In the Tuileries. By Sarah MacDonald.
In the winter, I sat at the bar at Au Passage in Paris, in the 3rd arrondissement, and I listened with extreme intent— active listening to the point of straining. To me, it felt like flexing all of my muscles during a particularly difficult exercise and I needed to focus, mentally and physically, just to get the weight up or down or move my body in a precise way. I did that but with listening because the owner spoke French to me, as an aural exercise, but, as she affirmed before, to ensure I could practice. I felt grateful for her care.
I didn’t realize I ordered a meaty red wine but I drank it anyway. I picked up bits and pieces in our conversation, trying as best as I could to respond in my broken French, the one I had spent two months straight on Duolingo trying to repair. I thought of my ninth grade presentation on Simone de Beauvoir, and how I wouldn’t yet know the weight of such a writer and thinker for years to come. I got an A on the presentation from Mme Easton but all I remember are her giant bows. Every outfit had a bow. It’s impossible to picture her without some kind of bow affixed to her luscious ponytail or her pencil skirt or the front of her blouse. I wonder if the bows were some kind of psychological trick to help us remember. Like association? I don’t know. I think I’m reaching. In any case, I did well in high school French, which is what you should remember from this, but it was 20 years ago now. Truly, absolutely, definitely. I finished tenth grade French in January 2004.
I sat at the bar, chit chatting away to the owner, who wore loose, thin denim overalls, a sweater over a t-shirt she removed once service really got underway, to reveal her sleeves of tattoos. She had short silver hair, too. I wanted to know everything about her then, and how I could become comfortable in my own skin before I reached her age. She told me that her Spanish wasn’t very good so she practiced on me, too, and I nodded my head politely between sips of my meaty wine. I don’t like such dense red wines but it served me well when the food came, which was some of the best food I’ve ever had in my life. She smiled at me and asked where I was from, and in my fractured, slow French, I responded as best I could. Her eyes lit up every time I opened my mouth, a visual encouragement that even if I said something wrong, I was doing it all the same.
Once the dishes started to come out, I noticed I was really alone. The owner had left, serving other tables, speaking quickly, almost sing-song, in French to her guests who could say it back. Two Americans sat behind me and I thought we had become the designated anglais section. I pulled out my book, my Kate Zambreno, Heroines, one of my favourites, and chewed on some cabbage with XO sauce and ground pork.
I’d have all of my meals this way. A few bits of strained French that slowly gave way to English-only, then sipped on cocktails or wine and nibbled on cheese or bread or sea snails or more bread or more cheese. Travelling alone in Paris felt sobering. Travelling alone anywhere, this year, felt purposeful.
~
There are only a handful of days left of this year, one I’ve written off too many times as difficult or rocky or a lot with the kind of exasperation that is the perfect mimic of teenage me. But I think it was beautiful with a singular theme of tending to and perfecting aloneness, and what I really want out of this life.
I flipped through one of my planners to look at how the year unfolded and found notes of what exercises I did which day, how many of my days had social activities and that I diligently noted *social* in small print to make it safe for myself to feel exhausted later on, and how many of my goals came true. I travelled more than I thought I would. I went to the West Coast for the first time and put my size nine feet into the ocean, inhaling the seaweed smell like I’d never smell this lusciousness again in my life. The water was cold but still I walked back and forth, the wind picking up and rolling waves toward me, crashing into my shins and thighs. It was magic, and I’ll never forget it.
A note at the end of 2022 for 2023.
I made some things with my hands this year. Floral arrangements. Something that resembles a candlestick holder with a gaudy and garish glaze of orange. My moon bowl. I eat out of it every day, several times a day. It’s heavy for a bowl and I like that. I look at where I could have smoothed out its sides but still I love that it has these flaws in it.
I spend a lot of time watching short videos on how to center clay on a pottery wheel, the pressure and grace required to steady this ball of material that can become anything you want it to be. I ruined a lot of pieces on the wheel and it felt so freeing—to be alone, hovering over the wheel, my forearms aching, my thighs pained with the sharpness of my elbows digging into them. I watched as a vase turned from having a sleek neck like a swan to collapsing into itself. I balled it up in my hand and tried again and again. Failure, it seems to me, with no purpose for anything other than just to try, was really beautiful.
I did a lot of my venturing out into this world alone. Museums, galleries, classes, stores, walks. Writing in the morning alone with people on Zoom, our faces hidden from each other, but nonetheless accountable to do something. I realized some time ago that doing things alone felt really good, even if uncomfortable. Cooped up in my various apartments during the thick of pandemic time made me feel afraid of the world in a way I didn’t think I could be. Walking to get coffee seemed to me like an enormous task, and often I wouldn’t do it. I sat, walls closing in around me, and made yet another French press to guzzle.
Perhaps this is why I felt so forlorn when I moved from my dream apartment. It was a dream but it was also my own cage. Decorating it just so, creating pillow forts and comforting positions for reading or watching movies, watching the world below with the light streaming in. How beautiful. How isolating. Leaving it meant leaving behind a place of sanctuary, a place to hide. We had only ever had a few people over to our apartment: Family, a handful of friends, never entertaining more than one person at a time. In our new one, streams of people popped through, and we’ve only been here for five months. Over the course of three years, I can pick out every single person who had sat on my couch, eaten dinner on my island, or sat on my balcony.
I’m a broken record about this but I suppose I’m still thinking it through and writing it out as a way to understand it but the pandemic years fundamentally changed something in me, in all of us, that I’m still trying so hard to recover from. It stripped years and experiences away. I feel like I’m behind more than I am going forward anywhere. I doubt everything, like my ability to write, write well, and pitch publications. I read past interviews, essays, and pieces I’ve written wondering who that person is, where did she go, and how can I have her back.
This is perhaps why being alone, writing about here in as experimental a way as I can with loose thoughts with joy and enthusiasm, is one way to find myself out of the darkness. To not necessarily go back to her, to a version that existed before we closed up, shut out, and removed ourselves from one another. It feels now more than ever that division is the way of living and wholeness is what I’m longing for the most.
What if I’ve been whole this entire time and not even known it? I wonder if the solution to a lot of my worries is coming home to my body. I can’t stop thinking about my therapist telling me that I’ve never relaxed into my relationship. That relaxing is something I’m almost afraid to do—period. She’s right, she almost always is, and I tell her and her face breaks into a big smile, reminding me that we’re both people in the room and not therapist/patient always. I’ve listened to narratives that aren’t mine my entire life. From my family to readers to friends to strangers online, I’ve heard and absorbed everything about anything. What I’ve long sought is release, I think, from all of that. From the crushing pleasing nature I developed to be loved but only in the way I choose—sort of like a feral cat.
Alone I’ve learned to come back to the sensations that have worried me, moved me, or excited me—tending to each one like a flower in my garden. The anxiety of walking into a new place, getting on a plane, being with myself. This isn’t novel. People are alone all the time and perform such tasks with ease, flexing that muscle effortlessly. To come back to it now, for me at least, is an act of great nurturing and a reminder that the world isn’t a place to hide from anymore.
From Nina MacLaughlin’s Hammer Head.
~
I stood on a bridge at the LACMA, taking a break between floors and exhibits, and found myself staring at the Hollywood sign. I wish it still said HOLLYWOODLAND. I’m fond of old Hollywood more than I am of contemporary Hollywood. Performance still dictates both versions but there’s glamour and magic in old Hollywood, a newness that today seems like it gets taken for granted. It was a grey day. I walked down Fairfax to spend some time with Georgia O’Keefe and whatever else the museum had planned for me.
As I had spent time with Georgia, and now found myself with the sign that stood crisp and clear in the distance, I heard a frantic squawk behind me. I turned around to see a big raven in a palm tree. It stopped squawking but clicked its mouth open and closed with a small sound emitting from it. I’d seen my fair share of ravens from a distance in L.A. on my walks alone (to Trader Joe’s, mostly) but there was one in front of me, alone. Ravens are solitary creatures, but sometimes arrive in pairs. When they are young, ravens move about in “teenage gangs,” Google tells me, and I smile, bemused by the image of all of us as teens, roving around, eating, living, and being together like smartass ravens. But they grow up to wander alone or with their mate, which seems to be how we evolve, too.
I stood staring at this raven, unsure if it was heckling me (which it can), or if it was simply trying to talk in the best way it could to me. Like my fractured French in Au Passage, it communicated to me in its best human way. I listened like the owner listened to me. We were like this for another few minutes before the raven stopped, nodded its head, and I turned back toward the Hollywood sign. I looked over my shoulder and the raven was still there in the palm tree, nestled in. I walked past it on my way into another gallery room and it squawked again. Alone, together.
~~
FAVOURITES OF THE YEAR
Books
Winter Solstice - Nina MacLaughlin
The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson
The Myth of Normal - Gabor Mate
The Years - Annie Ernaux
Felicity - Mary Oliver
Music
The Window - Ratboys
The Record - Boygenius
Guts - Olivia Rodrigo
The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We - Mitski
First Two Pages of Frankenstein - The National
Films (oldies)
Dark Passage (1947)
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Klute (1971)
Work I’ve done
Revisiting HBO's Girls feels like a time capsule of youth, failure — and grace | CBC Arts
LOOKING AHEAD
No Look: A podcast by myself and writer sommelier basketball witch herself, Laura Jane Faulds
Leaving behind: doubt, fear of change, tension, hiding
Moving toward: heart open, softness, bravery, more joy