This is the end. I leave Lili without much fluted fanfare and with two bags down the stairs and over the turnstiles at Tour-Maubourg one last time. It seems so familiar now, like leaving home. I guess I don't like traveling so much as I like to live in different places, and yes there's a difference. A subtle one that not everyone understands really, because in truth it really isn't for everyone so I won't bother explaining. I will say this though. It's a restlessness. And there's no slaking it. I don't know if I'll ever come back here. For what it's worth, I hope I do. This city's too beautiful to abandon entirely.
I exit at L'Opera. Back to the beginning, and as I wait for the bus to the airport the rain starts to come down at a drizzle. I don't have an umbrella (why would I?) so I back up into a shallow alcove of the Opera House with a high ledge that offers some shelter. It's like the place is sad to see me go. Or maybe it's the other way around. I didn't even finish the book, despite my better efforts. Yeesh, what a cock I am. I fucking hope I finish this thing. Eventually. Or hell, this shit just might drive me crazy.
The bus is twenty minutes late and a long beast of a thing that's caterpillared in the middle. Even so, the throngish horde waiting barely squeezes in entirely. I manage to find a seat right near the caterpillared middle, but the aisle is packed with standers. Standing closest is a older-looking lady with short white hair and a piece of luggage on wheels. She's got a book in hand, and I wouldn't say she looks fragile. More soft and sunny by disposition. Reserved and quiet by the looks of it. Not flashy, yet somehow American. So I raise my voice to offer her my seat.
"Oh, no that's quite all right," she says. She's American all right. "You look like you've got your hands full there."
"American?"
"Yes."
"Headed back home?"
"That's right."
After six months it's so nice to talk to a stranger in English, and I tell her that and we talk the whole way to the airport. Her name's Edie and she works for Harper's Publishing in New York, which makes me laugh inside at the odds of such a meeting. I tell her I've been over here writing. She's been over here reading. "And eating, of course," she says. "I think I love the food the most." Satisfaction floods her face at, no doubt, some dinner memory. A proper one too I'm guessing, not some shitty chinois. She's a soft voiced conversationalist, with an intrigue that reminds me of myself, and before I know it we're at Charles de Gaule. Her terminal's the one before mine, and as she grabs her things to leave I give her a web address to some writing samples for the hell of it. "Au 'voir, Edie!" I'll never see her again, of that I'm almost certain. But she warmed me. Maybe just when I needed it too, and I run through my terminal on an up-beat and get to the gate with ten minutes to spare. What a ruckus, but that's airports isn't it. I wolf down a chocolate croissant that I paid much too much for right before boarding.
In my seat I konk out quick, then wake after some hours in the middle of the sky.
I'm in no mood to sleep. Not now. And there's a handful of pages left in my old notebook still so I crank them out to the end, c'est fin, and start the new one finally.
12/12 (in the Moleskin)
"In the dark, I'm dreaming
Of a new, white, light."
It's the only way, forward. Galloping by the thousands of miles. In my tiny seat by the window, the rows ahead telling me to politely fasten my belt while seated. So I do. Safety first kids, remember. Remember. Remember the important things. The ones that stick. The ones that hold one's sway, because those are teh ones that are trying to tell you something, and it's usually about yourself. Not always good either. But then again, not always so sad. And if you can bear it, all of it, that window fogged with ignorance, comes clear and ever clearer still until there's no reflection and the world outside is just about the brightest damned light, all white with clouds. She's a beauty from the heavens, Cotton Jones would agree. That's a happy thought :)
So strange to think that the sun's already set on old Paris as we race it west in this sleek 767. It's still bright blue over Canada with clear skies and the ground's covered in snow and the water in the inlets and the lakes is all frozen over. Even the great river's got a scab of ice above it, and it looks so still as it snakes its way to the north, to that soft white horizon muddled in the low winter's haze of the Klondike. Old Jack London never saw the north like this, or at least I don't think he did. Not like this. Nor did that wily French-Canadian Kerouac. Not with reclining seats and in-flight movies and headphones crooning some slow, jazzy melodrama by my trusty Jones. The Cotton one. I wonder if he pulled his hairs out like I do, inspecting them vaguely before tossing them aside to reach for that tea-sized plastic cup of Canada Dry. No, he was a cognac man, and it seems as though he lived off it on his trip to Paris. What was it... 10 days? Ten days to dig up his history. Ten days to find his Satori on a steady diet of cognac. Hell, I was there for a month and a half. And not so much cognac as a steady wine glass in my hand that was never quite empty. And Lucky Strikes and Lili. And spliffs and that darling Rachel. And my Satori? Hardly. There's no bulb glowing bright above my head, just another reminder of the one burnt out constant in my chest. Stepped on and shattered slowly on the cobblestones of the 7eme arrondissement. I can't even tell for sure if I picked it back up. I sure as hell hope I didn't leave it there.
Pull the window shade down.
Play something slow and sad.
Eyes closed.
