1 Driving a friend’s car, turn on the radio, NPR, I think. An actress is talking up a play she is in. Once a big name in Hollywood, now she is doing Brecht at a regional theater. She’s knows the talk, though, the promotional talk. She says that now, having gotten older and wiser, she is only interested in roles she could fail in. If success is guaranteed, she says, there’s no learning. (I remember once talking with someone who studied child development in Africa. One of his principal messages was that stress was crucial to learning. In the absence of stress you don’t learn.)
I think of “my” journal, Zeteo; this seems often a project that might fail, at which I might fail, and I can imagine that this is indeed part of what makes it a good project. Perhaps not so much for the challenge of beating back failure as because life, too, is tenuous, and thus tenuousness can make one feel alive.
2 In Paris for several weeks, I have my annual dinner with a childhood friend, an American who came to Paris to live with her boyfriend. In fits and starts, over the course of half a dozen years , my friend has come to feel more and more at home in Paris, though she still has a ways to go and indeed spends several months each year back in the United States. I ask her what steps one would take, as an American, to make a life for oneself in Paris.
Before she has a chance to answer, I note my family’s standard approach: do research, make a list, every week try to do a few things in order to meet people, find one’s society. That’s what I should have done, my friend said, but I didn’t. She likes to go hiking, but it took her three years to look up the French word for hiking in a dictionary, with an idea of finding people to go hiking with. For much of the first years she was simply lonely and uncomfortable, planning her trips back to the United States.
3 I recall a story told to me a year or so ago. It concerned a woman in her sixties whose husband had died somewhat recently. After some stretch of grieving, she was cleaning out the suburban house in which she and her husband had lived and raised a family. She was going to move to the big city. Although this city was not far from her suburban home, in my mind the widow knew no one in this city. She was starting again. The person who told me the story connected the move with a decision to live. If, nearing old age, her husband and children gone, this woman was not simply going to fade away, she had to start again.
4 In two years I will be retired from my paying job, no longer have an office I have to go to, hours I have to work. Two years after that my son will start college. I have thought of moving to Paris, or to Lisbon, or to any number of cities in southern Europe or in Central or South America. Writing in a half-empty café in a not charming part of Paris, a large, nondescript building across the street covered in scaffolding and plastic, being renovated, I am thinking of how hard (like rock, breaking rock) such a move would be. Not so much the work of trying to find a place for myself in some corner of Parisian society, nor the challenge of the dark, wet-cold winters, nor the challenge of packing up, dispensing with almost forty years of New York life. I am thinking of years of loneliness and of feeling that I did not quite belong. And it seems as if this struggle would be the principal reason to make the move.
5 I have heard that the pianist Vladimir Horowitz used to take his grand piano with him from international concert hall to international concert hall. Of course we can see advantages—the familiarity, the likelihood that this was a wonderful piano. And Horowitz has been considered a great pianist. Another person, however, would have appreciated the challenges, the fun even, of confronting different instruments, producing different sounds from night to night. I can even imagine finding something in wrestling with a broken down piano, seeing what kinds of music you might together make.
Credit for image: “Moving Day”, Montreal, QC, about 1930,Anonymous, from the McCord Museum‘s Notman Photographic Archives.
montaigbakhtinian 
Reblogged this on My Blog.
Reblogged this on Lemons and Lemonade.
What a great reminder that life is about starting and not ending. Thank you.
Reblogged this on Mistrz i Małgorzata.
Reblogged this on sethadah's Blog.
Reblogged this on mfatihbedenli.
very interesting photo..
When the challenges are none and the day becomes monotonous this is when we start to deteriorate as human beings. To thrive is to be challenged, to be uncomfortable and keep the mind alive. Challenge yourself my friend…always
Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed.
Reblogged this on Apps Lotus's Blog.
You told it very nicely. I liked it
Love the style, beautiful.
Reblogged this on The Blog OF Magical Thinking.
Its a beautifully written piece
Reblogged this on L. V. Lewis and commented:
Such an apropos piece given my recent announcement 🙂
Great piece! I have found myself in an internal debate the last couple years over packing up and moving to NYC. My fear and the “what ifs” hold me back. You may be right, that the entire point of the move may be the struggle that will come with it. Thank you.
This is written beautifully (not that you need me to tell you that), and I truly enjoyed reading it. However, while I do not disagree with the premise, I do feel that there are those whom are the opposite of the people you discuss. I am an American and (unfortunately) back in the States, but after growing up with nary a friend, my move to Europe was immediately filled with wonderfully fulfilling experiences and -real- friendships, relationships, built quickly and on nothing.
Now, back in my home town, I am again alone (apart from my European husband). Some people are just not made for the fickle relationships in this country.
Great collection of stories, lots of wise lessons shared too. Well done your writing style is unique. Found on freshly pressed.
Amazing story
Yes, well written and it delivers the very thing that moving/starting over imparts: the challenge to think your way through change.
Best of luck with your decision. Then choose a place to live where you are within 15-20 min. walking distance to shops, services and some people. Not isolated and car-dependent in suburbs.
You cannot go wrong on this formula. As we get older, it’s nice to have some familiar faces not far away.
I lived in Ontario for over 40 yrs., then British Columbia for 8 yrs. and now I’m in Alberta. The last spot has been toughest for me in adjustment.
good luck
The Science Geek
http://thesciencegeek01.wordpress.com/
I love this and really personally relate to the woman in Paris. i wish I knew the Hebrew word for “adorkable.”
Thanks for teaching me a new word!
Making a decision is a positive move in itself. Whether it’s the right choice or not. Being inert is to put one’s head down. Beneath the parapet, life washes around us. Above the parapet we make ourselves a target, but it’s a much better view.
A beautiful story portrayed I guess more beautifully….let me follow your blog
it’s never to late to start over,,,, greater things await us if we let go of something….
Utterly lovely. “decision to live” is worth sticking to your mirror. It’s certainly going on mine.
We all have our stories to tell. Thank you for this piece. It was beautiful.
I love the style of this, quite beautiful really. The whole piece has a wonderful elegance to it.