Longing For Me
In the last few weeks I've been longing for the sea. For the smell of salt, seaweed and Bain de Soleil. For the cool breeze and warm sun against my skin. I wanted to hear the seagulls' cry. I wanted to sit in a beach side cafe, for hours, and somehow be cleansed. I wanted to leave there, replenished, renewed.But I'm not necessarily the Queen of The Beach. Sand pisses me off, for one thing. Swimming in the ocean scares me. Putting on a bathing suit scares me much more.
So it's all about escape, from Paris and from myself. Paris has been very cold and mostly grey. A pre-Christmas flea infestation in my apartment was worthy of a horror flick. And the noise in my apartment building just keeps getting worse. It sounded like somebody was breaking down the door of the apartment downstairs at the wee hours of this morning. I stood at my peephole trying to decide if I should rush downstairs and confront the burglars, but climbed back into bed instead. The young college student on the other side of my wall has a new boyfriend. I think he's the same guy that waltzed into the Hot Tan Girl's life downstairs a few months ago and roused her into multiple orgasms 5 times a day. She finally left, so I felt relieved. But now, instead of hovering above Hot Tan Girl's bed, I'm directly in bed with the Young College Student. She's just on the other side of the wall where I lay down my head, wailing Oui! Oui! 5 times a day. God. Bless. Her.
I just lie here with my headphones jammed into my ears, with Joni Mitchell playing, and long for the sea.
I think I have a fantasy that if I'm standing and looking at the sea, the world slows down to the languid rate of the waves' ebb and flow. There are no deadlines. No threatening letters piling up from the French tax office because I miscalculated and should have paid them 145 Euros instead of 128. There's no looming expiration date for my work visa. No days of standing in multiple lines just to talk to a grumpy French fonctionnaire, not to mention the nice chunky payment to my lawyer in order to get that visa. There's nothing at all pressing, except a wander down the boardwalk to find a place to have lunch.
I think there's no noise there, at the sea. No midnight robberies or door-lock changes or people banging refrigerators down the circular apartment stairs as they escape immigration in the middle of the night. No King Kong crashing the trash cans out of the courtyard, down the hall and out of the building at 6am. And certainly, no orgasms.
Only the seagulls are crying out. But somehow, that doesn't embarrass me as much.
A million years ago, the whole time I lived just a couple of blocks from the beach in California, I avoided the sea. Because if I stood there long enough, I would cry. A deep sadness would well up into my chest and spill down my cheeks. I didn't know why it was there and only wanted it to go back from whence it came. After a while, I realized that the sadness was my lonely, unexpressed self. I ran around a lot then, chasing after nothing, working way too much, spending money I didn't have, doing all I could to avoid noticing me. I had few friends. No hobbies. So when I stopped at all, I realized I was just an empty shell. Standing on the sand, looking out at the horizon, the sea just stared back at me, placid and deep, daring me to dive inside and connect with the teeming, unseen self that wanted so desperately to be expressed.
Instead, I just got into a new relationship. Or I moved to Arizona. Or to Paris. Though I've given up relationships for lent (and my lent is longer than your lent), I'm pondering my next country move as I type. Certainly there's a place where I can go where I can find peace? Where I miraculously step out of fear, grab my lithesome, ebullient, funny self and rush outside, right into life? Where I initiate, instead of follow. Where I create instead of stifle. Where I'm animated from my own inner light instead of closed up and hiding.
This week I took a 5-hour train ride from Paris to Cannes. To the sea. I anticipated the train ride for days. Five hours to watch the world go by. Yet it sped by too quickly. Leaf-less trees waiting for spring, rolling hills dressed in a thin spray of frost and fog swirling just a few feet above, beach cities with medieval castles just barely standing upon their cliffs and then, finally, the sea. Stretching to the horizon, deep, placid. But I was on the fast train. There was but a glimpse and then it was gone. On to the next town, the next hill, the next cove.
When I arrived at Cannes I was busy. Finding my hotel. Finding my friends. Setting up the trade show booth. Finding a place to eat lunch, then dinner. Catching up on my friend's life, his sister's, his mother's. Learning his business so I could bullshit in the booth. The sea lay just outside of my reach, visible only on a busy walk-by. I never paused to look, to feel.
On the last night in town, my friends slept past our dinner rendezvous time so I went out by myself for dinner. I walked along the empty boardwalk and took pictures. Of empty benches and chairs. Of trees lit by colored lights. Of magazine covers displayed outside closed news stands. Of window displays at closed shops. Of the twinkling lights from unreachable shorelines, far away.
I took the train back to Paris early the next morning. I read my book instead of watching the world whiz by. Everything annoyed me. The man in the seat next to me, blowing his nose. The man who was sitting in my seat when I got on the train and I was too shy to ask him to move. The woman who boarded at the next stop and pointed out that I was in her seat. I actually got the nerve to ask the first guy to leave, which he did, but he still pissed me off. The crowds of people walking down the quay in Paris, talking, laughing, not caring that I was behind them and wanted to pass. The smell of urine in the Metro. The dog shit on the streets. The greyness of Paris.
I've been longing for the sea and so, I went to it. But the reality didn't measure up to the fantasy. I returned, unsated. My tamped-down sadness and tied-up joy still struggle inside me.
It isn't the place. It isn't the work. It isn't the relationship. It's me.
