ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 28th, 1978, I walked out on the streets of Paris to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
No, wait, that was Stephen Daedalus at the end of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
That morning, I would settle for the reality of breakfast.
Faced with a closing shop I hastily decided upon a large container of apricot yogurt and stepped out to catch my favorite Metro line for Odeon. I arrived on the platform as a train departed, so I was forced to wait several minutes for the next. In the slack time I peeled back the aluminum seal stretched tightly across the opening. Then my train arrived, so I replaced the plastic cover, the taste of the sweet, thick liquid still alive on my tongue. (I had licked the aluminum clean.) I weathered the stares of my cabin mates, who found it exceedingly interesting that I carried a yogurt, of all things.
As I passed my familiar sequence of stops, I had a notion that I might like to jump off at St. Germain de Pres. I have a flash-bulb memory of walking up out of the station and looking up the stairs to see two denuded trees casting their stark outlines against the sky, black on gray.
On street level there were two pretty girls who bent to give directions to an overstuffed car as I crossed the street.
Following a glance and a whim, I turned down an interesting side road, and became submerged in Paris. The passages were narrow and crumbling white, but I walked these roads like Adam through paradise.
Where to, now?
Turns brought me to two art galleries.
The first held two paintings: A cool blue, abstract landscape; and a blue-yellow-green cityscape with solid roofs fading down into facades, trees, street people—all mixed in an abstract, soothing blur. The paintings intrigued me, but the gallery was fermée au public (closed).
The second gallery intrigued me and was open, so I stepped inside to witness green and orange creations, all portraits, all electrifying. The canvases held bright white lines which wandered in their inevitable paths, arcing with the tension of the staring men. The disappearance of the energy lines off the edges of the canvas brought forward the notion of the creature’s societal backgrounds. In one painting the energy line stretched across the canvas, disappearing behind the head but reappearing in the mouth, creating speech.
I left the gallery with no word to the girl at the desk. I would have no more said goodbye to her than I would have to the paintings. But my 20 minutes in the gallery were more rewarding than my obligatory two hours at the Louvre.
I moved down the street, into the contemplative walk of a person with no destination other than observation. This led me toward a favorite patisserie. Noticing a pain au chocolat for 2F, I made my purchase and walked out biting deeply into the yielding pastry and sweet chocolate. Two men approached me, speaking immigrant French, and the only word I caught was “baguette.”
Buy me un café, to go with that pastry
I pointed toward the patisserie.
“No,” the man said, gesturing coins at me. “Fifteen centimes...bread...would you?”
I offered directions, but he wanted money. I felt embarrassed, and grew stern.
I said “no!,” with fury.
With an abject look in his eyes, he said “I’m sorry.”
He and his friend crossed the street.
I sought refuge in a supermarché, where the music was tragically unaware of my selfishness. What was a twenty-centime piece to me, who had come to Paris on a lark? Nothing, yet I denied the man even that.
I was stricken.
I left the store with an 80c apple and saw a kind, old, distinguished gentleman reaching into his wallet for the two hungry men.
I returned to the Alliance Francaise, where I belonged, and wrote what I had just lived, and thought with fear that a daily journal must hold a page for the death of father and mother, and must hold a day when this record would stop.
There was so much to deal with, and I alone would have to create order in all the confusion and the conflict.
This was life.
I turned 22 the next day.
*On Fridays I run excerpts from The Road to Elsewhere, my coming-of-age-travel-memoir-with-funny-drawings. (The first entry is here. Most recent one is here. Or dive in here, here, or even here.) It details the story of my road through Paris, London, and god help me, Zagreb, in search of the ultimate destination: a life worth living. The story so far: Young Peter has arrived in Paris, occupied a dorm room at the Alliance Française language school, tiptoed out onto the Boulevard Raspail, and made the first steps on the road to elsewhere. If it’s too much to read, just look at the illustrations. They’re my favorite part, too.