Voyage

It's as if I've been living someone else's life lately. Right now, I am sitting in an airport, waiting to depart on a trip usually taken by undergraduates and retirees: Paris and Rome. But it's no ordinary trip: I will make my debut as a professional singer in Paris. After the shows, I will spend a few days in Rome, retracing my steps from two years ago. Then, I will return to Boston, having shed my drab old job for a new one, one with 'Senior' in the title, a healthy pay raise and generous benefits. There's another circumstance that is cause for celebration, but that will need its own post, and I do want to avoid the malocchio. Just in case it reads this blog.

Ah, Europe, that lock-box for American nostalgia. To go there means to go back in time, to sense deeper layers of history than can ever be possible here in the colonies. This is an odd trip for me in that I am visiting two cities I've known before, two places that call up strong emotions....

When I listen to a familiar piece of music, I am reinforcing the memory I have of it. I do not expect to hear anything new, so much as to enrich my understanding of what I already know. Because the experience of hearing a piece is temporal- there's only so much that can happen at any one moment of it- there are only so many different ways the ear can receive it. A piece of visual art, however, gives you no temporal beginning, middle, and end. In that way, you can never see it the same way twice. While each performance of a piece of music is entirely new and different than any other, we hear what we most want to hear no matter what the new interpretation is. But we revisit a piece of art expecting to duplicate the wonder of our first experience, and walk away disappointed. Even if the image has not changed, our way of seeing it has.

Apart from the musical demands of this trip, I will be walking around cities of art expecting glimpses of my first experiences. Will I find the palatine warmth that thrilled me the first time? And in Paris, will I turn into the sad and hopeless girl I was during my first trip, nearly 10 years ago? If there's any city in the world that needs some reclaiming for me, it's the ville de l'amour.

Spring 1998. After many months of an increasingly less passionate letter exchange with the person I thought was sort of, kind of, maybe, hopefully, just a little bit, still my boyfriend, I decided to pick myself up and see for myself. This was the German I had met during my semester in the Vaterland the year before, and he was spending a year in Paris. We had never officially broken things off in our letters, even though neither one of us spoke of visiting. Even though I intellectually understood that he was an idiot, he was my one strong tie to Europe, and staying connected to him meant a validation more important to me than anything.

To make this (fool's) errand appear less dubious, I had my brother tag along under the guise of a tourism trip. I wrote to the boyfriend. He knew I was coming. He wrote back. Yes, we would see each other. We would meet in from of the Louvre and spend the day in museums, sending my brother off to fend for himself. I greeted him with an enormous embrace. He had his hand extended.

Still, while I was sitting with him in the Tuileries, listening as he itemized his accomplishments, I felt the sun on my face and relaxed. My German had somehow improved since I last saw him, and I no longer had to exert myself just to understand. He was rather boring, I realized. And the only reason I had liked him was because he liked me, and because being with him meant a triumph on my part: that I was fluent enough in a foreign culture and language to win the heart of a native. (Bear with me, I was thinking like a 20-year-old.) "I don't need him anymore," I remember thinking.

Somewhere in that reverie I started listening again. He was informing me that he had met someone else, and had been together with her for nearly an entire year.

So we spent the day together. I was in a cool shock, but lacked the German skills to become indignant. He showed me some masterpieces, including the first time I saw this gem by Rodin's old flame Camille Claudel, whose story is one of the great tragedies of art history.

I will not be seeking another look on this trip.

Being the good, foolish person I was, I pledged allegiance to the newfound "friendship" with my apparantly ex-boyfriend, and I even agreed to meet his new woman. He walked me back to my hostel and gave me a hug that I would not let go of. Still in denial, I asked if it was a serious relationship. When he looked puzzled, I guessed that that expression didn't work in German, so I asked him outright if he was going to marry her. Without even closing my eyes, I can still see his face now as he silently nodded 'yes.' Backing towards the hostel door, I stepped in dog shit.

Well, if you're going to get dumped, do it in the most romantic city in the world.

I met the two of them a day or two later, in front of the Hôtel de Ville. In my revised memory, I see them on the plaza, approach just close enough for them to recognize me, and I turn and disappear down the streets. But that's not how it happened. I spent the whole evening with them, down to another awkward goodbye. My only solace was thinking that the occasion might have led to the couple's demise: he and I spoke German and walked together, and he rarely translated for either of his ladies. She trailed behind us as we walked, like an ill-favored wife in a mormon family.

My brother met us later on. After I had said my goodbyes and turned my back to them, he gave me some much-needed comic relief: "Boy, you sure are prettier than her, Amanda!" I was relieved to laugh! "Rabbit teeth, bug-eyes, and nostrils so big you could open a beer bottle with them." Oh my little brother, what would I do without him.

Paris was grey to me, despite springtime and waterlilies and Versailles. Salted butter and glace and fromage were delicious, but pleasures vanished the minute they melted on my tongue. I returned home, feeling as if all of Europe had rejected me, and I composed a carefully worded letter. I was hurt, I explained, not angry, but I still wanted to be his friend. I even quoted Edna St. Vincent Millay, for chrissakes. Day after day, he filled my mailbox with nothing.

So here's hoping Paris won't be so grey this time. That she'll reveal herself in pinks and yellows, with delights and pleasant memories. But I am certain I will meet my own ghost one evening. And what shall I say to her?