we have arrived at the airbnb. there is a big record player and an even bigger record collection. im living out my zoe kravitz high fidelity dream and we decide to play a new album every day, finding our favorites as we go along – thinking well end up masters of setting the mood as the month is up. we create a ritual: coming home, pouring a tall glass of icy lemonade, carefully placing the needle on the edge of the waxy record, hearing the initial white noise hissing. its the start of several dancy dinners and getting ready’s.
initially hemingway came to me through a friend. just before leaving, my old roommate was reading a copy of a moveable feast and read me the quote from the first page:
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
i immediately made it my mission to track down the book once i had arrived, once i had arrived to this moveable feast.
location: the abbey bookstore, montparnasse. its situated behind the other, more famous bookstore named after the english bard (which is unpenetrable to me by its long coiling queue). the abbey is occupying two stories in an old stone building, passages so narrow that you have to flatten yourself against the shelves to let another person by. along the upstairs shelves employees on ladders are busy sorting books, outside the entrance a wine and cheese-platter is laid out among the used books on sale. over the staircase to the basement a quote from dante hangs, lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.
(i immediately fall in love with the place)
i spot hemingway on the shelves. humble and slender in his light green jacket.
when paying for my book, the man behind the counter approves of my choice:
this is the restored edition, he says in a gentle, british accent; published how he wrote it, not censored like the first edition his wife edited.
he puts a bookmark in the book and admits that hemingway is his favourite short story writer.
i ask him what his favourite short story is.
he gazes up at the ceiling, searching his pale blue eyes. the light from the overhead counter catches the silver in his hair and he tells me it goes like this:
for sale: baby shoes. never worn.
i tell him ive heard of i.
its quite good, isn’t it?
people shuffle past. i agree as i have to cram myself against the counter.
when they have passed i tell him it was my first introduction to hemingway, back in my first ever literature class.
it reminded me of strindbergs a half sheet of paper.
his eyes light up.
i haven’t heard of that,
the woman behind me is coughing pointedly.
ill have to look it up, he says.
we both feel the impatience of the growing queue behind me.
next time you come ill tell you another favourite short story of mine. eyes warm despite the cool blue.
i thank him and leave.
outside the sun is blinding against the pale buildings.
i walk out with a new key to paris in my hands.
the next week pass where the hardest decision of our days is the choice between left or right – gauche ou droite – which street do you want to walk down? we’re trying our best to never walk the same alleys twice in this town, getting the most out of our steps, and it has payed off in an ever expanding mental map of this city.
in my bag hemingway has a permanent seat. i carry the book with me like the tourists below sacre-cour carry their guides – highlighted, weather-torn, dog-eared and well-thumbed. i retrace hemingways steps through paris and discover the parts of the city that were once glowing and gilded with promise, places that have since been turn into touristic shrines with overpriced coffee. outside café de flore and les deaux magots the roped-off queuing areas have become a constant fixture, people waiting with arms crossed for the opportunity to sit where their heroes once sat.
i can’t help but be one of them.
i grab a café créme (hemingways order) and return to my book.
im thinking about craft. hemingway writes a lot about his routine: after a day’s work in the attic, he walks with a light heart down the flights of stairs, finished and free to explore paris.
i think about my own routine.
the mornings often pass like this:
after the last sip of my espresso noisette (or: cortado), i move from my breakfast chair (the left one), to my writing chair (the right one), and begin the days work. often forgetting about the plates of cheese and butter and the abandoned flakes of puff-pastry that remains after the dissection of my morning croissant.
essentially, copying hemingway, mornings are spent writing and working; afternoons and evenings for strolling around.
and i like to stroll all over.
i might never run into gertrude stein on my walk through the luxembourg grarden, or see my friends paintings hang in the halls of a museum – but i can walk alongside those who did, retrace their footsteps. as im walking and thinking, walking and revisiting, i can’t help but wonder: where are my generations simones and sartres hanging out now?
je ne sais pas.
another list, another string of words holding a lot of meaning:
je ne sais pas – i don’t know. preferably said on an exhale, as one unbothered word: jenesaypa
café glacé sans lait – ice-coffee without milk. heavy on the ice
café créme – what hemingway orders. basically a french cappuccino
demi-blonde – my favourite order of beer (”half” a beer, served in a small glass, in the french way, with a slice of lemon)
im inhaling secondhand smoke in a café. my notebook splayed open before me, a hunger like no other in my belly.
just been to the louvre. and like hemingway wrote, paintings are protruding at their sharpest when hunger is present.
as a struggling artist, money was an issue. in turn, food was an issue. instead of lunch, he’d head to the museum to watch degas and the others. this hollow-bellied hunger only heightening their mastery.
i don’t condone artistic struggle for the sake of mythic artistic suffering, but a poorly planned and lengthy museum visit did indeed turn into a hunger-inducing one. wandering around the works of van gogh and cezanne in a dizzy-headed reverie, i couldn’t help but soak it all in. for so long these works had only existed for me through a digital screen or in small glossy print. now they were here. right in front of me, goldenframed and all. standing before starry night, i couldn’t help but think that this is where van gogh once stood too. thirty centimeters from this canvas just as i am right now.
and probably just as hungry.
as i left the building – in search for steak – i couldn’t help but feel another hunger within me grumbling too. the one for art, passion, purpose. at the end of the day, the gifts we leave behind to the world are what is born out of that hunger. whether hanging on the walls of a museum, or printed on paper and leather-bound, the fruits of that hunger are what will remain.
outside the museum, people are queueing in forty degree heat for the chance to see these artworks. if its not the hunger for beauty and meaning thats sustaining them, i don’t know what will.
i like stepping onto the metro wearing a big pair of sunglasses so i can unabashedly watch the people of the metro. hemingway isn’t one to daydream about his novels in moments like this. after the finished workday, he wants to be attentive, watch the people, learn from their behaviors and catch the little oddities that makes a character. the way they move, talk. i stand there and observe: a man is fast in his movements, fish-like reflexes, jagging steps as he decidedly grabs the first seat he sees. a bent over older woman takes her time, surveys the train, decides to move onto the next compartment which is less crowded. she stands in her space regal and steady. a boy next to her is immersed in his phone, left knee bopping up and down, fingers drumming on the edge of his seat. mouth compulsively twitching.
it hits me i am really here. a person like so many others in this humid metro-compartment. i catch my own reflection in the glass, all of our hands outstretched on the pole – gripping and desperate like the hands of michelangelo. the sistine chapel making its way into subwayhands.
the pre-recorded voice over the speaker announces my stop and i exit. this mental image still etched on my mind.
outside the montmartre cemetery a french man stops us for a conversation. he asks, rather disbelievingly: have you not taken a french lover?
i don’t know how to answer him. how should i explain that my french lover is no breathing, human thing made of flesh and blood. it is the city itself, constantly on my mind, constantly unveiling itself as i turn a corner, and then another. how im falling in love every morning, the sun illuminating the tops of the tall proud buildings. how there is a patisserie and boulangerie at every street corner, like the french couldn’t even go without the possibility of a baked good every 100 meters. how do i explain the pleasant pattern of pardon and merci when getting of the crowded metro. how parisiennes, despite the irony, always carry a baguette under their arm as nonchalantly as possible, because it is the only obvious way in which to carry a piece of bread. how do i explain my love for the nitpicky coffee-ordering – which is really just the veiled passion of specificity – how a café créme is not the same as a cappuccino and an espresso noisette carry no trace of the hazelnut. then there is the parisian old ladies, guarding the street-corners as proud, as erect and as elegant as the parisian buildings themselves.
so i answer him, no.
i have not taken a french lover.
my days are quite busy at the moment.
up next: rhys and melancholy. autumn leaves in july.
until then,
forgive me for the number of hemingways in this piece.
love,
e.
somehow, you manage to describe the indescribable magic of Paris. thank you for this. you are this generations hemingway. :-)