Friday, January 28, 2011

campus day

time is slow today. but it's faster than yesterday. because i'm a bit more active and a bit more social. i'm meeting friends, or just people i know, and catching up. it reminds me that i live here after all. as does sitting at my desk in the postgrad space where i blog without studying. i say hello to lots of people i know by face and not name. we smile at each other because this is familiar, because this is the start of another year in the big room on the 4th floor. the guy next to me noted that it's been a while and asked if i was away. we'd never shared more than three words before. campus is still quiet though, and only just starting to hum with life. i sat on the grass with t until it started to rain. we each summarised our previous year because it's been that long since we last sat on the grass. mostly we gave updates on theses and romances. the latter was more interesting.

earlier, j walks by the bus stop and stops to chat. i apologise for not making it to his party several months ago and for not contacting him. we talk about our travels. we went on a date once and i think he likes me. i like him too but not like that. mostly i remember his love for kate bush.

when i'm on the bus another man i went on dates with sits across from me. i bury myself in the book i'm holding and pretend not to see him. i can't remember his name. newtown is too small.

i swim, i eat a cheese sandwich, i take some paperwork to a building where the man is lovely but keeps ending every statement with my first name. i avoid certain people. i update my CV. i like that it's not stupidly hot.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

not yet me

i tidied and arranged my room and stuck things to my wall. pieces of things from times i've enjoyed. i guess it's about lining my space with stuff that gives me a sense of belonging. because so far i don't. i thought i would've missed my bed but so far i'm indifferent.

my thoughts are elsewhere. i only see where i've been and not where i'm heading. i sleep to a different time zone, waking in darkness, with thoughts that prevent me from sleeping again.

my diary is empty of plans.

i know i should swim, but motivation is a struggle. i have work to do, papers to fill out, jobs to apply for, friends to see. but it's easier to drink coffee and tidy itunes.

Monday, January 24, 2011

back home

but the people here are strange. they carry themselves differently. they wear less clothes. they're more relaxed but less voracious. i eye them suspiciously.

it's a familiar space but i don't know...

and the yoghurt on my breakfast is all wrong. i want brassé yoghurt to spill over my food; a creamy wave in my morning ritual. but this margaret river stuff doesn't cut it. this should not seem important, but it does.

and there's space. boundless space. this house is a suburb, each room a new street. my room is bigger than i need it to be. so i'm emptying suitcases and bags to fill it, but it's still lacking something.

the heat is not so difficult. i can't feel it. i liked that my washing dried so quickly. and there's a pile of woolens on my floor which i'll wash and dry today. this is me in sorting mode. adjusting to this space, remembering how to fit, but also questioning if i want to.

i haven't emailed him.

Friday, January 21, 2011

because i can't read the time

i was meant to fly out this morning, not tonight. there i am scrubbing the shower, making breakfast, chatting online, packing bags, deliberating over what goes where, thinking about my back and how much it can carry. and it turns out that my plane is already in the sky. my seat empty. or maybe not. maybe it was given to someone desperate to get somewhere.

i'll fly to singapore tomorrow morning, where i must wait (nobody knows how long) for a seat to become free. hopefully someone else can't read their itinerary. i want home.

i'm lying on a hotel bed. i could've stayed in the apartment another night but i'd washed linen, scrubbed it clean, had already made it no longer mine. this feels a better place to experience my limbo. crunchy white sheets, ugly pictures on the wall. all i can do here is shut my eyes and sleep.

on my way here, at métro jaurés, i'm at the foot of the stairs adjusting my bags when a stranger picks up my suitcase and carries it upstairs alongside me, effortlessly and without words. i thank him. twice. since this moment i know that my day isn't so bad. i have money, a bed, a flight (one at least), a home to return to, and my current situation exposes me to the kindness of strangers.

and this is why i'll continue to travel. because small gestures, such moments as these, take on new proportions and become magnificent. such moments rarely exist at home where i can simply say thanks and return to my daily patterns and my angst. at home i could thank someone for helping me without really meaning it. but today i wanted to hug this man or fall at his feet. because away from home these small moments are grand. so are other minor experiences like the taste of food, a stroll by the canal, an overheard conversation... and because such things make me forget how dissatisfied i am with the world, i can only welcome them. it takes being away (being a stranger) to be able to see this beauty. or maybe one has to be feeling lost, uncomfortable and alone (ie. strange) in order to experience these small gestures as life affirming. kind of like falling in love, which is only amazing because (like unconditional kindness) you'd forgotten that it existed, or that it was available to you.

i hope someone did take my seat on that flight. i hope they're feeling happy from red wine, in-flight entertainment, and the promise of arriving somewhere soon.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

message personnel

tonight we shared a last drink. tomorrow i start my journey home. soon i'll be in sydney and my thoughts will extend beyond him. soon i'll write about new adventures and loves and unexpected futures. in the last week paris and all else has fallen away, off the horizon. there is only him and us. i guess this makes me pathetic. oh well.

i waited for him at the carousel. he was late. i held in my hand a small bag with a sweet pastry inside. his favourite. a parting gift. i felt that it might even be nice if he didn't show up. maybe i would eat the pastry. but he turns up. i knew he would.

we return to the bar from our first night, exactly one week ago. this is us coming full circle, which he says is very Sophie Calle. this is us ending at the start. we sit at the same table, but i order a different drink and i ask that i sit against the wall this time. therefore, things are different. they have to be. another difference is the CD on the table, next to our last drinks. it's of sad girl songs and he made it as a response to my zine. we speak about michelle pfeiffer again. at some point two guys sit beside us and keep pashing across the table. i can hear their lips squelch, but i don't look.

i'm listening to the cd now. i point out that the last song is a favourite of mine and he says it's his too. of course it is. i quite like it when we disagree on something but it doesn't happen often.

the final song goes like this:

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

le canari est sur le balcon

this title is a song by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.

it's played a lot between these walls, here in this apartment.

today i took the birdcage out onto the balcony. he (the canary) is placed away from me, out of harm. it's cold out there, but he will survive.

which is where my story breaks from this one, because i'm not about to lie on the bed and die. i too will survive. i'll write something of this. i'll continue to find metaphors in the songs around me that speak to me about me. or perhaps i'll continue to make my experiences into coherent narratives (i.e. fiction).

i was reminded today that it's not all about me. he flaps his wings, he shows signs of distress, and i remember that my actions affect him. so i must do the right thing, which is not the easy thing.

my want (the easy thing) tells me we should lie on the bed together. that we should suffocate each other with these nice feelings. but no.

so i turn to fiction, as here is a bed that we can lie in forever. we can lie. we can make stories out of our wants.

but in the meantime, this is what goodbye looks like:

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

sourire

he's going to cook me dinner. a beautiful invite. this is crazy but lovely. i will see where he lives. we will watch bad french soap. it's quite cold today but i can't feel it. i sit, cross-legged, on the bed, in t-shirt and underwear.

i smile. i wonder. i write. i forget.

i've been reading about oulipo today. i'm going in search of douleur exquise later. i'm practicing my french but now my face is tired.

time to eat mushrooms on toast. time to shower. time to write more words.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

tripping and slipping

so we watched a romantic film. he wore a nice scarf. i felt his arm next to mine. i felt him breathing sometimes. i forget to read the subtitles sometimes. a glass of wine each at a café and we speak of melrose place.

i catch a glimpse of his phone and his wallpaper is michelle pfeiffer's catwoman.

fuck! that wasn't supposed to happen. this takes my plan off course. i'm stuck for words because i'm looking into the pond of my own reflection. before i know it we're saying goodbye in that same spot at métro bastille.

he'd like to see me again. tuesday.

bed demons

couldn't really sleep. the worse way to sleep is to worry about not being able to sleep. i urged myself to sleep, to imagine pleasant scenarios, to push away those crowded thoughts of 'what happens now?'. i read barthes but that doesn't work, just adds to the clamour. i watch more of shoot the piano player and that works. my eyes start closing and i push the laptop aside, closing the lid. i shut myself down for the night, which is now morning. so today i'm sleepy, still in bed, watching video clips like this one:



exquisite. but where is my day? i have so few days left. emma said not to worry about 'the last days' and i didn't know what she meant, but now i do.

i thought of people back home. friends, supervisors, men... i wondered what will be different from now on. it felt like i had little control over where things would go and couldn't convince myself otherwise. i also thought of jean-baptiste, and how i need to sleep or tonight could be ruined. for i will be tired, drowsy, ugly. i questioned 'the project' i would propose to him tonight. it seemed stupid and embarrassing and i was no longer convinced that i could do it, that it was of any value.

but that was last night.

Friday, January 14, 2011

textual excursions

today i saw Visconti's adaptation of l'étranger. it was quite lovely. i didn't cry but was swept by several waves of emotion. nicely depicted. i need more Visconti now. lucky for saturday night. Anna Karina's performance was quite disappointing (though i guess it's not the best character ever), but Marcello Mastrionni was great (despite being more butch than the Meursault I imagine). and it was kind of odd that everyone spoke italian in french-algeria.


then i walked to Place Saint Sulpice, where Georges Perec wrote Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien. I sat on a chair and didn't feel anything. i faced an Yves Saint Laurent shop, and to my right was Lacroix. yes, i think this place has changed in the last 36 years. it smelt of money, it was very clean, there was little trace of what Perec found here. though i did see a number 70 bus go past.

love runs smooth. i received three emails from him today. i sent him two. saturday night is confirmed.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

fiercely independent

me: so you describe yourself as 'fiercely independent'?
he: yes.
i nod.

he: would you describe yourself as fiercely independent?
me: yes.
he nods.

i think it's love. impossible love.

we're going to see a visconti film on saturday night. a restored print of Le Guépard.

impossible, romantic, love.

potentially torturous, but i think i have a strategy.

splashing around

i have a date in just over two hours. he has a beautiful name and a beautiful face. he reads beautiful books. i'm nervous, but i'm not. i'm concerned, but not. i'm feeling ugly, but not. i think i need a haircut and some different clothes (so bored with these ones). but nothing matters that much. i'm just creating drama because it's easier to think about these things than what's happening in Tunisia, or Queensland, or my academic career (if there ever was one).

it's grey outside. drizzle all day. pleuve is like pleure. rain is like tears. and in learning french i surprise myself by finding such similarities between new words, new and old words, or between the sound (the word spoken) and the thing it represents. but i guess language has only ever been an ocean of metaphor.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

night life

i know i should go and see chicks on speed tonight. and i really want to. but after a very long walk, a meal, and two glasses of wine, i feel somewhat sunken into this bed and this warm room, and i feel ready to forfeit. it's probably raining... it's far away... there's no guarantee of tickets on the door... etc.

so now i'm playing fast busy music, drinking coffee, waking myself out of this pikedom. my time here has been quiet, introverted, full of respite, and so an adventure wouldn't go astray. yet i find it difficult to really care about my quiet life. because i like it. one day, recently, i didn't leave the apartment or have any spoken communication. it was a good day. hermits get such a bad rap. and really, i've seen chicks twice already. will they be any different?

i have a new friend and we email each other about books. it's nice. maybe i can stay in and read books. i seem to be acquiring many. tonight i found alain robbe-grillet's pour un nouveau roman for 2 euro. i read the first couple of pages on the metro while small children kicked, watched and poked me, vying for my attention. they were very cute (except the one having a tantrum).

Friday, January 7, 2011

"who wants something real when you can have nothing"

soundtrack for today:



it plays as i get out of the shower, where i'd been deep in thought, and composing something to write here. the shower is quite a handy thinking space. is it the water? the shedding of clothes and dirt? or being away from a computer, pen, and spaces where words are read, written, and spoken? (ie. everywhere, like today's clouds).

24 hours alone in which to think about myself. and i'm processing conversations that took place in this room, on the internet, and in the past. conversations whose edges blur so that they leak into each other and i can't remember where they happened or the actual words said. so i create a new conversation with myself. it's about how the subject in process (let's say me) depends upon an ongoing separation with others (let's say you). and in doing so, we critique each other constantly. within this critique is a delineation of self, an affirmation of one's self - "i would not do that (or say that / be that / etc.) because i am me. and i like to think that i'm better / wiser / nicer than that. but really, i'm not. because in performing this, and to approve of myself, i need to disapprove of you. and perhaps here i am cruel, judgmental, or uncaring. in such moments i'm performing for an audience of myself (asserting my self). and i'm forgetting that you and other others have a much better vantage point of this performance.

but anyway, i guess it's necessary to critique the other in order to be. though i tell myself (and others) that it's wrong to do this. i don't want to bitch / judge / hate. but i continue, and i go on living, and trying to make sense of my subjective boundaries. but alas, i'm too close to see a clear line of where you and i differ. maybe we don't

oh dear, another post-structural rant. i guess paris might be the place to have them after all.

let go of the wheel, turn your ass over... (girls)

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

i'm the real tourist

The tourist, it seems, is the lowest of the low. No other group has such a uniformly bad press. Tourists are continually subject to sneers and have no antidefamation league. Animal imagery seems their inevitable lot: they are said to move in droves, herds, swarms, or flocks; they are as mindless and docile as sheep but as annoying as a plague of insects when they descend upon a spot they have ‘discovered’.
(Culler 1990)

thanks jessie for sending me this article. it arrived at a nice time, when i'm processing my own 'away' existence that lies somewhere between tourist/resident, and in which i'm guilty of seeking a more authentic experience of awayness.

lenny and i chatted today about our different styles of photographing paris. he says he gets my everyday thing, but asks how the tour eiffel is not also part of the everyday. he argues that for many parisians it is. a few days ago (at the pompidou) he asked me to photograph him with the tour eiffel in the distant background. i didn't want to but eventually did. i felt conflicted. he says he can't understand my hatred of this monument. i explain that my hatred is not of the monument (i've never 'really' seen it), but of its symbolism. i hate that for many, it is paris. and i guess i hate that it interferes with my paris.

neither of us would photograph sydney opera house. i suggest that it's pointless because, like the tour eiffel, you can just google it and there it is, shot from every possible angle. so why bother? i don't need to see the tour eiffel to know its shape. i can't not know it. i can't not imagine it. and i guess my refusal to visit it (let alone photograph it) could be about my struggle for authenticity, as Culler suggests. for in doing so, i raise myself above the 'herd'.

and yes, i love it when i get mistaken for a local, when french people ask for directions. it means i'm passing, that i'm falling into step with the locals. when i walk the streets with a bag of groceries, bread, food to prepare at home, i'm a resident. i have a kitchen, a bed, a door code, a place to not simply stay, but to live (whatever that means). and these walls belong to a subleasing resident; this is not a hotel. i fend for myself, and this makes it more real to me. yet i also understand that it's not real. this experience is very much mediated by my being away from home. tourist or not, i do not belong here. and whilst i might pretend, i know that this is pretense.

this neighbourhood houses no monuments and there's little english spoken here. there are piles of broken furniture on the streets, discarded xmas trees, posses of french-african teens on corners. this is a paris i feel more comfortable with because it's uncomfortable. it's different to my usual existence and i'm forced to contemplate this broken furniture (evictions?), my concerns about 'gangs', my understandings of poverty, violence, immigration, noise, mess, etc. the domestic argument that echoed through the stairwell a few days ago was difficult to stomach. but it's there (with or without me) and i guess i'd rather 'experience' it if this can help to broaden/complicate my understanding of how people live.

i can accept that this neighbourhood might even be hostile to me and my bourgeois pursuit of the everyday. it probably should be. and i should be made to question that. and this tension of wanting to belong but knowing that i cannot is one i quite enjoy. it generates material to contemplate, write, and grapple with.

so yes, partly this is about a pursuit of authenticity, but i think it's something else too. i don't think i fit into either of the camps that Culler discusses - the tourist or the traveler. for there's no touring and very little traveling. i'm just staying, and most of my time is spent in my neighbourhood or in my apartment. so my distaste for tourism is not simply to conjure my authenticity, though obviously it's useful in elevating myself higher towards a more original experience of paris (therefore, it conjures my paris).

my suitcase has been stowed away, hidden, out of sight. my fridge is stocked like at home, but not, because it has food that i don't eat at home, things that aren't readily available there. but there are similar habits, practices, routines that stay with me wherever i go. and so here in my paris, i'm both here and there, home and away, myself and not myself. i think in english and (attempt to) speak in french. schizophrenic, i lose my way on these streets. lost, i happen upon pastries whose flavours take me elsewhere.

this morning i walked along a canal. i walked over bridges, under bridges, and past bridges. it was new territory but not too far from 'home'. i ate an almond croissant which i believed to be the best almond croissant i'd ever tasted. i made a mental note of the patisserie location, for i hope to return. yet i know that i might not because experience tells me that i forget locations, that i lose my way, that in seeking an old patisserie i'm more likely to discover a new one. and maybe it's not really the best almond croissant anyway because my memory isn't perfect and the amount of pastry i consume is quite high. but i like to think it's the best, particularly there, in the moment when i'm walking the cold morning streets and feeling its warmth and sweetness fall inside me.

perhaps nothing of that moment was new or authentic. yet surely a spasm of pleasure that resembles something new is just as good, if not better, than the real thing. and maybe that's the paris that i can carry with me always, wherever i go, like a tour eiffel pendant.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

né pour courir

...means 'born to run'. i found the expression accidentally, in researching a writer i long to read. so i added it to my spreadsheet of new words, as i push myself closer to reading new books, and old books in a new language. or the language they were born into.

christine angot writes autofiction. having explained my style of writing, a french man/lover told me my writing sounds like this. so i'm curious, and want to read.

today i remember bruce springsteen and how i haven't listened to the born to run album in quite some time. i play it now.

yesterday i went to the pompidou. i didn't want to, but was seduced by the mondrian exhibition. i also liked the sound of Gabriel Orozco's work, which is about celebrating the everyday. but i was underwhelmed. then i walked into the Saãdane Afif exhibit, Anthologie de l'humour noir (anthology of black humour, a reference to Breton), and i smiled a lot.


in the centre of the room is a sculpture of the pompidou as coffin. on the walls are song lyrics by 12 friends of sàadane whom were asked to respond to the sculpture. there's a few aluminium cylinders cast from a mould of a pompidou bollard (also commissioned works), but they are barely noticeable, despite intermittent spotlights falling upon them. they are dead matter. unlike the words on the wall, which of course, are all about death - of art, artists, institutions, and more. funny, absurd, satirical, words.

i didn't want to visit galleries. this is a first for me in paris. i wince at being amongst the cattle of cultural tourists, or at the thought of appreciating art as isolated, singular, evenly spaced works propped high on white walls. i know that my attitude is a little ridiculous, and thankfully, i had to eat my bias here, in this room, surrounded by words about the morgue, the cemetery, death and decay. the erosion of art and its institutions. and yes, i found myself nourished. the death of art is alive and well in paris.

how can i not fall in love with the institution that houses a celebration of its own decay? or the artist that makes this (but doesn't, because he commissions much of the work)? he's a collaborationist, which is as beautiful as the black humour, the referencing, the ensemble surrounding me. mostly, for me, it's about the words, but they can't be separated from the artist, the institution, the networks between them, or the responses i have. the songs are in english and french (half of each) and i manage to comprehend most of the latter. they're not sung, but printed on a wall, so they too are dead. but also they're not, because the reader gives them life.

where i don't comprehend words and phrases, i skim, i make meaning. i fall in love via my own skewed interpretation. much like how i fall in love with people. it's about my experience of the assembled words, objects, feelings, and not the thing itself (the art work). in the room i'm connected to artists/people both dead and alive. i'm drawn into a politics of the past (1968, surrealism, anarchy, etc), yet a politics still to come. dismantling and erosion takes place in this room, but it's also the sound of a future death. a rumble, an almost, a could-be. a mire of words and sensations that i can't quite crystallise with my own words, but of course, i want to. and of course, there's the beauty. what is beyond me seduces me. it moves me, or rather it propels me, to run towards something.

j'étais né pour courir.
j'étais né pour mourir.