Wanted, Sunshine: Waiting for January to be over

To my knowledge, I have never liked January.

It is a little known fact that January is the longest month of the year. And once it is finally finished, the same day repeats 28 times. Of this I am firmly convinced and will not hear otherwise -- no matter what the days look like, February is the same day. Just repeated.

Also to my knowledge, these two particular months, especially February, are not kind to me. There is always some miniature disaster, but mostly just the little things bug the crap out of me.

And yes, I do believe these two phenomenon are related; clearly, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, I expect the first two months of the year to be shitty and thus pick out everything that is, leading myself further into the belief that they are shitty. A vicious cycle, you might say.

Well, hey, this year I am in Paris, and I can't afford to mope away two whole months, despite my inherent mistrust of them. It's just that the days

d
r
a
g
.

And it's gray, ugly, spitting rain and cold, and did I mention gray gray gray and uhhhggggglieee.*

*like the way I just wrote ugly.

What hey. I want the sunshine. I was born and bred in Colorado and the western sun good and soaked into my DNA and everywhere I go, I miss it. New York, now Paris. I don't know if I will end up living in Colorado but wherever I am I take the endless blue skies of the west with me and I firmly believe that I'm just more alive when the sun is shining.

That said, it doesn't do so very much in Paris.

Au contraire.

I've been missing it dearly this week, missing the sun. But I've been working hard not to get too complacent and whiny because my time in Paris is limited and I know it. I pay cher in euros but also in time.

(I've noticed these days that no matter how much I dance, it isn't enough. I always thought I should stop moving sometimes, but I realize that I'm just a restless person and I need to be moving, dancing walking, and so these days, especially these days, I try not to sit around too much. I need to do less of that, even still...)

This sunday was one of those patented January days. Not terribly cold at least, but spitting rain, windy. Turns your cheeks red and batters little drops of water against your face. But I couldn't stay inside, it would drive me crazy to sit and stare at the gray sky outside my window...

So I decided to take a walk. Not really knowing where I was going, I turned down a street I'd never been down before. Wandered along, looking at the shops, slowly. A pale, unhealthy sun was trying to poke through and in a few minutes of glory, succeeded, right about the time I found a random tiny little park, with tall green hedges and benches for one people, while a mother and her little girl kicked around a ball. I didn't stay long, but paused for a minute and smelled the green, this wonderful little oasis....

Then moved on. The street took me to another that I knew, the Avenue du Maine, wide and busy. I walked along, noticing my shadow walking alone on the sidewalk, the still pale, quickly vanishing sun. I was heading towards the Tour Montparnasse, I thought, and I knew where I was going.

Le Chien Qui Fume, a well known café run by the friends of my host mom, a place I now frequent. Cute, small, the regulars at the bar. People come in one and twos, meeting friends or reading books. They know me, say hello and a kiss on both cheeks.

I ordered a café express, and then was asked if I wanted a croissant or a pain au chocolat. I hadn't thought of it, but the waitress told me it was the best croissant in Paris, so I agreed finally.

She didn't lie. It was the best croissant I've ever had. With a half package of sugar the express is just bitter enough to make you awake, and I drank it slowly, reading some old bits of writing from the past year, things I keep in my "book of souls", which is not really a journal but acts like one sometimes. The colors of the café, though not garish, were bright enough to contrast sharply against the gray world outside, and the people outside bustled along with their heads down. I watched them, and ate my croissant.

I decided to walk home -- I could have easily taken the bus, but wanted to do something with my life and my energy.

But I didn't want to leave the café -- somehow it seemed like the only thing real. In my mind, I remember it being the only thing that wasn't black and white that day.

I think the moral of the story is that I need to spend my time in Oz these months -- stay away from the black and white of the outside, eat good food, drink coffee, and move. Without the sun, those are the things that keep me alive.

An Evening in Montmartre: The View from Center Stage

It seems like more than a week since I've last updated -- I feel like it's been a long time but not that much has really happened. I'm currently caught in the throes of the January blues. I hate, I repeat, I hate this time of the year. I'm convinced that January is the longest month of the year, and just when you think it's over, the same day repeats 28 times. Not to mention it's just kind of gray and cold all the time. Paris allowed me a glance of sunshine Sunday and it just made me miss the sun more.

I've been feeling kind of stuck lately anyway, for no particular reason. I had a fight with the voices in my head on Monday (should I have admitted that?) because the one in particular was not being sympathetic to my plight. Let's just call it the voice of my conscience, shall we? In any case, I was complaining about not going anywhere, and it was like, no, you aren't, the subway is stopped right now. Not helpful, thanks very much dude. However, he has a point -- I'm not really going anywhere right now. My work is to be here, right now. It's not that easy, but I'm working on it.

I actually think I'm not dancing enough -- though it occurred to me today that no matter how much I dance, it's not enough. I had 7 straight hours on Monday and though I was exhausted afterwards, I was ready to go again Tuesday. Of course it comes down to a question of money -- something a little iffy at the present moment, for various reasons. It has to do with transfers.

I will get to the title in a minute, but for a second I'd like to tell a little anecdote. In my ballet class on Monday, my teacher was explaining something and getting on everyone for muscling through everyone. That's not dancing according to him, because anyone can make their body do something with enough training.  But anyway, he was talking about wanting to dance, and he said, for me it was never a choice. Everyone says you always have a choice, and of course some people in the class just take it for leisure and work other jobs, but he said, for me I never had the choice, I had to dance.

When he said, I thought, yes. I understood completely. I've been saying for awhile, and I completed identified with him. I don't have a choice. If I had a choice, I'd probably do something different -- the dancer's life is difficult, often uncertain, and taxing. I don't have the years of technique some do. I'm behind on my training. But I mean it when I say I don't have a choice. I can't do anything different. So the only thing I have left is to make it work, somehow.

Cut to Friday night. I was at the Elysée Montmartre, a nightclub in Montmartre, one of the old cabarets. These days it's just a giant room, with two bars surrounded by people shoving for their drinks, and two coat checks that are even more insane. On the night I was there, it was a special "We are the 90's" soirée -- only 90's music! - and was absolutely packed. 

Oh great, I thought. I hate clubs like that -- you can't move, it's too hot, the floor sticks, and all you can do is just kind of bop around a bit. Until 5 in the morning? Mmm, not so sure about that.

Then my friend decided to make it her mission in life to get on the stage at one end of the room, where the DJ was and a few VIPs who were bumping and grinding to the delight of the onlookers. So off we went, and she flirted shamelessly with a few people and got us on for about twenty seconds before we were kicked off.

"Come back at four," the guard told us.

4:05, we were back. By this time we were pretty good friends with the dude, and so he went off and talked to someone, and up we went.

Hey, look, room to dance. I don't remember if I had the idea first or if my body just did it -- both are possible, but I decided, hey. I'm a better dancer than anyone up here. I'm classically trained, but I can work it. I learned a bit about showboating from someone this summer and added it into my repertory. So I thought, fine. Let's see what I can do.

Give me about twenty minutes, during which I got warmed up and starting attracting attention -- my friend decided it was too hot and headed off, but I stayed -- and let me put it this way: by the time I was two, probably earlier, I already loved being the center of attention. That's just who I am. Performing. I tell you, I don't have a choice.

The point is, I got myself center stage. I had fans. At one point, I had everyone on the stage around me in a semi-circle clapping. I had people filming me with their cell phones. I had the attention, that is to say, of pretty much the entire club.

I can't tell you how amazing it felt. I've been busy spending my last semester questioning my ability to be a dancer, to join a company, technically, etc. I spend all my time wondering, and I had a hint on Friday night. Not to mention the last time I was on a stage at a nightclub, I was being upstaged by the guy I was with at the time, and while I was happy to let him have the attention at the time, this time there was nobody upstaging me. The stage was mine, and I can tell you, the vindication was pretty sweet.

The view from up there? It was a whole lot of flashing lights, heat and sweat, heads, faces and smiles, hands and arms. The beat, just the beat, the music, and sometimes the strobes blocked my view, so all there was was the music, pounding in my soul, making me move, the kind of deep, fierce joy that makes me smile like a "folle".

No, I don't have a choice. I'm just more alive when I'm dancing. It can't be helped.

The view?

It was good.

Paris vs. New York: A layman's view

Hey, look at that, TWO posts in one day!! Let me put it this way: being just sick enough to stay at home and not quite too sick to be flat on your back (like yesterday) has its way of being impossible boring. And so since childish computer games can only hold their appeal for so long, I thought of this subject and thought I'd write a bit.

(Disclaimer: I have an Inner Poet. Thank you).

Paris and New York are particularly related to me -- two cities I have up and moved to for school, not knowing really anyone, the surrounding geography, or street names. It happens sometimes (surprisingly often in my life, actually). However, I'm not the only one. A lot of Parisians apparently love New York, and often go to live there. I did not know this, but you can speak only French and mostly get by in New York. Go figure. They say it's the most European city in the US -- I'm not exactly sure why, but I suppose it works.

The thing is, though, is that while they are linked psychologically, they are nothing alike. As far as their characters -- yes, they move a lot, yes they are big cities and thus have more in common than, say, Cheyenne Wyoming and Los Angeles might -- they are -- well. Nothing alike.

I knew that was the case from the beginning but could never quite put my finger on it, besides the obvious (HINT: it has to do with a thousand years or two of history, but I saw it the other day when Darcy and I went up the Tour Montparnasse and looked at Paris from way up high.

Here's something you need to know about New York: Seen from up high, especially at night, New York is impossibly beautiful. It makes sense from up there -- the grids, the lights, the sky scrapers jostling for a position in the skyline, the endless, twinkling lights lights lights, and you just can't hear the madness from up here. All the cars, or most of them, are yellow, and everything could be glamorous.

The truth is, bluntly, is that Paris just doesn't make sense from above. There is no rhyme or reason, and from above it just makes things confusing. The buildings, from the most part, look alike, and there is no street pattern -- they wind around each other in no particular order, spitting out onto the occasional grand boulevard. Here and there, the great monuments pop up, the space around them strangely and bizarrely empty, as though they have warning fences around them. Do Not Touch, it seems to say. Historically Important.

No, from above, the character of Paris is wiped out-- because it's here, on the streets, below the buildings. Only from here you can see the differences, the different types of balconies. Only from here can you see what's hiding under the eaves of the boutiques of the Rez-des-chaussées. The boulangeries, épiceries, patisseries, brasseries, cafés...you can't see it from above, but that's where Paris lives. On the streets, in the cafés. The conversations, the people, the cigarette butts scattered everywhere. The motorcycles taking never before seen traffic liberties.

Because the thing is, history is taken for granted here, even as people cling desperately to it. No monuments must be changed. If it's historical, it must be preserved. The boulangerie that you go to everyday has always been there and probably will be.

In many ways, Paris has become, I think, a museum city, sometimes cold and unchanging like the somber austerity of the Pantheon, which for being the home of the great men, feels numb to me. The city is filled with museums of course but the city itself is a museum.

In contrast, New York is new. It breathes. It changes. Of course, it lives through its street vendors and taxi drivers and the bum you always see on the corner, but the thing about New York is that all of things build up to this bigger entity, almost, that has no real faces but everyone knows what it looks like. From above, it makes sense. Paris is only made up of what it is.

Of course I couldn't tell you which one I prefer. I think I've mentioned that I fell into living in Paris as easily as breathing, while in New York, I just loved it. Two different characters for two different cities, and if I could tell you which one or either may find me in the years to come, I would be a rich psychic.

Bisous à tous.

Confessions of a mid-January Slump

When it comes down to it, I don't really have anything against January, it's actually February that I have an active dislike of, but either my normal February shit is coming early or February itself will be worse than usual.

Okay, yes, I'm whining probably too much for the situation. My only real main beef with the life at the moment refers to a vicious cold that has laid me out flat for the last, oh, 48 hours or so. I don't usually get this sick, and while Colette astutely pointed out that it's just a cold and it's not that "grave", normally my colds just get in my way without actively attacking me. Either way, after spending the ENTIRE day yesterday in bed, I decided to pretend I was a human being today and take a shower, get dressed. I still refuse to leave the house, but I'm making progress.

Another problem is that I'm bored as heck. This has something to do with the fact that I refuse to go out in public in the state I've been in for the past couple days, and there is only so much I futzing I can do on the internet, especially in a half-brained haze. But let's put it realistically: I don't have a lot to do these days, and I have never been particularly good at chilling out. I talk about it often enough -- man, I do too much, I need a vacation, what have you -- and then whenever I get more than a day or two to do nothing, I get bored.

This semester, I have the feeling, has the possibility to leave me with a fair amount of free time. I don't expect to have a lot of homework, and I'm still working on finding some new dance classes, because I don't think I'm dancing enough. I imagine things will pick up once my directed research gets going, and rehearsals for the big she-bang in April, but either way.

I need to be better than ever at living in the moment. Whether it be going out to wander around Paris, going to soirées, seeing friends -- I don't have a LOT of time left here, as much as that dismays me, and I need to profit as much as possible for the second half of my time here. (Wow).

I'll keep you updated!!

No Such Thing as a Coffee To Go: Holidays in Paris

I present two situations of surreality:

December 24th: Christmas Eve. In a black dress, heels, in a huge, beautiful Parisian apartment in the 16th arrondissement, surrounded by fifteen excitable French people, for the most part all much older than me and dressed to the nines, talking loudly and quickly, as families do when they're together. Eating foie gras, oysters, shrimp, cuchon au lait, potatoes, bûches du noël, chocolate, and endless glasses of champagne. Everything decorated white, the tree, a huge mound of presents underneath . At the beginning of the evening, I knew exactly two people. By the end, everyone kissed me on the cheeks to say goodbye, said they hoped to see me soon.

This was my Christmas Eve, and it was surreal because it just seemed so far away from anything I've ever done before. The first Christmas away from home, in someone else's home, but not only that, in Paris. It struck me as somehow remarkably significant, to be celebrating like this.I stumbled home at 3 in the morning that night, drunk off champagne, and collapsed into bed -- only to wake up the next morning and, three hours later, restart the whole process with my host mom and her family.

The second moment of surreality:

December 31st, or really January 1st if you want to get technical. Another apartment in the 16th. Low lights. Young people this time, though equally unknown. My sister as well, by my side. We'd just noticed it was midnight.

"Bonne année!!" everyone yelled, turning to everyone else and kissing them on both cheeks, unless they were a couple and then on the mouth. Everyone hugging, music pounding in the background, to which we spent the next two hours dancing too. Wearing heels, of course, and something fashionable. Chatting with a new friend, who was trying to speak English for Darcy's benefit.

It was another moment, that I looked around and thought, wow, is this really my life? I thought, this is the first time I'm celebrating the New Year's in Paris. I thought, my year is starting in Paris. I loved thinking it, and had the strange feeling that though it was the first, it won't be the last.

For the past week, my sister has been in town, and it's been a ton of fun. We go out every day and see something new -- some things I've been to already, but also some new things. We went to the Musée d'Orsay, for example, which was really fun, and the displays at Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, the Ferris Wheel at the Place de la Concorde. We went back to Montmartre today -- I love Montmartre. I wish it was closer to me. Went up the Tour Montparnasse because everyone and their brother was at the Eiffel Tower. We also went to the Musée de Quai Branly and found one of the best exhibits I have ever seen in any museum.

It was called "La Fabrique des Images" and was essentially using archeological objects - like masks, tribal statues -- and art -- paintings, sculptures -- to present four different world views of the interaction between man and nature, specifically animals. The world views themselves were incredibly interesting, but what I loved about the exhibit was that it forced you to think. We started going through it without really thinking -- we were both exhausted - but about halfway through I cottoned on to the fact that there was more to it besides the objects, and we restarted and paid attention this time. Most exhibits -- in fact, all of them -- present something and just require that you look at it and go, oh hey, cool. They show something. This one synthesized. It had a connection. It had relevance. It didn't just present something, it was an intellectual exercise. It was incredibly well put together, and if you are around and have time to go there, do.

I've spent the past two weeks pretty much eating straight through. We had a super good dinner on Thursday night, where for 33 euros you got an aperitif, entrée, plat, cheese, dessert, and a café. Oh yeah, and a half bottle of wine apiece. It was really good, too, and was made more amusing by the fact that the waiter and the two elderly gentlemen on either side of us were all flirting with me at some point in the evening. The waiter was at least quite charming about it -- he asked if all the girls in New York (he had previously asked me where I was from) were as pretty as me.

Tomorrow Darcy leaves at the crack of dawn and everything goes back to normal. I start teaching again, and my choreography workshop restarts. I'll probably start dancing again as well, so there you go. I need to start eating better and cheaper as well, because I have spent SO MUCH money on food this past week. It's been really nice to have Darcy here, though I can't deny I will enjoy having my room back to myself, and though it's kind of silly, I'm also looking forward to conducting all my daily business in French again. She doesn't speak French, so I've been mostly talking in English, and I miss my French!!

It's also just been really interesting to hear her questions -- she has never been to Paris before, and so she often asks things or make observations that I realize are normal for an American -- but it's been four months since I was in America, and they occasionally seem bizarre to me. I think today was the most telling -- we were in Montmartre. I had just gotten some cash from the ATM and was looking for a café. "Why don't we go up to that coffee to go place I saw up there?" she asked, and I looked at her like she had sprouted an extra head.

"What would be the point?"

She's remarked a couple times there doesn't seem to be the concept of coffee to go, and when she asked that, I realized that I have completely bought into that idea. In New York, all the time, I bought a coffee and walked off with it, going to the next place, the next class. And now -- I honestly do not see the point. It seems so random. If you are going to get a coffee, you have to sit down in a café and drink it. Coffee to go is utterly absurd. I mean, I know the point is to wake up, technically, but still.

She also pointed to the boulangerie and asked if they might sell coffee in there, and the idea seemed absurd again to me. No, I said, the boulangerie sells baked goods and pastries, and that's it. The idea of the "coffee shop" with pastries and coffee drinks just doesn't compute anymore. It is extremely interesting to note how I think about things these days!!!

And so life goes on. 2010 is over: it was probably one of the most intense years of growth I have ever had. I had everything to gain and I did --- then I had everything to lose, and I did. I got lost, found, and love more fiercely than I ever have. 2011 has begun, the first year of my life in which my only goal has been to not make plans. I can tell you what is most likely to happen, but I refuse to set anything in stone, or even think about it. My life has been reduced to a few basic truths: I love where I am. I dance. I live. As far as anything else, tomorrow, next week, next month, I have no idea.

Bisous à tous, bonne année à vous!!!