goodmorning, midnight
from: paris
its raining for the first time in paris.Â
i decided long ago that as soon as the first drops would fall my fiend and i would head out in the soaked cobblestone streets for soupe à l'oignon with a daring side of escargot. we stop at the first authentic french restaurant we can find (circular tables, waiters in bride-white) and we each get a menu the size of a newspaper.Â
below the yellow and green striped canopy we order our meals and wait patiently. beside me on the table i’ve placed the current book i am reading, goodmorning midnight by jean rhys. it is grey and dark and very suiting for this weather, as if rain is continually falling in there too.Â
i realize i started feeling sad when i began reading rhys.
i don’t think it was a coincidence
last winter, daydreaming about paris in the snowstorms of my own home, i was reading lauren elkins chapter on rhys and the following passage etched itself onto my mind. in flâneuse, elkin writes of how she added the novel to her class-readings, and shortly, one by one, her students would come to her distressed and distraught about the main character of the novel. spending her days drinking and wandering the haunting streets of paris in disillusion, i can’t help but become infected by her destruction as well. stumbling over thoughts, purposefully missing the mark and delaying action.
the problem is i can’t turn to elkin.Â
or can i?Â
i decided to pick myself up from this emotional sludge the best way i know how: podcasts.Â
elkin recently released an english translation of simone de beauvoirs newly-discovered novel the inseparables (more on that later), so i decide to listen to her talk about that. and i decide to do that on a pilgrimage to shakespeare and company. because i know, that if there is something in this world that will never fail to cure me, it is being in the dusty aura of a bookstore.Â
so one bright morning i set out.Â
because you have to understand, it is impossible to get into shakespeare and company if you naively decide to go there after 10am. there is a perpetual queue, a persistent, snaking, around-the corner longer than mona-lisa line of people. and after several failed attempts, i decided to do it right. so setting the alarm to arrive in time, i head out the door and into the morning sun.Â
i get of at cité so i can walk over the bridge by the notre-dame in the sunshine. i buy myself the usual café crème from the boulangerie next door and settle in. alone outside the historic bookstore, the iconic dark-green wood-paneling warm against my back. the voice of elkin in my ears.Â
she explains how simone had trouble with finding a way to tell this story. how she wrote about it in her diaries, her autobiography, as a short story and then this unpublished fictionalized version. which she – after showing it to sartre and seeing his disapproving pinch of the note – decided to put it in a desk-drawer and never worked upon again. it left me thinking. about how the stories we tell must be told in the right narrative. like simone, trying out all of these shapes of telling, to arrive at the best-fitting one. i recently learned that, in our scandinavian language, there is a word the rest of the world does not have in translation: sprÃ¥kdräkt (literally, language-costume). the style in which to dress our works, the attire in which to adorn our words. simone worked hard to find the best tailoring for her story, trying different forms to find the best cut, well-matched and stylish one. putting metaphors aside, i like the idea behind this attentive specificity. like all literature, the story is the story. but what makes reading fun is experiencing the ways in which the story unfolds: the twist and the turns and all the innovative obstructions of narrative.Â
stepping into the bookstore, no longer any obstructions to my narrative path, the first thing i saw was elkin welcoming me. flâneuse on the shelf under the paris section. for a few brief moments, there was only me and the quiet empty store. the worn, dark-wood floors, the uncracked spines – surrounded by the history, the mastery, and the well-worn words of the writers i admired.Â
i made it to the upstairs loft. to the old books, the seats and the library. everyone is quiet and reverent here. no photos please. i walk around and look at the books in awe, like that of the devoted, running my fingers over the yearworn spines, frayed and broken and beloved. as im standing there, before the writing desk by the window, the view of paris stretching out before me – i realize that this is my place of worship. not the high dark hall of sacre-cour, not the towering spires of notre-dame. but this: a desk, a view, and a medium in which to write.
i feel the purpose thats grown cold within me start to burn again.Â
like rhys, i want more of this feeling – fire and wings.Â
back under the yellow and green canopy, the waiter has arrived with the food. there is still the sound of rain pattering the canvas, the smell of warm wet concrete. two young women eat greedily, hungrily. as if there is nothing more important than nourishment. there is the sound of cutlery against porslin, the clinking of wine-glasses. the waiter comes and takes the scraped-clean bowls of soup, the plate of half-eaten shells. now there is only the check, the walk home.Â
it is no longer raining.
to bookstores, rain, and an infinite supply of onion soup.
love,
e.