Saturday 26 January 2013

Ageing Young Rebels

We went to Paris again for the fashion trade fair. Strange things happened. Coincidences, not things that go bump in the night. I recognised an editor who is publishing a piece of mine, in a nearby booth. By chance, in the middle of a mass of booths and fashion and flustered clients, we were both working. It was alarming and sweet. Suddenly feeling a connection to writing and my new book, while sitting on a red sofa in the midst of hoards of people and clothes.



Then when it was all over – the partying, the orders, the hangovers, the odd conversations (with a Danish designer about the Australian lady now married to their Crown Prince and mother of four??), the hotel breakfasts and long starving days – we relaxed in Paris. We were shepherded about by a friend who has just written a guide so is more-than-informed. We drank Mexican cocktails to die for and I ate a lemon tart I could have married (if one could marry a lemon tart – the patissier maybe?). We tried on clothes, swooned over jewellery, walked and walked AND walked.


And then the biggest coincidence. Our friend had to go to the printer’s. The printer had his offices in my old street. Suddenly we were driving the van up a cul de sac – now prime real estate – where I had worked as an au pair in the eighties. My old street. My old life. A skinny twenty-year-old pushing a pram around the drug-ridden 11th before the designer shops and hip cafes.

I stood beneath our old apartment in the cold, absolutely stunned. Too stunned to take a photograph. To stunned to help with the boxes.

As I stood there it began to unfold. F and R in the apartment above, sexy R who kissed me at a party, who took me to a Johnny Halliday concert. M the painter who sang above them, who took me out to films I would never have seen (I remember watching eerie James Mason in Lolita). Another affair. I remember my ‘family’ C & M whom I visited in the south last summer, how I found the advertisement at the Eglise Américaine and first pushed open the apartment door to find a trompe-l’oeil covering the walls, a painted garden of leaves and chairs and vistas. Then a hall with racks of photography books, a creaky-floored studio where C did his theatre set models, all the way around to the crammed kitchen with its mosaic shelves of broken plates where many many delightful meals took place.

Even lately we’ve said it, how that day we all fell in love.

What a whoosh, tumbling into that woman’s life. I remember how hard I struggled to find my place, how I grew up suddenly into a young woman speaking French, tapping her first novel into a crappy machine and trying to decipher what the druggies said to me in the street. Mon Dieu! I was so far away from everything I had known – from the uni student never knowing what to wear, what to say, what to be.

Standing there I remembered greyness, isolation, love, words, dancing. Never seeing blue water. Missing my folks. The guilt. The delights. The men. The books. The knowing that some sort of transportation was taking place and that this would send me forth on a certain path.

And it did.

And coincidences? My wise mate S says that coincidences happen when you are on the right path. That mouse-ridden apartment in Paris was my first true writing environment. And how on earth – by chance – did I happen upon an editor who loved my work?

Clear the decks, this ageing young rebel is going forward.

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Mille grazie to Amy Sue Nathan who hosted a guest blog post from yours truly about these last nine months of book promotion. Thanks Amy and good luck with The Glass Wives this year!

20 comments:

  1. Love the idea that coincidences happen when you are on the right path ... maybe I should start believing in that!
    I would marry the patissier and not his lemon cake, so he make smore, also with chocolate maybe. But ... I would first want to have a glimpse! Sorry for my superficiality!

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    1. Perhaps you are right - I never took a peek. And in truth I'm a very selective cake eater (I only eat tarte au citron).

      I have had so many coincidences happen both in Paris and concerning people I knew in Paris that I'm certain this city HAS to be on my path.

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  2. I envy you your Parisian experience - it is a special place and it is quite strange when you find the world is such a small place after all!!! 6 degrees of separation definitely!!

    Loving to love your life is not being a rebel - just a courageous human being!!

    xox

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    1. The coincidences were just alarming. I think I will always feel a little at home there, no matter where I live. I think I crave a month there every year. Oh well. On peut bien rêver!

      Ahh not courageous just an old disco babe.

      xxcat

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    2. Sadly many people silence their passions and do what they think 'is the right thing to do' living one's dream and having the passion to realise your goals is courageous - even if you are 'just an old disco babe' xox

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    3. I think I've always run a mile from 'the right thing to do'. It just ain't mah thang. Xxcat

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  3. Oh Cat. Writing so good and rich I could eat it! You describe it all so well - I can feel the wealth of life you experienced in France - as ingenue and on your return.

    I'm sitting here nursing a cracked half molar and bemoaning the crumbly ageing of my body - and you made me smile inside and be determined to embrace full-on every single damned thing/idea/opportunity that comes along!

    But yum! Clothes, jewellery, cocktails and lemon tart!

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    1. Don't worry I've also had my broken-molar moments but I swear we danced in dangerous heels on broken glass the other night. I think we still have it in us!

      Lovely to have you back xxxcat

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  4. Time really has a way of folding in on us, or running rings, maybe. I'm never sure if I'm on repeat and only the set is changing.

    Beautiful evokation of your past there, Cat. Reminds me of the scene in Katherine Mansfield's story (Prelude? Or Bliss?) where the young gent leans in through the window with flowers as a metaphor for the beautiful scent of the garden.

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    1. I agree I almost felt as if I could see her walking down the street, that other skinny woman. Some wrinkle in time!

      Must reread Katherine Mansfield, it's been way too long. I bet there are some lessons to be learned there. X

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  5. I think your mate is absolutely right. Coincidences do happen when you're on the right path. They also happen when you throw down the blinders and open yourself up to the Universe. I remember those old Parisian streets. It's been almost 25 years since I got lost on them but when I close my eyes their cobblestone image comes instantly to mind. I don't know what neighborhoods I traversed but their spirit is forever inside me.

    This is your time, Cat. Take it for all it's worth.
    xo

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    1. Thanks MSB. I also agree that throwing down the blinders is the first step. Being able to see and feel. Ah those cobbled grey streets and getting lost in different quartiers... My old hood is so much more chic now!

      We'll see where this crooked path ends up taking me. Xxcat

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  6. First you should know: I read this in the sunny parking lot of our local grocery store right before I ran in to hurriedly buy some milk and vegetables. Despite the sun, it was a cold morning and I was wearing my thick polar bear parka and not a stitch of make-up. Are you envisioning the scene of me, looking quite puffy and house-wifey? So needless to say, this post read like one of those black and white foreign films with the captions on the screen; the ones where all the women wear thick eyeliner and pouty lips and the men have dark, wet looking hair and cigarettes that hang from-the side-of-their mouths?
    Hmm. Maybe Europeans don’t view their films this way. I just had that thought.
    But oh well, what I’m trying to say is how wonderfully descriptive this post was; I actually began to crave popcorn. It read like a movie scene and I was right there. Watching you beneath the old apartment, with your gaping, stunned reaction and seeing flashes of your past. This was some good writing, Cat. And besides the fact that I felt terribly intimidated by your story telling skills, I completely enjoyed it.
    xo
    Leslie (Gwen Moss)

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    1. Dear Leslie,

      Thank you and please believe I have my entirely domestic moments and what I wear to drop off my youngest well before dawn would have you giggling into your popcorn. If my car ever breaks down I could be arrested! Move over Nepalese Sherpas..

      What really strikes me is that away from home duties I have a much more relaxed and less twitchy mind. Paris made me miss that.

      Xxcat

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  7. Coincidences happen when you're on the right path. I couldn't agree more. Sometimes I feel like I'm going in circles, round and round I go, expanding the edges a little bit more every time around. The widening gyre, as Yeats wrote.

    Ahhhh Paris. I miss it.

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    1. Love Yeats, he is the best, most rewarding and beautiful. To treasure!

      It was a great week, and already home is driving me nuts. My brain in slivers again, mushy as old snow. Oh well, it was brilliant while it lasted.

      Ps I listed yours on my Addictive Blog Award last week but sorry haven't had time to pop over! Xcat

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  8. I love this post, and I love the power our old residences can have over us, how rich they are with memory. I recently drove past two old apartments I lived in and was absolutely flooded by memories of all the good and all the change that happened during those years...it's sad and wonderful all at once.

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    1. Yes it's so strong. Whatta whoosh. There are certain houses I couldn't even step into now but that one in Paris was filled with wonder and growth. You are so right, sad and beautifully bracing at the same time.

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  9. Not sure if I believe in straight coincidence; I'd prefer to believe there's always a plan.

    Next time I come to Europe, Paris is definitely on my list. Hope you can meet me there to provide another great walking tour! And a cocktail or four...

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    1. Yes! Come to Paris! I know this great Mexican cocktail bar.. Just the coolest. And patisseries to die for. In Paris I could walk for weeks on end and never tire. It's always very hip and not laid back like London, a little preening. But I still love it.

      I'm up for a meet-up in Paris!

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