As The Co-Dependent World Turns

Dudes. I don't know what happened, but I went ahead and wrote to the Depression People. Ack! I have boundaries...WHO FREAKING KNEW? I guess my time in Paris was the thing I wasn't willing to lose.

From the email:

I am more than willing to work on this until we get it right, but right now I'm in the position of having to choose between 'my' work (the creative project I'm here working on) and 'your' work. It's upsetting feeling like I'm either letting you down or letting myself down.

In order to feel like I'm not wasting precious Paris time, I need to choose my work. The project is a book set in Paris and I cannot do this research back home. I'm back in less than two weeks and will be able to give this my full attention then.

Day 187: Zounds! They Found My Secret Lair!

Paris, Day 16. It's a horrible feeling to find yourself on the wrong side of the halfway point. And an even worse feeling to be on the downward slide to home time and have the Giant Ungainly Neverending Soul-Crushing Work Project that you hoped would be finished before you LEFT for Paris follow you TO Paris and threaten to poison the precious few days you have left.

The Depression Project returns.

The clients were three weeks late with their comments on my first drafts, but OF COURSE they've sent them to me now. Which means if this project is to stay on schedule, it's all up to me. In Paris.

This makes my personal issues flare up like teenage acne.

I spent all day yesterday grinding over the rewrites, which are more like primal therapy sessions than text edits. I tried desperately to remember this is about helping kids and not about clients completely overstepping their bounds and totally f*cking up my life. I tried to force the words 'complete waste of a day' out of my mind.

And in the end, none of that worked. I had two modules (out of SEVEN) rewritten and I felt like crying.

Why? Because it wasn't supposed to happen this way and I can't let that fact go.

Why? Because this project is an endless game of Melanie Pours Her Heart Out And 10 People Repeatedly Judge Her, Screaming 'DANCE MONKEY DANCE!'

Why? Because I'm in EFFING PARIS, yo, and would very much like to tell my clients to SUCK IT but am too much of a people-pleasing asshole to do it.

Can someone out there please Fed Ex me some boundaries? Or perhaps several pounds of Xanax?

Day 186: Bird Market (Yay!) Artist Market (Boo.)

Paris, Day 15. Sunday, I ventured to a couple of the stranger Parisian market options: the bird market near Notre Dame and the artist market in Montparnasse.

The bird market was pretty much exactly as billed: a city block worth of tweeting, twittering birdies. Which (unless you have a mortal fear of birds) was quite a magical experience.

There were also other creatures for sale.
Like colourful goldfish, gerbils, chipmunks(!) and these fuzzy bunnies.


This fearsome attack dog was so riled up by the proximity of all these fluttering appetizers, he mistook my scarf for a budgie and tried to eat it.
Or maybe he was just going for my jugular...

This man, pictured here with a future chinchilla coat, was also selling a box full of rats. They were piled one on top of another and sleepily writhing with their pale, wormlike tails slithering behind them. I almost vomited.

Only the French could make birdseed look this good.

My favourite part of the bird market experience was the children. This little one flitted around the market like a blond Tinkerbell. She was so spectacularly excited by the presence of animals that she couldn't stay still. Until she met her match in this parrot.

After the bird market (BM?), I headed south to the Left Bank and Montparnasse where 100 or so artists gather every Sunday and display their wares. This area was made super famous by all the writers and artists that used to hang out here, which I guess is why they picked this location for the artist market. As far as I can tell, it's a desperate and misguided attempt to cling to Paris' past glory. Because Montparnasse is NOTHING like it was in the 1920s and the artist market SUUUUCKS.

Thrilling stalls of brilliant works of creative genius. Not.

Please note the bored-looking artist with the weird hat. Everyone looked that bored and wore weird hats. Even the customers.

The most exciting thing about modern-day Montparnasse, as far as I could see, was this delicious-looking carosel. It was gasping for breath in the concrete wasteland between the gare (train station) and the 1000-foot eyesore known as the Tour Montparnasse.

Right now? Henry Miller is puking in his grave.

Day 185: Bad Lighting, Radiant Widsom

Paris, Day 14. After trying in vain to recreate and amplify several of my Paris Part 1 experiences, it was a serious gamble to venture back to visit the Harmonica Men. But really, is there a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than to be surrounded by old farts with sweater vests and mouth harps? I don't think so.

I get there on time, only the Parisian concept of time is a little different. A l'heure can mean anything from ten minutes past the scheduled time or, in this case, an hour and a half. I tuck into their plat du jour, a very yellow chicken tajine and "enjoy" a glass of red wine from a box while I wait.

Le Petit Ney bills itself as a cafe litteraire, but really, old folks home cafeteria would be more to the point. The place is all white walls, Brylcreem and support hose. I am the youngest by 30 or 40 years with the exception of the bored-looking waitress and the couple sharing my table.

The wife of this couple leans across the table towards me as soon as I snap my first photo. I instinctively cringe – I'm always ready to be yelled at in this town. Especially while wielding my camera.

"Excusez-moi," she begins. "Can you please take a photo of that painting and email it to me?" Sure, I say. "It's a mother and two daughters...I have two daughters." I smile. It reminds me of my dad, who buys paintings based on the presence of three of something for the same reason.

She asks what I'm doing in Paris and I tell her. "It is very special," she says smiling. She pauses and then clutches her heart rapturously. "Ah! I love Paris. I'm a girl in Paris!"

Her name is Eliane and I love her immediately. She used to be singer and now works in an environmental agency "to put milk in the refrigerator." Working at an environmental agency doesn't stop her from wearing sweaters with purple fur on them, though.

I'm here to see some old dudes play harmonica, but suddenly they seem incidental.

The show begins. Jean, the president of the Harmonica Federation of France, takes the stage. He rocks out to a bluesy number and then asks the gloomy butler guy presiding over the background music CDs to do something fancy for his second number.

"I can't," the butler guy says. "The machine is old. Like YOU."

The crowd laughs and Jean launches into the next song. This man kicks ass on the mouth organ. No two ways about it. He bends and bobs. He squints and flicks his fingers for different effects. He makes sure I get his good side for my photos. He's a total freaking PRO.

His final song is Georgia On My Mind, and I'm not going to lie to you, I think he was flirting with me. I'm blushing when he hits his final note.

I go back to sit with Eliane, who has an espresso waiting for me, the doll. Her husband, another Jean, is talking to a THIRD Jean, if you can believe it. "Jean, Jean et Jean," I say to Eliane. "Un trio," she says laughing. "Un trio de comedie."

She leans in and nods toward Jean #3, a dashing fellow with a peach coloured shirt and a big, shiny St. Christopher. "Where is a man when he is alone?" she whispers with a sympathetic smile. "Women, we have our children. But a man, he must find something else, like music."

I ask her what she means. "Women make a new life. We cry, yes, but we move on for the sake of our children. But what do they do?" She shrugs. "Harmonica."

She's talking about men and women in general, but I can tell she speaks of very specific losses. Jean #3's and her own.

While the old men play, Eliane tells me that life as a woman is like a train with two tracks. "One is your husband, your children," she says. "The other is your life – you are an artist – it is the life you choose. The husband and children may go, they may come back, but through it all...you have your life. It must keep going."

Day 184: Je M'en Fou, Je Suis En Paris

Paris, Day 13. The past week here in Paris has been all about people. Parties and lunches and meeting people at the airport. Playing all those ROLES you play when there are other humans involved: new girl, English girl, straight girl, helpful friend, third wheel, martyr, and frequently in my case, nosy and invasive writer.

This week, I’ve taken very few photos. I’ve skipped whole days my journal. I’ve lost sleep. The dishes have piled up and the low table where I’ve spread out all my drawings and ideas has gathered a whisper of dust.

My little Parisian life has gotten away from me.

My first week here, I came to the surprising conclusion that I was here, not to work on my book project necessarily, but to work on myself.

I did my writerly due diligence, of course, by taking notes and snapping pictures – all fodder for my second draft – but it didn’t FEEL like diligence. It felt like play. Evenings, rather than hit the town, I’d be huddled over sketchbooks with Crayola markers listening to Roberta Flack.

I filled pages with multicoloured scribbles and swirls. Plotting out my ideal life. Daydreaming about where I wanted to go and what I want to learn, see, do, experience. I spent hours in states of wide-open possibility and childlike imagination without worrying about what club I was going to hit or what Girl-Writer-In-Paris outfit I was going to wear.

My life stopped being about me being “an artist” or being “in Paris” and became simply about BEING.

I found Dana’s copy of The Vein of Gold – a book about digging down into yourself as a creative being. Finding out who you are and inhabiting your own authentic creative self. It felt like God himself had put that book under my nose, so I opened it up and stepped inside.

And then the phone started ringing. Dates and rendez-vous pulled me this way and that. I rushed out the door in the mornings and staggered home late at night. I got caught in the tractor beam of interpersonal drama and gossip. I stopped seeing the beauty in the city and only saw the shit and spit and grit. I wondered why I came and wished I could go home.

My calendar might be full, but I am emptied out.

And so today, after six days of lifting my skirt for every wayward friend-in-need, I am reclaiming my Paris experience. I’m doffing my Canadian politeness and people-pleasing availability and I’m turning the ringer off the phone.

My journal is open. My camera battery is full. The Crayola markers are beckoning and so are the spring tulips, glaring gargoyles and secret places I’ve yet to discover.

I’m not a chic party girl. I’m not the queer family’s second-cousin twice-removed. I’m not a map-toting tourist or a hard-nosed journalist. I’m someone who spends an afternoon arranging Sharon fruit for photographs. Who’d cross the street to fill her nose with the green smell of a flower shop.

Who could stare at a boat, any boat, for hours on end. Who presses her nose against patisserie windows and for whom the rainbow rolls of leather, fabric and yarn are more interesting than the clothing for which they’re intended.

My Paris is not cloud-scraping steeples or echoing cathedrals. It's not stylish, cultured people who all look fabulous and bored every moment of the day. Nor is it gilded frames around the masterworks of Western history.

It’s the faded dust-smell and polka-dot shuffle of bead bins and button cards. It's capturing mid-afternoon daylight not by F-stop but by feel. It's the tangy thrill of indecision over lemon tart or raspberry. The crush of the Wednesday market. Sudden silence down a tiny stone-walled street. An old lady in a fur hat. A new cheese. A quiet night.

This is my Paris. And I'm taking it back.

Day 183: Fraying at the Fringes

Paris, Day 12. Yesterday was supposed to be Weird Anal Sex Workshop Day, but it has been postponed – I'll admit to some relief on that one – so Ms. Burlesque and I went to lunch instead.

Having only seen her once before, I had no idea what to expect. She arrived sans makeup, sans false eyelashes and practically in her pajamas. But that didn't mean she wasn't in character. We walked into the cafe and she immediately gushed a hello to the owner Marion, curtsied and spun and generally flitted about the establishment for ten minutes while I found a table and sat down.

When the human hummingbird finally came to rest, she told me she was SUPER excited. "About what?" I asked. "I'm FINALLY getting an apartment!" she squealed. I congratulated her and we ordered.

I've been dying of curiosity about the corner of the gay community she inhabits and couldn't wait to learn how it all works.

"So," I began, "how do you identify?"
"Well, I used to say I was bisexual," she said, "but since I discovered the word queer, I go with that."
"What does queer mean?"
"It's auto-defined."
"So it's different for everybody."
"Yeah!"
Great.

She told me if I wanted to get more savvy in the queer lexique, I should check out a new social networking site that just launched in Paris called French Queer Fries(?!). The registration page features an entrance exam worth of questions and checkboxes all about who you are, what you're into and the various shades of grey of your relationship status.

The "Me, Myself and I" section featured no less than FORTY different options including Queer, Trans (and all its variations), Butch, Fem, Futch(?), Grrrrl, Cyborg, Bear, Dandy, Genderqueer(?) and a whole schwack of letters including FtM, MtF, FtX/FtU and MtX/MtU. And at the end of this headspinning list was, of course, OTHER.

"It's very complicated to be the kind of gay I am which is attracted to masculine entities who are not biologically masculine," Ms. Burlesque said between bites of quiche.

Uh. YEAH.

"But I'm just SO excited," she continued. Oh? I said, looking up from my notes. "To pick up the key to my apartment on Sunday!" Oh, right. "Hey! Will you come help paint it?" Um, sure, I mumbled. "GREAT!"

Every word this woman said seemed to be punctuated with an exclamation mark. And that snippet of conversation – I'm so excited! About what? My apartment! – would be repeated approximately ONE HUNDRED TIMES during our time together.

Whenever there was a gap in conversation in which someone would possibly take a breath or swallow their food or, I don't know, just BE SILENT for one second, the mythical golden apartment would re-emerge as a shining (and extremely repetitive) mirage.

It was conversational Groundhog Day.

By the end of my time with Ms. Burlesque, I could no longer muster ONE MORE IOTA of feigned interest about that damned apartment or anything else for that matter. The corners of my mouth REFUSED to budge in the direction of a smile. They were just too tired.

Day 182: Making Paris A Mix-Tape

Paris, Day 11. Have been thinking a lot about love these days. The strange Parisian laissez-faire approach to romance. The day-to-day grind of a relationship, a job, a life. The fact that being in Paris a second time feels like falling in love the second time: less intense, less consuming, less passionate.

Yesterday, I met a fellow Canadian at the airport. She's here to live a Parisian dream and she's filled with that OH MY GOD I'M IN PARIS excitement. The excitement that appears to have exited Stage Left in me.

While I waited for her to come through customs, I witnessed the single sexiest airport reunion of all time. He came through the sliding doors and enveloped his lover in an embrace. They held each other FOREVER and then kissed unashamedly passionately for ten minutes right in front of all of us waiting.

These people basically made love right there in Terminal 2B.

Eventually, they started walking toward their car or whatever, but then they stopped for another make-out break a few feet down the way. They were so into each other, nothing else mattered. Not even leaving the airport.

It was so awesome. So lovely and awesome and I WANT THAT.

Currently, my lover Paris and I are in a bit of a rut. We've settled into a pretty hum-drum routine where all I seem to notice is the dog shit, diseased pigeons and creeps selling contraband.

Don't get me wrong: I love her despite all her flaws. But we're deep in the Sweatpants Stage and, let's face it...I'm looking at other cities.

(I was on this porn site called Facebook where someone had posted all these nude photos of Barcelona. I was all over it and felt guilty afterward.)

But when I met up with Justine From Canada and she spent most of the Metro ride SWOONING over Paris and how this town is basically a menu of deliciousness and how she feels sexy and extraordinary just by BEING HERE...well. I was forced to confront my own apathy.

I got home and called Boyfriend. "I need to fall back in love with Paris," I said. "This trip has been all about gritty weirdness and counter-culture. I need to re-ignite the romance. I need to remember why I fell in love with this place. I need candlelight and flowers and..."

"You need to make Paris a mix-tape," he said.

YES, I said. I DO. Passion de Paris Make-Out Mix 2009? Here. I. Come.