After a year of moving around, from London to Paris to Berlin and back, I've been thinking about the way that surroundings affect people. I am convinced, now, that habitats influence a person's state of mind, that they affect and reflect the shape of the human soul. A home's aesthetic is a person's aesthetic: the glow from the very walls infuses into a person and emits memories at them. I'm not quite saying that Naturalism runs riot. Instead, I'm arguing that a sticky surface - a kind of memory bank - is enacted by each wall.
Lacking a home, I have used the internet as a wall: a sticky surface, a memory bank, a permanent place in my itinerant lifes, which will welcome me whenever I need to return, whenever I feel sad or nostalgic or homesick.
I've been itinerant the whole year, and when you move around a lot, the fung shui of foreign flats and rooms has a different effect. Surroundings affect the traveller profoundly, since they are very different to home. Travellers don't get so attached to the places they stay in, because they know they're moving, but these places sometimes affect travellers more than inhabitants, who have gotten used to their hometown's aesthetic and are no longer affected by it.
Showing posts with label paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paris. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Bleibenblurb II
Over the weekend I watched a Dr Who episode where the Doctor and his assistant are living in 2 worlds, both of which feel very real. They have to choose which one is real and which is the dream. If they die in the dream, they wake up in the real world, but if they die in the real world then they just "die, stupid."
Basically, their lives are at stake.
This episode got me thinking about the nature of travelling and the life narrative. Normally, when tourists travel to another country, they stitch their journey-chapter into their narrative; when they return, there will be others who remember the holiday and what was seen and done. Thus the holiday, though in another place, is easily recogniseable as part of the tourist's narrative.
Yet when I travel, to Berlin, to Paris, I do not travel with others from home, who will remember. When I return to London, there are none there who know my life in those other cities, no collective memory of that time, and so it feels as though I am switching lives, walking between worlds. There will be hardly any evidence, save perhaps the inches of dust rolling up in my room, to show that I have been anywhere else at all. I have built up new lives in these other places; made new friends; told new jokes and anecdotes; stocked new kitchen cupboards; formed new favourites; frequented new cafes, bakeries, clubs, cinemas, bookshops.
When Proust wrote of selves proliferating, he was referring to one individual whose various selves were divided by time and age: an older Marcel was able to write down younger Marcel's impressions. Yet for modern travellers, who can reach half way around the world in a number of hours, the multiplicity of selves results from a dislocation, not in time, but in space.
So my sejourn here in Europe is not just a continuation of the narrative; it is a fragment. It is a different life in a different world. I have barely aged between being in Paris and Berlin, yet these are two existences in which I, the "I", is a very different being, in which my worlds are galaxies apart. Even the plane journey felt like a Tardis trip. Viewed through the telescope of time, in hindsight, these two worlds will once again be fragments; anomalies; dreams. They feel so real now but will seem light years away when I go back* - sleepsung, sandy-eyed, awaking from that familiarly elusive Proustian dream - when I return to the milky, familiar cosmos of life in London.
* back in space but forwards in time.
Basically, their lives are at stake.
This episode got me thinking about the nature of travelling and the life narrative. Normally, when tourists travel to another country, they stitch their journey-chapter into their narrative; when they return, there will be others who remember the holiday and what was seen and done. Thus the holiday, though in another place, is easily recogniseable as part of the tourist's narrative.
Yet when I travel, to Berlin, to Paris, I do not travel with others from home, who will remember. When I return to London, there are none there who know my life in those other cities, no collective memory of that time, and so it feels as though I am switching lives, walking between worlds. There will be hardly any evidence, save perhaps the inches of dust rolling up in my room, to show that I have been anywhere else at all. I have built up new lives in these other places; made new friends; told new jokes and anecdotes; stocked new kitchen cupboards; formed new favourites; frequented new cafes, bakeries, clubs, cinemas, bookshops.
When Proust wrote of selves proliferating, he was referring to one individual whose various selves were divided by time and age: an older Marcel was able to write down younger Marcel's impressions. Yet for modern travellers, who can reach half way around the world in a number of hours, the multiplicity of selves results from a dislocation, not in time, but in space.
So my sejourn here in Europe is not just a continuation of the narrative; it is a fragment. It is a different life in a different world. I have barely aged between being in Paris and Berlin, yet these are two existences in which I, the "I", is a very different being, in which my worlds are galaxies apart. Even the plane journey felt like a Tardis trip. Viewed through the telescope of time, in hindsight, these two worlds will once again be fragments; anomalies; dreams. They feel so real now but will seem light years away when I go back* - sleepsung, sandy-eyed, awaking from that familiarly elusive Proustian dream - when I return to the milky, familiar cosmos of life in London.
* back in space but forwards in time.
Friday, April 2, 2010
homeland and hiraeth
Language is a funny fabric. Words are shapeshifters, changing to fit the speaker's intentions. Yet a word can also be incredibly specific, pinning down a precise concept that's difficult to translate. 'Home' is one of these words. Do nomadic languages have a 'home'? And if so, does it describe the nomads' temporary housing, or does it denote something far more important, one of the few stable factors in nomadic existence: the home that one has among family?
Explaining my longing for home is difficult in Paris. My home doesn't exist in France, or indeed in French. 'Home' is translated as 'Chez soi', or 'ma maison', but neither of these explain the specific feeling of love, and warmth, and comfortableness that I feel. 'Homesickness' is inadequately translated as 'nostalgie' or 'le mal du pays'. Faced with this inadequacy of wording, is it any wonder I feel so tongue-tied in Paris?
The other day, I stopped a well-to-do woman on the street to ask for directions. 'Je ne parle pas aux étrangers,' she snarled. 'Did she mean she didn't talk to strangers, or to foreigners? Was she being racist, or just careful?
'Etranger' has two translations in English: a stranger, and a foreigner. In English, a foreigner can be someone you know well, but in France you would still call them an ' 'étranger'. Even after living in Paris for years and years and years, you will always be an 'étranger' - a foreigner, and thus a stranger to this strange city.
Explaining my longing for home is difficult in Paris. My home doesn't exist in France, or indeed in French. 'Home' is translated as 'Chez soi', or 'ma maison', but neither of these explain the specific feeling of love, and warmth, and comfortableness that I feel. 'Homesickness' is inadequately translated as 'nostalgie' or 'le mal du pays'. Faced with this inadequacy of wording, is it any wonder I feel so tongue-tied in Paris?
The other day, I stopped a well-to-do woman on the street to ask for directions. 'Je ne parle pas aux étrangers,' she snarled. 'Did she mean she didn't talk to strangers, or to foreigners? Was she being racist, or just careful?
'Etranger' has two translations in English: a stranger, and a foreigner. In English, a foreigner can be someone you know well, but in France you would still call them an ' 'étranger'. Even after living in Paris for years and years and years, you will always be an 'étranger' - a foreigner, and thus a stranger to this strange city.
Friday, March 26, 2010
latex heads and lather, part II
Having moved to the 15th arrondissement, I was in need of a new local pool. During the last six months here in Froggieland I've tried out many of the famous ponds in Paris - including the pool in Les Halles surrounded by tropical plants, and the Josephine Baker pool with a glass roof, situated on a floating island on the Seine.My experience of swimming with the frogs has been mixed. At Piscine Josephine Baker, a snotty, spotty receptionist accused me of being foreign - shock, horror - and wrongly trying to claim a discount available to under-25s who live in Paris. I pointed out that I live in Paris and am under 25, regardless of my accent. Nonetheless, she refused to accept my various identity cards, and insisted that I'd need to bring my apartment contract to get the discount. Something was very fishy about Josephine Baker - and I'm not just talking about the Seine.
My experiences at local pond Aspirant Dunant were better- although their lilipad lockers once proved disastrous when a friend couldn't get hers open and had to flip-flop to the main reception in her bikini and ask the male staff to help. They were delighted to naturally...
Now, I have found piscine paradise - finally, a pond with excellent showers, very very clean floors and a 50m pool! (This is twice the length of most pools in Paris). Its size means it's rarely crowded. In Piscine Blomet, Liliputian lockers are a thing of the past - rather than having to cram all my possessions into a frog-sized box, I can lock the entire cubicle I have been using and take the key! The showers are very good by Paris standards, lukewarm but very powerful, and the hairdryers are fantastic. Piscine Blomet is definitely my new pond - and I'm one very happy froggy indeed!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
latex heads and lather
Latex heads and lather sounds like it could be some kinky ritual in the shower, but actually - sorry to disappoint you - I'm talking about my local pool. Having swum on my return to the UK and enjoyed it, I promised myself I would take a dip with the Frogs. French swimming pools couldn't be that weird, could they?
My trip to the local pond proved more complicated than I'd imagined. Feeling exposed and foreign, I tried to tiptoe into the changing rooms, only to be stopped at the border and ordered to take off my shoes - wearing them beyond this point gets you a 5 euro fine. Entering the pond included dodging lilipad-swarms of AquaFitness classes and sporting a skin-coloured swimming cap, which stretched ears back beyond recognition.
Swimming with the frogs became swimming among the Frodos; our shiny bald heads and stretched ears certainly placed us in the land of sci-fi. The feeling that I had landed in some fantasy novel was confirmed by the wacky orange walls resembling Martian craters (let's face it, swimming pools are not the best place for the 1970s colour scheme that seems ubiquitous in parts of Paris). The turquoise and purple lockers were computerised and whizzed shut, nearly slamming my fingers in. Annoyingly, they did not respond to normal things like keys and thumping. Instead, I needed an 8 digit pincode to recover my possessions.
In the swimming pool, the Aquafitness class had luminous faces like distant stars. Pregnant women doing backstroke kicked the water viciously as their faces curled into sweaty masks of pain. One woman passing me had a bump like an island that she seemed to be trying to swim away from. Listen ladies, I wanted to say, save it for the delivery room... An enormous man in a tiny speedo wailed to himself as he swam. When a young and overeager kid dived into the water and missed, crying loudly on the side, I decided it was time to leave.
Swimming with the frogs was interesting, but I think I'll wait till the pond's empty before I try again.
My trip to the local pond proved more complicated than I'd imagined. Feeling exposed and foreign, I tried to tiptoe into the changing rooms, only to be stopped at the border and ordered to take off my shoes - wearing them beyond this point gets you a 5 euro fine. Entering the pond included dodging lilipad-swarms of AquaFitness classes and sporting a skin-coloured swimming cap, which stretched ears back beyond recognition.
Swimming with the frogs became swimming among the Frodos; our shiny bald heads and stretched ears certainly placed us in the land of sci-fi. The feeling that I had landed in some fantasy novel was confirmed by the wacky orange walls resembling Martian craters (let's face it, swimming pools are not the best place for the 1970s colour scheme that seems ubiquitous in parts of Paris). The turquoise and purple lockers were computerised and whizzed shut, nearly slamming my fingers in. Annoyingly, they did not respond to normal things like keys and thumping. Instead, I needed an 8 digit pincode to recover my possessions.
In the swimming pool, the Aquafitness class had luminous faces like distant stars. Pregnant women doing backstroke kicked the water viciously as their faces curled into sweaty masks of pain. One woman passing me had a bump like an island that she seemed to be trying to swim away from. Listen ladies, I wanted to say, save it for the delivery room... An enormous man in a tiny speedo wailed to himself as he swam. When a young and overeager kid dived into the water and missed, crying loudly on the side, I decided it was time to leave.
Swimming with the frogs was interesting, but I think I'll wait till the pond's empty before I try again.
do sculptures get crushes?
Leaves fall on them. So does faeces, rain, dust, sometimes snow. Love, never. Scuptures in Paris certainly don't get crushed by the heat of the moment, but they must get crushes - with so many beautiful people walking around, how could they ´not? Human hearts crafted these sculptures, remember - something of love still fizzles along the stone outlines.
Paris is alive. To be in a city of busy traffic, buzzing telephones and racing pulses, among scattered couples - to be among all this, and yet stone, motionless, eternal, must be torture.
Sculptures that see this vivid living daily - of course they desire it! Of course they chase it, the way men in bars chase women in red skirts and smiles - how could you not covet the life that flows through people here? Imagine being a sculpture here - perched among trees that blossom, leaves that fall, fertility consummated and confirmed before your very eyes, yearly anew, whilst you - fruitless, barren, old - are strapped in stone for ever.
I like to think that every now and then, one of these statues slips out of her stone chrysalis, winks at a beautiful young man with Monoprix bag, and smiles a little sadly when he saunters past, oblivious.
Paris is alive. To be in a city of busy traffic, buzzing telephones and racing pulses, among scattered couples - to be among all this, and yet stone, motionless, eternal, must be torture.
Sculptures that see this vivid living daily - of course they desire it! Of course they chase it, the way men in bars chase women in red skirts and smiles - how could you not covet the life that flows through people here? Imagine being a sculpture here - perched among trees that blossom, leaves that fall, fertility consummated and confirmed before your very eyes, yearly anew, whilst you - fruitless, barren, old - are strapped in stone for ever.
I like to think that every now and then, one of these statues slips out of her stone chrysalis, winks at a beautiful young man with Monoprix bag, and smiles a little sadly when he saunters past, oblivious.
Monday, August 4, 2008
on paris
We chatted. We laughed. We bridged a temporal gap - le temps qui coule sous le pont Mirabeau - through talk and laughter, to reconnect in the present. We talked of love, life and literature, of history, hopes and heartache. We saw Picasso, ate dried apricots and sundried tomato-stained bread and bought expensive shampoo and skipped on dinner to make up for it. We made collages on the floor and she smoked on the balcony. we fell asleep and woke up to the Eiffel tower, to days filled with possibility but lacking direction. we left the flat at 1pm and stayed awake and out till 6am, used coffee and bars and theatres and Paris streets and staged our last day on these platforms…
Monday, June 2, 2008
green graveyard
Pere Lachaise cemetery, eternal home to some of the greatest people that France has ever seen. Even the trees seem dead – their bases ground into the gravel, the cement thick to crush the fumes of the deceased, to keep them firmly buried underground. A river of faded & gnarled leaves, like souls of the dead in the river Styx, floats permanently between the tourist-pounded pavement and the silent graves, between life and death.
Cemetaries are a nightmare for unwilling symbolists. The dead are around us here, stillness, faded leaves are amassing on the sides of pavements like graves or souls. Yet – the trees here, green. Living people parade the pavements, their speech forms pyramids risen from the dusty silence. The green leaves are a reminder that life goes on and on and on and on, that new lives are exploding on the world scene in maternity wards and bathroom floors everywhere.
We like to keep birth and death separate from ordinary life, containing each earth- shattering crunch in hospitals or cemeteries. And yet in this cemetery, the leaves are stirring green & vivid above the graves – perhaps there is life here after all.
This cemetery is a tribute to some of the great thinkers and movers and creators of our time. Yet it is also a silent tribute to those whose lives will not be remembered as moving through the world stage. Their lives had meaning for those surrounding them, loved ones, and as part of the patchwork of history.
No life is without meaning.
This tourist attraction seems inappropriate somehow. The pleasant aesthetic of blue sky, green trees and shapely graves is jarring in contrast with the reality of death, the slow disintegration of the old, the sudden lightning stop of the young, earthshattering bottomless breaking night.
Some would argue that the beautiful graves and carefully engraved names are a tribute to former lives – not deaths - after all. But I I would suggest that these beautiful gravestones are a pleasant sheen over real death and an inadequate tribute to life. I don’t want to be blasé and relaxed around these graves, strolling gently to the next famous name. I want to confront life and death, stare them straight in the mouth & try to comprehend the mystery inside.
Cemetaries are a nightmare for unwilling symbolists. The dead are around us here, stillness, faded leaves are amassing on the sides of pavements like graves or souls. Yet – the trees here, green. Living people parade the pavements, their speech forms pyramids risen from the dusty silence. The green leaves are a reminder that life goes on and on and on and on, that new lives are exploding on the world scene in maternity wards and bathroom floors everywhere.
We like to keep birth and death separate from ordinary life, containing each earth- shattering crunch in hospitals or cemeteries. And yet in this cemetery, the leaves are stirring green & vivid above the graves – perhaps there is life here after all.
"they gave birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more" Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
This cemetery is a tribute to some of the great thinkers and movers and creators of our time. Yet it is also a silent tribute to those whose lives will not be remembered as moving through the world stage. Their lives had meaning for those surrounding them, loved ones, and as part of the patchwork of history.
No life is without meaning.
This tourist attraction seems inappropriate somehow. The pleasant aesthetic of blue sky, green trees and shapely graves is jarring in contrast with the reality of death, the slow disintegration of the old, the sudden lightning stop of the young, earthshattering bottomless breaking night.
Some would argue that the beautiful graves and carefully engraved names are a tribute to former lives – not deaths - after all. But I I would suggest that these beautiful gravestones are a pleasant sheen over real death and an inadequate tribute to life. I don’t want to be blasé and relaxed around these graves, strolling gently to the next famous name. I want to confront life and death, stare them straight in the mouth & try to comprehend the mystery inside.
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