paris is where writer dreams are born
new york is where they go to die
Hiiiii. This is vol. 1 of many in an ongoing nonfiction series called On being a writer with a day job. Next installment’s coming soonish so pls come hang again.
Paris. November 2018.
For 9 days I’d been having the quintessential writer experience—that is, sitting in bistros and cafes for hours, reading books and writing in my journal like an asshole. And on this particular day, I was at the mecca of writer assholes: Shakespeare & Company.
In case you’re not familiar, it’s the bookstore all aspiring or current wielders of words go to be among books you can get at most bookstores in the U.S. and on Amazon. Except these books come with the coveted Shakespeare & Co. stamp as well as the experience of being in the same rooms as not-for-sale books that might have been sniffed by luminaries like Hemingway, James Baldwin and Anais Nin. I will even go so far as to say that you have not experienced Paris if you haven’t gone to Shakespeare & Co. to breathe in their nose particles.
Another benefit of going there in person is that on the second floor you get to sit at the little desk with the typewriter by the world-famous reading room with the world-famous French windows overlooking the world-famous Notre Dame. Which is what I was doing that cool fall afternoon. It was there that a fellow crone was holding court in front of a small group of nose-particle sniffers. I imagined her a former Beatnick type, maybe a bestie of Ginsberg or somesuch who, with her incredibly comfortable house clothes and wild hair, definitely belonged to an era when people didn’t have to worry about having their pic or vid shared with the masses after having rolled out of bed without wasting time primping when there were books to be read. To her credit, she was still living in that era: pics and vids were prohibited inside the bookstore.
In any case, this crone was griping about the music from the street musicians below. They were ruining poetry hour. “I’m gonna go tell them to be quiet,” she said and walked out in a huff. It was at this time that a fellow nose-particle sniffer and tourist from Asia took it upon himself to start pouring everyone the tea the crone had prepared for her guests. It’s important to note he was from Asia, by the way, because I imagine in Asian cultures, when there’s freshly brewed tea sitting in front of you, it’s perfectly fine, nay, mandatory, to pour it for everyone before it gets cold. But, unfortunately for this good samaritan, not so in crone culture. In crone culture, it was an affront to she who had brewed it. And when she who had brewed it returned, having successfully told the street musicians to pipe down, she hissed at the sight of freshly poured tea in people’s mismatched cups. “Who did this?!” she said. The rogue tea pourer sheepishly raised his hand.
It was in that moment, as I watched the crone snap at the well-meaning tea guy in one breath while exhalting poets in another, that I decided this was the life I wanted. I didn’t dare be so bold as to yearn to be the crone yelling at writer types about tea in a beloved world-famous bookstore overlooking the world-famous Notre Dame. But I did yearn to devote my life to writing with even more gusto than I previously had.
I decided that instead of holding down writing jobs that took up precious energy and time and brain space writing for other people instead of for myself, I was going back home to New York to cobble together a few service and part-time jobs so I could dedicate the rest of my days to the arts.
This dream shot through my body like a bolt of lightning. The nose particles had worked their magic. I was going to be a writer with a capital W.
And so I went back to New York City, ready to take on a life of bohemia.
A few months later, I was at a desk again.
But in an office.
I had just gotten a full-time job.