Paris Letters (17 page)

You’re welcome.

On days that the rain would whip around buildings, I stayed home and sifted through my blog posts from the year before, trying to reshuffle, edit, add, and create something out of this raw material. When I was stuck, I called in my own imaginary Ernest Hemingway. I opened my journal and asked him for guidance. I wrote a question, then on the next line, I wrote “Hemingway:” and he answered in a voice that was my voice but also not my voice, similar to Mr. Miyagi and Percy Kelly. It was a voice that seemed wiser than myself. And that guy set me straight. He didn’t mince words. He asked me why on earth I wanted to go through my blog posts from a time when I was so miserable in Los Angeles during a time when I was so happy in Paris. Good point, Hemingway. Good point. Onward.

Dear Áine,

There is this blue door I walk by often on my walks through Paris. It looks like an ordinary blue door, but this is the blue door at 74 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, the first Paris residence of Hemingway back when he was just Ernest. Before the novels, before the accolades, before the fall, he was trying to build a new life here with is new wife Hadley and their son Bumby. And Hadley, she was building a happy family despite the cold Paris winters, post-war conditions, and tight budget. They had a nice handful of literary friends—James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein to name a few—and the charms of Paris itself to weave into the narrative of their lives. He would go on to write books that changed literature forever, culminating in a Nobel Prize. She likely never suspected that she would go on to be known as the first wife. As I look up at the building, I imagine these newlyweds trying to make a go of it. If you walk by at twilight, you can hear doors opening and closing, friendly murmurs of conversation, and the smell of dinner on the stove. I wonder if it’s Ernest and Hadley haunting the place.

“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.” Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.

Janice

23

Guests Galore

Paris is the most popular tourist destination in the world, so if you live here, you have pretty good odds of meeting up with some vacationing cronies from your old life. If so, you’ll do a lot of tour guiding, especially if you don’t have the steady office job to get you out of it. Karma is a sneaky minx.

Generally, I was fine with walking my old friends around my new Paris, but soon I realized just how expensive it was for me to do so. Taking a day to tour them around meant not making traction on my artistic pursuits, plus paying for my own lunches and dinners in restaurants. Over time, it dawned on me that they weren’t just in Paris to see me. They were looking for a free tour guide. Resentment bubbled up. Did I really choose these friends back in my old life? Were they always this clueless? And two thoughts kept coming up: Why am I not saying anything? and How did I let this happen? After I took one such guest to a dinner party and he proceeded to fill his wineglass with the last of the good wine without filling other glasses first, I knew I would have to create major boundaries with guests in the future. I couldn’t keep this up.

Melanie explained how to regard future requests for tours around Paris. We were out for coffee the day after my old friend drank up the wine at the dinner party. She took a napkin from the table and said, “This is your life.” She folded it in half. “Half of it goes to work.” She folded it again. “You’re left with one half that is devoted to life maintenance: groceries, paying bills, that kind of thing.” She held up the small square that remained. “This small square is your free time. Do you really want to give this small square to a clueless friend from your old life who acts like a barbarian at dinner parties in your new life?”

Lesson learned.

But for the select guests who were worthy of that small square, I had developed an itinerary that would get them to all the major sites in as few steps as possible. One must be mindful of one’s feet when traipsing around Paris. For this, I included a boat ride along the Seine that went from Jardin des Plantes, near my apartment, to the Eiffel Tower and back again, stopping near all the major monuments along the way. During these boat trips, something magical started to happen. As we floated along from monument to monument, my fatigued travelers would begin to open up about their frustrations about daily life: their jobs, their love lives, their grief and failures. One by one, they would talk it out, and I would listen. I didn’t plan this, but each time it was the same. I think it was the lull of the boat: its slow sway and humming motor combined with the pause from dodging scooters, looking for signs, and grasping maps. Somewhere along the way, I had turned from being a Vacation Request Coach to being a Vacation Release Coach. My new vocation suited me.

But my three-day itinerary fell away with Akemi. She arrived and spent all her mornings in bed in the hotel and all her afternoons with me on my street. She had a mean case of burnout from the advertising agency. I understood all too well, so instead of walking all over the city, we just took the boat ride along the Seine. As we floated under the bridge by Notre Dame, she confessed, “I’m just so tired.” And she meant it. She herself had been silently working through her own escape plans since I left.

Soon after, my mother arrived for her two-week vacation. On the second day, she fell on a sidewalk and required two rows of stitches in her knee. We spent the night in the emergency room with Christophe as our translator. Sometimes she acted like a frail old grandma, holding my arm as we walked and telling me how this cramped and that ached. But then there were times when I saw that it was mostly an act. She was much stronger than she admitted. The day after she fell in Paris, all she needed was a few Advil and a fresh bandage each morning before she walked with me all over the city. She also slipped in questions here and there about me finding a job, but then I told her that for now, I had enough money.

“And for later?”

I shrugged and she started praying.

I’m pretty sure she mentioned her worries to my uncles and aunts who arrived one after another. I became tour guide to them all. They each mentioned that I should make a profession of touring people around the city, but when I started replying to their questions about French history with, “Dunno, Google it,” they piped down about the tour guiding.

Still, they had a point. Since I spent most of my days on long hikes throughout Paris, I thought that perhaps I could get paid for it. I asked Vicki for advice. She was a painter from San Francisco. She arrived in Paris from time to time to paint scenes of rue Mouffetard. Each morning, she unfolded her artist chair on the sidewalk, pulled out her supplies, and started painting. Alongside her easel was a box of postcards of her previous paintings that she sold to those gawking over her shoulder. And since one needs a permit for such things and she
may
not have had one, she
may
have had her friend Monique come by and watch for the coppers. Monique may have been a Communist spy in her youth, so this side gig may have been a perfect fit. Vicki packed an extra guest chair for when company arrived. These two lovely silver-haired beauties chatted and sat at different locations up and down the street. Vicki painted. Monique spied. Everyone was happy. I thought Vicki was in her mid-fifties but wasn’t sure because something came over her the longer she sat and painted. She seemed to regress in age as the weeks went by. I thought perhaps it was the company she kept. She stayed at a youth hostel called Young and Happy. “I’m not young, but I’m happy,” she quipped when I mentioned her mysterious age regression. By the end of her Paris visits, she always had a skip in her stride of someone half her age.

On the morning before I was about to meet friends of friends and give them a little tour around the city, I stopped by Vicki who was painting a picture of the restaurant Le Verre à Pied on rue Mouffetard. She saw me coming and unfolded her guest stool. I sat and sighed, telling her I was taking some friends of friends around town for the day. “Vicki, I need to make more cash, and people have recommended becoming a tour guide. What do you think?”

“You couldn’t pay me enough,” she said. “But I’m a plein air painter. That’s what I do. I like to show people Paris through my paintings.” She daubed her brush in burnt amber. “With the exception of the few people such as yourself whom I allow to sit near me, I want to be left the hell alone to do what I love doing.”

She was like a wise owl.

“Here’s what you can do. Take my advice or leave it. Today when you tour these people around, pretend it’s a paid gig. See if you’re into it.”

So when I met up with the friends of friends, I tried out being a tour guide. Paris was their first European city, or their first trip outside a resort or off a cruise ship. This meant they wore pretty but inappropriate footwear and yoga pants (never do this in Paris unless you’re actually going to yoga or are alone in your home) and carried large, heavy water bottles. Their first request was a big coffee so they could sip and stroll. I told them that it’s not easy to find a coffee to go, but then they spotted a Starbucks on the horizon and got excited. They ordered their giant mocha-frappa-etceteras and we began exploring, me knowing that they would require les toilettes in twenty minutes. There are public toilets in Paris, but not that many and they are…well, public toilets, and come with all the usual unpleasantries. In order to use a toilet in a restaurant or café, one must saddle up to the bar and order something. Usually, this was an espresso, because it was cheap and really what we were after was restroom privileges. So they slurped back their espressos, headed to the loo, and in twenty minutes, they needed to do it all over again.

The French avoid this entire cycle. I figured out how they do it. They sip liquids constantly at home, likely because they are severely dehydrated in their tour around the city. They stop half an hour before their next jaunt around town. They leave the house slightly thirsty but confident they’ll not need a pit stop on their tour. And when the ladies have earned restroom privileges in a café, they take them. Men? I know what they do by evidence on sidewalks.

With these friends of friends, I gave them a few facts about me, and they gave a few facts about them. It was like a first date except we all knew our relationship was fleeting and it was unlikely we’d ever meet again. I spewed off a few facts and figures about Paris as we walked around. They seemed slightly interested but would likely retain nothing except what their cameras captured. They talked about work-related ailments and stresses and especially how tired and busy they were all the time. These people were kind of a drag, but I agreed to meet them, largely out of the kindness I felt for people like Sandro and Marco when I was traveling, and because I, on this particular day, was testing to see if I would like tour guiding.

After my pleasant enough but exhausting tour around the city, I returned to Vicki who was still sitting in her artist chair on the sidewalk, putting her finishing touches on a painting. She saw me coming and whipped out her guest stool. She doesn’t keep it out for fear of inviting unwanted guests. I sat.

“Well, how’d it go?” she said.

“I’m tired and over it. I didn’t ask for cash but they gave me some to thank me.”

“So you even got paid and still didn’t like tour guiding.”

I nodded.

“Sounds to me like it’s not an equal exchange. How much cash would it take to make it an equal exchange?”

“Too much,” I responded.

“It’s settled then,” she said, slapping her knee. “You’re just like me. Show people Paris by selling more of those letters of yours and forget the touring.” She pointed at her box of postcards and winked. “I sell enough of these postcards to pay for my whole vacation.”

And that’s when Quit Your Day Job came along.

Dear Áine,

Even though there are four seasons in Paris, it seems to be the rainy season all year long. And though the tourist season is technically early summer, they seem to be here all year long too. Lately, I’ve become the Ambassador of Directions to confused map-gripping vacationers. But if I come upon a tour group, I usually slink my way around to quickly get where I want to be.

All the tourists eventually arrive at la pièce de résistance: the Eiffel Tower. Only here do I hover close to the groups, who are usually led by a person carrying a large plastic flower that is easily visible for anyone who meanders too far from the pack. The leader usually rattles off facts and figures about the world’s most recognized monument. I don’t pay much attention. Instead I listen in to people’s conversations. It’s easy to do and I can’t resist. As we all look up into the brown belly of iron, I hear wives talking about the campaign to convince their husbands to come to Paris. I hear employees talking about the vacation time they had to earn. And students who saved every dime and are willing to eat crêpes on the street for every meal just to be here in this moment.

It takes some effort to get where you want to be. Now that they are in Paris looking at the tower they’ve imagined for so long, they sigh with satisfaction, snap a photo, and look for that big plastic flower to find their way home.

Au revoir!

Janice

24

The Etsy Quit Your Day Job Article

A blogger from Etsy contacted me and asked if she could feature me on the Quit Your Day Job blog. This is the same blog I scoured for ideas on how I could quit the advertising agency. It featured people who successfully moved on from the daily grind to build successful businesses on Etsy. Back then, I wanted to be one of those people. Now I would be! Being featured on Etsy was the moment that changed my grassroots business that paid for my coffee and cheese addictions into a business that could also help me keep padding my buffer of cash and saving up for the next big adventure, whatever that might be.

By now, I had sent out over one thousand letters. But a week into the Quit Your Day Job article, I was getting orders to send out thousands more and I was pedaling dans la choucroute, which means pedaling in sauerkraut—getting nowhere fast. I went to bed at night with fifty orders to do the next day, only to wake up to fifty more. By the time I finished those, another fifty would be waiting. Of course I was astounded, delighted, and grateful for the success of this project, but there was a brief moment when I felt I had re-created history. I felt chained to my desk and overwhelmed by creating mail.