i think the best way to roll with the punches is to get a few punches in yourself.
there are gems in every neighborhood, and every time you move, you lose some things. but also you get some new things. so it’s a trade off.
leaving the 16th arrondissement of paris was tough. it was quiet, you know. chic. with its museums housed in neo-classical jewelry boxes, young girls carrying their mom’s old goyard totes, and all the shoebox service apartments made bearable because you see a tip of the eiffel tower by the window.
living in the 16th is to be away from the bustling correspondence corridors of chatelet, far from the usual drunken crowds at république. c’est où bagnolet en fait? to live in the 16th is to be safe. but to be shielded and tucked away from activity, isn’t it also to be away from life? a false sense of safety that eventually leads to isolation?
looking for a place in paris is less about finding your pinterest dream and more about seeing (1) what is available right now and (2) who would take your dossier. it is less about choosing but more about being chosen.
so i felt good when i heard of a studio in the 19th, owned by a friend and recently evacuated by a tenant, good until i heard what another friend had to say about the area.
“stalingrad? you know they call it stalincrack right?”
stalingrad, where 2 years ago, in the métro, i was looking for something in my tote bag and touched a foreign hand who also seemed to be looking for something in my bag.
went there to visit the flat, now less skippy. waiting for my friend outside the building, i decided to sit at the park out front. yes. a park! a park front-lined by a tiny farm sheltering animals rescued from violent slaughterhouses.
i watch, from afar, as goats and chickens and other animals a city boy does not have names for roam around in their tiny perimeter. it’s a relatively quiet street, but still sees steady foot traffic. and what about all the cars passing through? how good is it for the animals? the noise and the smoke. surely this spot in a giant, ever-growing city is no place for them.
until i remember where they came from. sure, stalingrad is not some grassy hill by the countryside bounded by a river flowing silently nearby. but this place is probably a hundred times better than where they were. here they had warm milk and regular doses of caresses from quiet kids.
i look at one of them now, a boy wearing glasses caressing a lamb, and i feel my heart swell. just by the pureness of it. here, in a "rough” neighborhood in an impossible city, i witness the softest image i have seen in months. this is it. i tell myself, counting it as a sign.
i end up taking the apartment and have been living here for a few weeks now. i love it.
but sis imagine making big decisions based on signs. but maybe a life governed by signs is really just playing peekaboo with god. on the lookout for the brief moments where he exposes himself in the everyday, so fleeting that it you are not fully there, you wouldn’t see it.
a poem:
in a parallel universe
we live in tokyo
piles of books grow
from the floor like trees
a bubble where the night is blue
and the day orange honey
there’s a pink candle burning
on the kitchen counter
peaches bruised
ripe to the touch
the tiles in bathroom are green
and your hands hold me
and never hurt me
in a parallel universe
maybe we make it
all grey and wrinkly
smile still toothy
your hands freckled with brown spots
extending a single white rose over
my tomb
oh if you signed up for pictures of shoes, here’s a creamy one from lemaire
happy full moon
Love u my sweet Muscovado