearing beyond the steady stream of traffic beneath my window. Hemingway had a goatherd marching past his window, I have 24/7 ambulances and trucks and cars and scooters and bikes. The more I read about Hemingway, the more I realize how driven he was by ambition. And I suppose I was at that age, too. He was in his early-mid 20’s when he was “just starting into writing” here in Paris. He had been a journalist before that, but now he was devoting himself to the real stuff, the forging of a new modern style. He knew he could do it, and he was highly disciplined. He was not unaffected by rejection. Quite the contrary. But he was so motivated by this desire for recognition that it didn’t stop him. 

If I had not won that job, the job I have now, when I was 23, I would have certainly continued to take auditions. But for how long? Where does determination falter? And who’s to say if it falters too early or too late? All that is beside the point for me now as I embark on this new, possibly short-lived foray of starting into writing. It’s beside the point because my determination to do so is next to nil. 

Whether it’s naturally connected to being almost 38 instead of 23, or because I am doing this on my own rather than under the guidance of mentors, I can’t say. Both must have an effect. There is something intoxicating about being at college, surrounded by inspiring teachers and fellow students, with names hanging on the wall, people practicing like crazy and winning jobs left and right, and having almost no responsibilities except to succeed, and to succeed quickly. 

As it is, I am spurred on only by a quiet longing to express something, an inkling that I have something to say, and a knowledge that I enjoy saying it, figuring out how to say it. That’s it. I know I enjoy it, and I suspect there is an it. What I am doing now is trying to find it. I am lucky to have people who encourage me on this path, and I suppose that adds some extra fuel when my own conviction is sagging. 

Like Hemingway, I do hope to write just one true sentence, the truest sentence I could write. The truth, the naked truth, the kind of truth only dreams can speak, that is what I’m after. I stop myself, probably prematurely, from writing about family, religion, my childhood, because I want to protect people I love who believe in it with their whole heart. But my interest isn’t really in proving any of it wrong. All I can say is what I experienced, what I saw and what I see. 

Perhaps I am simply on a journey to giving myself permission to walk through a door, or to walk up a narrow, spiral staircase, like the one in my dream. I had this recurring dream–still do, occasionally–where I would be making my way down a path, or through a tunnel or hallway, and suddenly I would turn a corner or look up or else just realize that, in order to proceed, I would have to fit through a terrifyingly small passageway, one where claustrophobia was inevitable. I would usually wake up at that moment in a cold sweat.

In one dream, as in many iterations, the passageway was upwards, in this case a narrow, spiral staircase. The fluorescent light flickered green, like in an old, dingy city building. I tried to walk up  the staircase, but quickly realized that I couldn’t fit on the staircase with my violin on my back. That dream was pre-2020, but I’m not sure exactly when.

The most obvious meaning of the dream is that I can’t take my violin with me through the next phase of my life, my real life, if I let it unfold the way it wants to. But I suppose there could be a more nuanced interpretation, like maybe my violin can’t help me through the next phase, or the next phase is irrespective of my career. Something like that. 

The challenge is to remain sensitive, to continue listening to the quiet voice inside, to not settle in too much to an interpretation of the dream. I do feel I am on the path, but I can’t see it. How is that possible? To be on a path I can’t see. The next steps revealed to me are baby ones. 

For instance, what I am hearing now is that it is time to stop speed-walking through the streets of Paris. I’ve been here for a few days now. Thursday, I arrived. Friday, I shopped for essentials. Saturday, I met up with Fred and his family for crepes. Sunday, I went to the Marche Bastille and walked as far as my legs would carry me and there were still a couple of hours of daylight left.

Today is Monday. I’ve already covered a lot of ground and have a pretty good idea of the lay of the land. The voice is telling me that it’s time to slow down, actually go into one of the cafes, stand still and look at some art, have a conversation with someone. Beyond that, I don’t know, except that I knew I needed to start a document like this. I don’t love much of anything I’ve written here, but it’s a start. I can’t write about wanting to be a writer forever, but I could see how I might need to get it out in order to get to the next thing. 

One idea that came up in my journaling this morning was that it would be interesting to explore ideas that coursed through this city throughout the ages. Liberty, for example. Christian mysticism, for another. You can visit the site where a woman was burned (and many people were executed after her) in the 14th century for writing a book about love and God, a book which threatened the established theology of the church. That people would die for their ideas is very humbling. These people thought long and hard about what they really thought. Me, I like to feel my thoughts. That hardly seems respectable. 

This was an idea that crossed my mind yesterday. Would I respect me if I weren’t me? Probably not, and for this very reason. I only feel my thoughts, I don’t think them. Perhaps this is what makes art and creation possible, the feeling of thoughts. But on the world stage, as it were, I can’t be taken seriously unless I devote some serious thought to, well, something. 

Should I try to articulate my dissatisfaction? It would hurt like hell, I’m sure. My emotions are all tangled up in there. And I run the risk of finding out that I am wrong, that I am the asshole, that I owe someone an apology. There is also a part of me that feels it would be a waste of time. I can smell that it’s rotten, I don’t need to dissect it. Where is my compass pointing now?

This is all truly disorienting. And there are two choices. Either I continue to float in space, hoping to land somewhere interesting, or I actively try to root myself in the past, in my past, bringing myself down to earth perhaps prematurely but perhaps not a moment too soon. And I don’t know which is the right thing. All I know is that I need to go easy on myself and try to enjoy this part, this part where I don’t know.

Upon my return from living in France for two months, I found it difficult to answer even the most basic questions, questions that I probably could have seen coming, questions like, “how was your trip?” and “how are you settling back in?” I remembered phrases like “it was great!” and “it was awesome!” but when it came time to elaborate thereupon, I wandered off into strange territory that neither I nor my interrogator could have seen coming.

I was freestyling, baby. Anything that came to mind was fair game: no anecdote too insignificant, no generalization too unexamined, no statement too grandiose. I was philosophizing, thinking out loud, journaling at my conversation partner. In truth, I had no idea how I was settling back in, and only an inkling as to how my trip had been.

I decided that my brain was mush and in need of organizing, lest I continue to leave my friends and acquaintances bewildered and slightly worried. I took out a small piece of paper and scrawled out the title, Modes of Being. Underneath, I made the following list:

• Animal Ellen
• Society Ellen
• Cosmic Ellen

Animal Ellen was the part of me that needed food and water and sometimes felt scared. Society Ellen was the part of me that played a role that made some kind of sense to the people around me. Cosmic Ellen was the part of me that wasn’t really “me” at all, the part that directly experiences the universe and sometimes has thoughts about life.

The plan was that, at any given point in the day, I could determine which of these modes was appropriate for the situation, and could summon it to the fore. If I felt sleepy, Animal Ellen could take a nap. If someone asked about my trip to France, Cosmic Ellen could take a seat and let Society Ellen do the talking. Come to think of it, Cosmic Ellen could pretty much just stay seated.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Society Ellen had a breakdown the day after establishing these delineations. We’re talking full on panic mode. I assumed I had made false distinctions and that I should instead try to be a whole, “authentic” person, thereby not putting so much pressure on Society Ellen. She obviously couldn’t handle it.

As the weeks went by, I slowly regained my ability to talk to people. Granted, I received fewer and fewer questions about my trip, but I managed to navigate the occasional query with my dignity still intact.

It wasn’t until yesterday, after having been home for more than a month, that I realized that Society Ellen’s mini-meltdown was not due to her being an imaginary prop. She was as real as anything else. No, it was due to the fact that she’d been out of commission for two months, and was a little rusty.

I didn’t need her when I was in France. I mean, I still made it a habit to wear clothes in public and not go around destroying other people’s personal property, but as far as answering for myself and making communicable sense of my existence, I was off the hook. In a foreign land, you are fulfilling your place in the world simply by being out of place. It is assumed that your life at home must look very different, and there’s no expectation that you should try to bring that life with you. In fact, a respectable traveler is one who leaves home behind and is willing to truly inhabit a different way of life, even a different persona. When else can you shed Society You?

When it came to probing questions about my life and plans and career and purpose and dreams and intentions, people generally left me alone, but more importantly, I had decided to leave myself alone. I could have easily spent those two months holding my own feet to the fire, “taking the opportunity” to take stock of my life and figure it all out, but I somehow had the good sense to know (call it being 38) that that was a recipe for crumbling if there ever was one, and I did not want to have a breakdown overseas.

I made it my sole aim to simply be in Paris. At the end of each day, I asked myself, “was I in Paris today?” If the answer was yes, Animal Ellen could sleep well, and Cosmic Ellen could dream. Society Ellen tried to bully me a couple of times, riddling me with questions like, “what are you doing here?” and “what’s your plan, Stan?” But I gave her the hand because she wasn’t even really supposed to be there.

I will be mulling over what my time in France meant to me for a good while, but for now, it feels supremely important to realize just how much time, attention, and energy I had been giving Society Ellen before the trip, and how I’d deemed Animal Ellen a nuisance and Cosmic Ellen a luxury. After all, Society Ellen adds value, Animal Ellen is an inconvenient fact, and Cosmic Ellen adds and subtracts nothing. Post-France, however, I can see that Society Ellen is expendable, Animal Ellen is an unthinkable gift, and Cosmic Ellen is eternal.

I can see that you’re getting worried again. Let me clarify that, when I say expendable, I do not mean disposable. I mean it in the following sense, the Oxford’s English sense: of little significance when compared to an overall purpose, and therefore able to be abandoned.