day by day

Day 2: October 16, 6:54am

I like the sound of sirens here. Not so high-pitched and disruptive. Loud yet low. Almost calming in comparison.

Everything i have here is constructed through comparison. The sirens, the people, the hotel furniture. I have a long pillow that is the width of the bed, instead of the 2 pillows i would have in Australia. I’m used to stacking them to prop myself up as i type, but can’t do this here.

Nothing is new in the sense that i can compare everything to something. But much is different. And this i like. I like not quite knowing how i feel about a place. I don’t wish to be able to make ‘knowing’ statements about Paris or Parisians. I don’t need to know whether i like them or not. I’m ambivalent. I’m an outsider. I’m here to discover things, mostly about me. it’s unlikely that visiting a monument will help me to do so.

Last night i walked to Ile Saint Louis, then crossed another bridge to Notre Dame. It was impressive, yes. But frustrating, because i wanted to look at the stone work up close. I wanted to touch and look at the figures up high. The carvings, the shapes; all so beautiful, out of reach. Lots of tourists took photos. How many photos of the Notre Dame can there be? To fit the entire thing onto a photograph you would need to stand far away from it. What’s the point? The beauty is in the detail, and the hands and lives of those that carved it. Photography can’t capture that. As a concept, photography serves only to erase it. To put gloss where there is none.

And my comparisons extend to other tourists. I want to disassociate myself from them. Like the guy also buying novels out front of a shop last night. He jumped in to look from the row of books i was looking at, then said ‘sorry’. I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to out myself as English-speaking, and therefore, like him. i also hated the people riding bikes slowly, distracted by monuments. I hated all people with cameras, people reading plaques on walls, people milling about, having stepped off buses. Though i did like the girl reading her maps on Ile Saint Louis. She was alone, without camera, somewhat discrete, like me. i position myself as a model visitor to this place, but when i open my mouth and try to speak, or try to hear words, i am just as much a nuisance as the rest of them.

I try to blend in, but i know that i cannot. I think of people telling me i look French. I recall three girls on the seat near the old Hunter St Post Office, and how one said “are you French?” That was years ago, seemingly trivial, but has stayed with me. I guess i found it flattering. I want to be French, partly because i want to be ‘other’. And perhaps this is an other that i can get away with (according to those girls).

But i also want to be Henry Miller, Anais Nin, and other others. In my travels i think of their stories. Their love/hate of Paris, but how it eventually wins them over. And how it’s not so much about Paris but the people they meet, and the surroundings that cushion their meetings, desires, writings. I’m being hopelessly nostalgic, and do understand that the years around and between the wars are different to today. The banding together of artists and misfits can’t happen like it once did. Paris cannot provide me with access to another time. There is no Henry, June and Anais today.

After a nap yesterday, i felt itchy for a second, and immediately concluded that this was a Henry Miller (bed bugs from cheap hotels) experience. But there’s no bugs. Strange that I wanted this, just to be closer to his world. I wonder if i should have brought Tropic of Cancer with me. But maybe i’m better off without it. That could make me more desperate in my wanting to be him. But i can’t not think of him, when all these streets and places are familiar because of his and Anais Nin’s writings. Montmatre, Place de Clichy, Montparnasse... signs of them are everywhere, and remind me of stories i felt close to, the pleasure i had in reading them, the desire to be there. And here i am. but alone and somewhat muted. With no Anais to take me under her wing.


"I've lived out my melancholy youth. I don't give a fuck anymore what's behind me, or what's ahead of me. I'm healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day." (Miller, Tropic of Cancer)