Sunday, November 16, 2008

turning in a new direction

The sun hangs low in the sky for most of the late fall days, just about at eye level, forming pedestrians in the narrow street into silhouettes, obscuring everything. Walking forward into brightness, unable to see the sidewalk ahead, I wonder how much the late autumn sun is a symbol for my emotions. A friend recently pointed out to me, that when you settle into your life in one city, to find adventure in that city, you have to seek it out. However, when you’re always moving transiently from place to place, in each city, it’s adventure that seeks you out. The adventure is always welcome… But there comes a point when I long for tranquility and these experiences seem to be on the verge of short-circuiting my ability to feel.
I’ve felt rather aware of my mortality lately, I suppose because I’ve been raging from day to day in cities by the sea that revitalize my conscience but fail to provide me with a proper income or any certain future plans. I’m burning away my savings and to distract me from the reason in my head softly whispering “responsibility”, I’ve been breathing the air of the present so thick my lungs will almost burst. On trains, in motor-cars on busses, zooming back and forth from the French Alps to Barcelona and back home again to Marseille, the kind of jet-set lifestyle one would expect of the wealthy, and in exchange I can’t afford to buy myself a decent sweater, deodorant, a light-bulb to replace the dark corner in my room.
What it all comes down to is I think that I’m happy. Fundamentally so, though rationality or society tells me I ought not to be. I’m working almost for free but I think I love my job… If I don’t think too much, I love it. In the end, what is it all for? Nothing I suppose. In the end, “this too shall pass,” says the ring on my finger in Hebrew I’ve been wearing continuously for the past five years. I wonder about this phrase and this concept and wonder if I’ve only come to embody it so much because I carried it around with me everywhere. When I lose my thoughts or sense, I look down and there it is. “This too shall pass.” If I’m sad, I try to have patience. If I’m happy, I try to soak up the day to day fully and not lose this precious now by planning the future… But I don’t know now… I think it’s time I got a new phrase… Something less existential and more inspiring… Something like, "What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! / Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." (Goethe) I don’t regret a moment of my life and my experiences, but now I think I ought to make a shift from the passively absorbing my surroundings to actively creating them.
And here I am writing anyway. Writers are such slackers… Sitting back, observing, then thinking we’re being active by writing about what we witness.

Monday, November 3, 2008

what is a smile?

My neighbor across the street is at the piano again. His window is closed and the sound of a melody in a minor key only faintly mingles in the air with the leftover rain dripping from drainage pipes. Clean white balloon clouds are moving quickly over a clean deep sky, and I like to stand at my window and watch the clouds mobilize until I think I can feel the motion of the earth. Until I feel like my apartment building, my street and I are moving and the clouds are standing still. The same way I like to stand and watch the luggage belt at the airport until I am dizzy.
One of those empty, beautiful nights in which I feel nothing, but think that I ought to. What is it? Saturday? Sunday? It really makes no difference to me. Either way, I feel like staying in tonight. Maybe with a glass of wine.
Standing outside my friend’s vintage clothing store before returning home earlier this evening, I struck up a conversation with another loiterer. Or he struck one up with me. He was tall and handsome, well dressed with a sort of unfocussed energy that gave him away to be quite young. Twenty or so. Women, he wanted to know about women. How are women in the States? Are there a lot of them and are they sexy? Then his next question was about balloons. “Are there a lot of balloons in New York?” I looked at him, puzzled and so I suppose he thought I didn’t understand the word ballon. So he took out his cell phone, where he had several photos stored and showed me. He scrolled through multiple pictures of balloon arrangements. Balloons for birthdays, weddings, openings… bar mitzvahs?... balloons that look like flowers, like people, like clouds and telephones.
“You see this is what I do.” He said, “And I want to go to New York. Do you think I can?” I told him I didn’t see why not. “New York est dur,” I warned.
“Do you want to study in the States?” I asked.
“No, I don’t need to study for my job. You see, I just make balloons.” Again he showed me his cell phone and scrolled through more photos, balloons in swimming pools, on rooftops, tied to motorbikes. “I see.” I said.
A woman standing near us on the sidewalk, whom I knew from having encountered her many times in the neighborhood interrupted, “Do you have a cigarette?” She held open an empty cigarette packet waiting. “No, I’m sorry.” I said, “I only have rolling papers,” said the balloon youth. The woman’s voice changed to a sort of high-pitched whining, “S’il vou plaît s’il vous plaît s’il vous plaît…” We turned our backs and headed into the vintage shop where we tried on some giant sunglasses and winter hats with fur earflaps. A few minutes later, I drifted out of the store and headed home, pulling my regular French exit without saying goodbye. Saying goodbye can be such a hassle, especially when you have to kiss everyone on the cheek two times. A French exit is much easier than a French goodbye.
On the street, a man asked me for some change, which I didn’t have. Reflected to myself that I do however currently have a roof over my head at night and life could be much harder than mine. Another street bum passing turned to me and said, “Tu dois sourrir. A smile is much nicer.” What is a smile anyway? Is it something we do when we are happy, or the greatest way to cope with pain?