crossing worlds to paris
after ten years in NYC, I left last week for indefinite travels — to try living elsewhere for a while. the first elsewhere is Paris. here is letter #6, written for my patrons program, where I share the voyage, inspirations, and my work.
Dear L,
I'm writing to you from an Iranian cafe in Paris, a few blocks from where I live now. a friend told me that downstairs, there is the dance of the whirling dervishes, and that the grey-haired owner is a maestro of the Persian drum. I feel comfortable here — an immigrant in an immigrant's world.
where do I begin, then, to tell you about my last week in New York, and of crossing the threshold between worlds? last week I didn't write you, because it was very bad weather in Keningland - sudden dust storms and yellow fog. a bad visit to the doctor’s entrapped me in the valley of illusions. then an unpleasant phone call with my mother triggered a flash flood of dark water.
then I left. in the car ride to the airport, the weather outside was beautiful, by my standards. the clouds loomed like mountains; there were strong winds, sunshine and hail, light rimming cloud shadow. the weather was a living, tactile painting of my emotions. and so I felt seen.
I took a red-eye flight at 10:30 pm. saying goodbye to E was hard. I felt tempted to call the whole thing off and to go home and read together in bed. when I got on the plane, I was surrounded by thirties-something women traveling to Paris for work; their energy like the foil to mine-- objective-oriented and industrious, efficient and ambitious. I slept a few hours and woke up feeling very, very alone.
next thing I knew, I was in an uber, and the sun was shining again. things felt the same, but different. like changing the channel on the TV -- the visuals all looked familiar, but now the audio wasn't connected. continuity, with a slight disorientation. everything was normal, except now the voice on the radio spoke in French.
the next day, I walked four hours in sunlight across the city, past the Seine, and it was like taking a chilly sound bath. there is something meditative about not understanding the conversations of passing strangers — urban solitude at its best; a linguistic spaciousness.
I went dancing. I kept company with the friends I made this summer. late at night, I returned home to the alcove studio, alone. when people asked what I'm here for, business or holiday, I said neither; I just wanted a change. (perhaps what I really meant was: I wanted to change myself? isn't that always the deeper reason for travel? a desire (however sublimated) for transformation (however fleeting)?
and when you go to a different world with the mentality of living there, you have to relearn the basics — how to turn on the stove, how to buy groceries, how to greet strangers. yes, this is Paris — not Mongolia or Tibet — but the small details have shifted: the door handles are ornate and centered, the winter radishes have black snakeskin, the flowers are arranged differently in the shops. not the cultural differences, but the day to day minutiae — these small things add up — and, somewhere in the process, you surrender old habits, if you are willing, and you reconfigure yourself: turning the knobs of your being, tuning to a different frequency — a different sense of time, of self, a different way of eating, speaking, cooking, working, loving.
this is what I’m here for, isn’t it? to surrender, and to see what becomes of me.
on Friday afternoon, I lifted my luggage up five flights of winding stairs. I looked out the window of the studio into the neighbors’ apartments, where they are growing a lemon tree and a small forest on the terrace. last June, when my friend invited me here, I saw these neighbors sitting, drinking wine on the same terrace, and I knew, in an flash, that I was glimpsing a life I wanted; I felt an intuition I was destined to follow. not to be the couple on the terrace, but to be the girl living alone in an alcove studio, looking from a slim window at strangers drinking wine on the terrace. I knew then that I had to come to Europe - not in 3 or 5 years, but now.
now I’m here. that Friday afternoon, there were dark clouds and clear skies, and very very faintly, beyond the neighbor’s terrace, there was a whisper of a rainbow, like a soft affirmation from the universe, rewarding me for my courage, consoling me for all the shitty weather I endured, saying, it’s okay, dear kening, look. look what can happen when you leap between two worlds. when you laugh and cry at the same time. may the bittersweet in between-ness of things always be your portal.
...
xoxo until next Monday,
Kening
<<inspiration log>>
audre lorde reads “the uses of the erotic, the erotic as power”
a friend in Paris mentioned this to me. I listened to it four times in two days. it is so powerful that I will write a separate post on it and share it with you next week. it is about the "erotic" not as merely sexuality, but as a life giving energy within women; a compass for seeking deep feeling in everything we do.
I write weekly letters to share my travels, inspiration, and creations with my patrons.