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| Me, (or the back of me), admiring the view of Paris from the Louvre during the summer in 2008. |
I've had some major writer's block for the last month or so. Or, well, judging by the number of diverse drafted posts in my Dashboard, it's been more like writer's "commitment-phobia."
I've been wanting to write a series of "First Day" experiences in this blog for awhile. I've had so many monumental shifts in my life, from college to graduate school, from there to New York City, first performances and jobs, and so on, that I think it's fun to look back and reflect on the first days of those experiences. I thought there was no better example to begin with... than the first day of my summer in Paris in 2008:
When I decided to go to Paris, it was very much on behalf of my ingenious - and extremely generous - friend Sera, who had courageously decided to move there after we graduated from our undergrad together in 2007. I had been at Eastman for a year when I got on the plane to Paris, and I'd been as frustrated as I was exhilarated by the experience of graduate school. I had pretty much broken down my technique to the basics with my voice teacher that year. I'd come to Eastman with mostly choral experience, containing my voice to a small, tense instrument -- although my voice was naturally about double that size. I was a bundle of tension, insecurity, and weird habits. I spent the year doing mostly dance in the mainstage opera, a few scenes, and a lot of coaching and lessons. I had made progress, but I wasn't feeling like I had a lot to show for it yet. On top of that, I had just gotten my last rejection to a summer program and had no plans at all. I called Sera and told her my worries about the upcoming months, to which she said "What if you just come to Paris this summer? Sing in the Euroculture festival with me in August?" I knew instantly I was going to take her up on it. (I still owe her my first born for this.)
To make a very long story short, I set up plans to nanny for Naomi, the little girl Sera had nannied throughout the year, while Sera would work for an office in another part of Paris. I planned to crash on Sera's Chambre-de-bonne floor (if you do not know what this is, imagine a tuna can. Good, now take away about half that size.), pitch in on groceries and whatever other expenses were necessary, and live like a Parisian until we entered the festival in Auvergne (...yet another story for another time). I had no idea what I was in for. It was, and remains, the greatest summer of my entire life.
My first full day in Paris started when I woke up jet-lagged at 2pm to Sera's empty room. She had left to go to work hours before, but being the doll she is she left me a list of things I could do, where to go, and how to prepare my own crepes and coffee in the apartment. She'd given me a book with maps of each arrondisement, and I mapped my route to the first thing I knew I wanted to see: the Eiffel Tower. To my surprise, it was an easy walk there, especially considering I could already see it from her top-floor window.
I knew as soon as my feet hit the pavement that I was going to love living in that city for the summer. There is an indescribable energy to Paris. Some days New York City reminds me of it, especially when it rains, but nothing can really compare. It was as lively as it was peaceful, crowded with families speaking French and strangers eyeing me in the street. The culture shock I'd felt upon arriving dissolved completely when I stood beneath the tower itself, awed by how much larger it was in person than I'd anticipated. I found a bench underneath, and just sat and stared, waiting for the reality to sink in. It was never totally fathomable: "I am here. I am in Paris. I, who just two months ago didn't expect to ever be here and never really considered it someplace I'd travel to, am underneath the Eiffel Tower and surrounded by a country I do not know at all."
But, somehow, I felt at home. It was the first time in my life I've ever felt home someplace where, by all rationality, I did not fully belong. No one from my immediate family had ever been there, (yet), and it was an experience I was going to endure pretty much alone, which did not scare me nearly as much as I'd expected it to.
I've had a tradition of keeping diaries and writing every experience, good or bad, down in those books. Even the ones that are filled to the brim with hard times or heartbreak will be kept, because a part of me knows that while my young and inexperienced soul thinks those journals are unbearable, when I am older and wiser (hopefully), I'll read them over with a smile remembering how much strength the hard times brought me.
My first day in Paris was no exception to the rule, and I recorded my very rambling, tired thoughts down as I sat there:
May 21st, 2008:
Well, here I am. In Paris. Right now I am in front of the Eiffel Tower.
...
Whoa.
I know I am lucky. Yes, I am nervous and perhaps a bit lost... but I'd rather be nervous and lost in Paris than in Rochester, NY. (As I so often already am).
I find France strange, foreign, exquisite, enchanting...I want to fit in more than I can begin to express. I have learned some beginner phrases, and I am determined not to let France be something frightening at all.
I feel a little as though I tricked the universe into letting me come here. :)
It was a whim, afterall, and glamorous, extravagant things do not happen to me usually. Homesick and French-illiterate as I am, I know I must stay and make the most of all of this. I only pray I don't mess it all up in my typically clumsy ways. I will stand for no less than the best experience I can make of this. I will just walk, watch, and learn every day. I am lucky; and small and humble... but I do believe I am deserving of this inevitably life-changing time. Better to find myself in a country like this, where I cannot distract myself with all of the opinions I worry about on a day-to-day basis.
...I keep looking up at this tower to be sure it's still there each time. I'm already fighting the desire to move here and never return to NY... while also fighting nerves over how I will manage three whole months here with such ignorance to the culture and language. (sigh).
I am actually somewhat envious of everyone around me here. Obviously, the fact that they can speak to one another and understand each other is one reason, but it's something else: They believe in love, and LIFE, above all else it seems. They don't concern themselves as much with the definitions of their success in their careers as Americans do. (The Americans I know, anyway). Everyone seems to embrace art, music, family... American artists could learn so much from Parisians. I already have, just in these hours on my very first day here.
It isn't a fantasy after all; a world where art and true love are married is a very real thing. A practical thing, in fact, and above all - it is necessary. I hope to love my time here. No matter where I travel to this summer and what I see, I hope to find love in my own, simple, life. How impractical. :)
