supposed to be somewhere (#21)

...out of place and a brief ode to bread

i’ve been searching for something to link things together and it was the woman – long flyaway blonde hair, burgundy emily-in-paris beret in the dead of summer – who walked past my dinner with her companion’s arm around her and scratched, limbs contorted, at the belt she wore over her dress. this is the scene i have needed to relate finding the woman between the deep jungle leaves and street rats chasing each other through the planted quadrants of a sunken park. her face halfway in the falling darkness, looking out.

there’s more: notes of discordance that send me tunneling through time like this brand of cigarette smoke and an overfilled glass, hand dropping on the book you meant to finish last year, en poche

is it comfort or discomfiting to be startled backwards to twinge out of sync or step with your environment to roll through your life as if encased in etched plastic. sometimes i feel like i am in the giant hamster ball looking out but really i watched someone else do it. is this the danger of doing things again or of doing things in a way where you notice the difference. paris is weird when you’re alone and i mean this as you and perhaps one or two of your cafés have stayed open for the tourists. the quiet corners are as much yours as the hyped coffee overlooked by more people than you would think. the retired couple examine the green guide between their outstretched hands in front of the glo-green pharmacy sign. they don’t ask for directions but other women do, when you’re huffing to the airport and strolling to the library and walking out of a café the next day.

i look surprised and the man also asks me if i speak french so that we can switch places in the udon resto, and they all are trying to take care of me. i am trying to take care of me, and that means something else I guess when you’re out of your place. we switch places on the metro and the art history woman asks the two masked older women leaning against the un-opening door if they want her seat. she laughs because it’s improbable and gestures her thanks, anyway. somehow this is also the solidarity of not flinching when people approach you. somehow this is saying what you want out loud. this is uncertainty and this is where we live; somehow that quiets me.

we are in the sea treading water, there is nothing else to do. we are buoyant, and the saltwater is warm.

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–      ­feed me

ode to bread: the best sandwich i had, totally worth the digestive discomfort, was a tunisian fricassée: challah roll, tuna piled high, housemade harissa, citron confit, pickles sliced lengthwise, peeled and boiled baby potatoes, a hard-boiled egg. my preferred croissant, elastic interieur layers, thin flaky edges, was at the same place but on the other side of the counter as the best multigrain bread, a german loaf that takes two days to rise and contains oatmeal. the best breakfast was a tartine, président butter and raspberry confiture.

–      read me

or don’t! ottessa moshfegh’s short story collection, homesick for another world, features seedy, disquieting protagonists and their gently upsetting lives. i enjoy being creeped out by books, but i read this on libby which gives you less ability to dip in and out of the story. would read again, but probably worth waiting til you feel mentally stable. or not!

significantly less upsetting, oyinkan braithwaite’s my sister the serial killer. sort of delightful, the pace of the story picks up after the first third, also drifts into love triangle territory. the premise seems absurd enough, but i would have gone along with the much weirder elements that were hinted at along the way. being haunted by the sister’s last victim? makes sense! protagonist is actually the killer ? fab. will read more by this author.

–      legacy

i have been tutoring a 9-year-old in french for a while now, and i realized just how long when i asked her to remind me what an infinitive is : “so, it’s like you get a giant cookie and you break off different pieces and give them to different friends to form new words.” that is exactly what an infinitive is and this is entirely her analogy. i couldn’t be prouder. what a measure of success.