Jazz and a teapot

Today I'm especially weak and light-headed, and I don't know why. I can barely stand up without falling over. But an hour ago I decided that I was tired of lying down, I was deafened by the silence of my room, and my eyes were watering from the gray, blinding light spilling through my bedroom window. It was then that I remembered the Chet Baker albums I had uploaded onto my computer in Michigan and the teapot I had bought after class two days ago.

After sipping on several cups of steaming Marco Polo tea, poured from my rustic, ivory-colored théière, and listening to an hour of Chet Baker, I feel less sad, fitful and alone. That combined with my resolution to write letters from bed, I'd say I almost feel cozy here in my apartment.

It's cold outside after all--18 degrees fahrenheit with windchill, 28 without. And the sky is heavy and gray. It's a Normandy coast gray, not a typical Parisian gray today. The Normandy variety of gray is darker, and feels closer to your head--the color is approaching graphite. Parisian gray is lighter usually, more reflective (in my eyes, anyway).

No matter, though; the essential thing is that Chet Baker adds warmth to the gray.

...I wonder if I would grow tired of Paris if I lived here permanently. Or maybe I would just grow to love it more and more. Somewhere in my thoughts it seems a pity that I couldn't have fallen in love with and lived in a more unconventionally loved city like...Kabul, for example.

I don't feel very original loving Paris, you see. According to the World Tourism Website, France has approximately 70% of the world's tourism traffic on its doorstep. So I love Paris along with everyone else in the world. But there's really no sense in my denying it, because it's obvious that I'm a Paris sort of person, and not a Kabul sort of person at all.

Being here, and being so happy here, makes me ask myself quite seriously, "Do I want this life?" When I try to think about what I want in the long term, I find myself trapped between essentially two life models:

1) Working long hours with little vacation or home-time (and potentially larger salary) in a job I might find fascinating, or

2) Working reasonable hours with lots of vacation and ample (but almost certainly not large) pay in a job which at times may be interesting, at others quite tedious.

In my opinion, many jobs in the U.S. fall into category 1, while many (let's say most) jobs in France fall into category 2. Although, what am I saying? Most jobs are probably tedious in the US, too. Anyway, sticking with the model for the time being, a perfect example of a category 2 job would be working for the United Nations in Paris. They have so much vacation time it's stunning. And they're quite well paid. Recently I met a man who works for the UN here. He says that the idealism with which he came to the UN was soon lost to the tedium and highly bureacratic nature of his job. Still, he likes working there because, after all, his life is very good and he feels he is doing something meaningful with his time at work nonetheless. I wonder what I would think about that kind of life? The only way to find out is to find out, of course.

On the underside of the cardboard lids of Stila eyeshadow there used to be famous quotes, like "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I hardly ever used the eyeshadow, but I remember the quote for how simple and obvious it was. It was so simple and so obvious that I had never thought of my difficulty with decision-making in those terms. It isn't the journey itself that I find daunting--it's that first, single step. For example, where do I go and what do I do once my classes here have ended? I just need to make one step, to something else, but I find myself paralyzed by the need to make the "best" step, the most "correct" step.

I suppose this is the burden of choice and freedom.

There are no doubt many people in the world whose lives have been pre-determined by their social, financial, and ethnic condition who would love to be in my place. Strangely, my guilty luck does not help me move forward. It just makes me feel guilty.

That being said, I do have one idea for what to do after my classes. Next week I will call a number of chateaux in the Loire valley to see if I could work for the summer with their team of landscape preservationists. Those are the people who, aside from ensuring proper preservation of the grounds and buildings, organize the historical tours and literature for the chateaux. I'm hoping that at least one of these chateaux would like to take advantage of my bilingual status to allow them to give tours in English. I've checked, and many of the more historically rich locations either do not offer guided tours in English, or they offer precious few (one, once a week, for example). My top choice is Villandry.

So there's Saturday's verbose update.

(photo at top is of the grounds of Villandry, early January)