A date with your city

Modern Musings
Sep 3, 2018 · 6 min read

“Nerves strained by work would relax in its presence, following the restful example of its stagnant waters and for he who would live in it, this room would offer a refuge for peaceful meditation in the midst of a flowering aquarium.” As I sat in the middle of the Water Lilies exhibition, a vestibule designed and gifted to Paris by Claude Monet in the Musée de l’Orangerie, a space designed to be between the “hustle and bustle of the city and his works,” I let ‘hustle and bustle of the city,’ linger in my mind.

I took the moment to reflect on how had Paris been, living in it rather than visiting, over the past three months? Had the first three months been harder than my previous inhabited cities? How was this different to Melbourne? There’s a breath of a music scene, but the foods a fair rival. Had it been harder than London? Pubs swapped to bistros, but the weathers pretty even. Also, how much of this was Paris kicking my butt versus how much was it just adjusting to a change in general?

The easy differences would be the language and the culture, but the weird thing is, in many ways the way of thinking and the language itself are the smallest and actually the best differences. I love the french language and I love hearing it spoken to me. Don’t love it as much when I speak it. Do I hate that I can’t converse in this new language with the same ‘zest’ of my native language? Yes. It pains me. It’s not until you live in a country that speaks and lives in an entire different language to yours that you realise how much of your personality extends from conversing. For jokes to actually be understand and received, instead of receiving responses and facial responses that what I said was a literal statement.

“No, no, that was a play on words (A what?) uhh… a double entendre? (*wincing eyes*)… it was meant to be a joke. (Ohhhhhh! Haha?) *sigh*.”

Especially dating. You don’t realise how much you’ll question your sense of humour (if you want to call it that by that stage) till you’re translating jokes in another language. There’s nothing quite like explaining a joke. It’s the verbal equivalent of spraying bug spray… into your face. How am I perceived? If they can’t understand half of what I’m saying, do I come across smart? Dumb? Funny? Serious? Ok yes, it’s Paris so most of its inhabitants speak english at some level. But until you know the level of their understanding, you never know if anyone is truly understanding your context, let alone what you are saying and this can feel very isolating and as if you are speaking to a wall that sometimes gets you and often doesn’t.

Language understanding is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s cultural understanding. Specifically dating cultural understanding. I’ll look back on this in my later life I’m sure with grandma lols, but right now while I’m in it, navigating an unknown country without a map and only the sun to guide you would be easier. Whether it’s being love bombed with compliments and constant texting to zero communication after hooking up, only to be told the excuse is ‘his culture’; or two weeks of consistent texting, setting up a time to meet up and then not showing up, without a text to re-schedule let alone to cancel; or being told because you’ve been talking for a week and apparently gone on ‘dates’ — via texting each other only — that you’re officially dating without any prior knowledge (or input) known to you, that you start to feel even more lonely in your new hometown, as you’re not sure if you arrived into a dating vortex (aka 2018 dating) or that these are just slight modifications to the aforementioned (dating) shit storm that you just need to get accustomed to.

Electricity box replacements, internet setup, banking setup, ordering tables at restaurants, attempting to be served in general in bistros, attending (see:attempting to understand) exercise classes, learning your bra, clothes and shoe sizes, tailoring, attempting basic conversations with colleagues, ordering coffees, ordering anything, applying for a Navigo card, meeting and asking neighbours to leave their stinky trash not in the hallway, ordering appliances, moving furniture, redirecting mail, buying groceries, mastering laundry machines, finding meeting rooms and the aforementioned dating. All in another language, in an intermediate lingual purgatory. At least I’ve got ordering wine mastered down to a fine art.

A friend said to me to be prepared to look and sound like an idiot for at least the first 6 months of living in a new country with a new language. She’s absolutely right and every day I take a deep breath and quash my perfectionist brain and act present and attempt to remind myself that I’m in a new country, new culture, new language, new reality.

But it brought me down last weekend. Last Saturday I’d been pushed into the dirt so many times that I was now too tired to get up and starting to think that maybe I should stay in the mud and make it my home as maybe it’s where I belonged and maybe I shouldn’t have been so naive to think I could survive in a big city like Paris. After trying to find answers outward and it not scratching the internal emotional itch, I turned inward. In the mirror, self-mantra style, I told myself, “You need to remind yourself tomorrow that you’re in Paris and what an incredible city to be living in. You’re still new here. Find that spark of attraction. You’re still in the honeymoon period dammit.” So, what do I love that Paris has a lot of? Art. God damn art.

Every first Sunday of the month, Paris opens (most) of its gallery doors for free. Viva la France! I tell myself that I’ll have a date with Paris and go visit a gallery I’ve not been to before. I decide on Musée de l’Orangerie has Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. I’ve loved Claude Monet since I was a little girl as my mother used to take us to his house in France when we lived here when I was a kid.

No line. Ground floor. A series of four paintings in an oval room. There’s a second room with another four. I sit in the middle of the room and spend 15 minutes staring at each painting consecutively. I feel calm. I feel at peace. Each express a different season, but to me they expressed one of each of the feelings I had felt so far. Exhilaration, depression, loneliness, fear, optimism. I leave an hour later, rested, I pick up a program on the way out and realise the gallery has an incredible view of the Eiffel Tower on a bluebird day…

I pick up the program and I read, “… With no horizon to orient the viewer, the elements — water, sky, earth — seem to merge in a composition without perspective where the flowers create a rhythm… the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon and without shore.” Ok Paris. I’ll try again and give this another go.

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