A Letter from Paris
Les Deux Magots - Paris, France - November 8, 2021
I want to sit in the sun and write. So I do.
Paris welcomes me like a saint. My pants are beautiful but uncomfortable. They make me feel like I’m choking through my stomach.
I’m in the cafe of greats but I wonder if I am great. I wonder which stab will be the one that pours the greatness out of me. I haven’t left Paris yet but I already want to start crying.
I order a café creme and fresh raspberries. I put them on the tips of my fingers and eat secretly like I’m at home. There is more to me that I’m not seeing. It comes through bursts of intrigue, then clarity as I leave Los Angeles. I am in search of a life worth living. Not enduring. I want the endurance of truth. To run and light myself on fire. To burn and heal in gold. My outgrown selves live as stone and stare upon the city as gargoyles, monuments. There is a magic here that can be sung, in a low breath hum, and tune. I am everything in this square. In this moment. In the avoidance of seeds while eating raspberries. I stick them on my tongue and press. They squeeze at the roof of my mouth and puncture their sweet-bitter juice. I let my teeth dance on the remains. What is left of the body. But lightly, with a delicate jig, so as to not disrupt the sanctity of my teeth by jamming a seed between the cracks.
Paris is beautiful, yet determined. I think to myself, I wouldn’t mind spilling a bit of coffee on these pages, so as to halt a remnant of this fate. Oh, it makes me feel so weak to know I must leave. That the story unfound must remain undiscovered. Where is the story now? While I am here, where is it? When will it come to me? Or if it already has, when will I have the patience to fully receive it? What do I have to do to myself to let me know I am ready? Is this exclamation proof enough?
How do I explain to this atmosphere that I am ready for it to take me clean? To wipe my residue and spark new hope and danger. I am alone in Paris but I am not alone in my thoughts. Something is guiding me, like the cool presence of a breeze, but with thick, slow urgency. The whispers grow apparent. Something is trying to save me.
But the truth is, I know I must save myself. We must throw ourselves into the night of undiscovered thought and wait there, but not without action.
I come bearing my axe and knives. All my tools of artillery.
All I will say now is I will be back.
..."What do I have to do to myself to let me know I am ready?..."Embrace your destiny fully, then you'll know it's ready! because it's strange to live in the dark... this feeling will always persist, that something is missing.