I Want To Be...

An American In Paris

Published on February 26, 2004 By Tangled Wishes In Blogging

I have to write on my intense jealousy of American writers in Paris at the turn of the century and into the twenties and thirties. They were so damn lucky!!!!

Explanation:

In my Paris class, we're reading a book called Women of the Left Bank which is over all kind of boring, I suppose, if you don't spend every waking moment wishing to be a writer surrounded by other amazing writers and artists. Especially in an amazing place like 1900's Paris. We're also reading The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.

After reading parts of both of these books, and seeing a video called "Paris Was A Woman," my jealousy level has skyrocketed!!!

It is my freaking dream to go somewhere exotic and amazing and be surrounded by brilliant people who will leave a huge mark on the literature world, not just like Lovely Bones which will very possibly die down within the next year, but with people who wrote things like Ulysses, or An American in Paris, or artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Rousseau! Not to mention, these women spent their time writing. I repeat, writing.

They had homes, social lives, paintings by the most amazing modernists, partied with the most brilliant people, got painted by the most brilliant artists, and were able to afford all this!! HOW?!?!?! AND WHY?!?!?

Mostly, though, I want to know why I can't do this. Why can't I just hop a ship to France and take up shop in a nice little Parisian apartment, and spend the rest of my days there writing with a (male--I'm not a lesbian) lover? Why can't I have amazing paintings by the most brilliant contemporary artists? Why can't I just spend all of my days wandering and writing, with a nice big beauceron and big, colored hats?

I already have that obsessive love for hats. I already have that obsessive love for writing, and for wandering, and I could find me a great expatriate lover in Paris. I could drink lots of wine, do plenty of little watercolours and drawings (my favorite form of art), and live the rest of my existence in peace and happiness.

It wouldn't matter if my books didn't catch on right away; I would know they're worth reading, and then after a while some awesome rich society woman from DC with the last name of Barney or perhaps Hilton? would catch on to my writing and have immense faith in me, and would get every one of my manuscripts published, even the sillier ones I wrote during HS. And I would die happy, anyway, because I'd have my Beauceron named Murphy II and my expatriate lover and my multitudes of french collectibles and my comfy wicker chairs and my writing!!! I would die happy!

But the problem, you see, is, I have no money. Well, that's a lie, I suppose I have around... $2000 dollars after I get my tax returns, and that isn't enough to live the rest of my life happily in Paris. I would have to get a job there. And learn the language, firstly. And I would have to find an apartment that allows dogs, and I would have to find my circle, and I would have to do so many impossible things. It wouldn't have been impossible for me in 1908, or 1923, but it is today. And that really sucks.

So that's why I'm here in college LEARNING HOW TO DO SOMETHING I'VE BEEN DOING EVER SINCE I CAN REMEMBER (writing) just so I can live out some mundane life in the States, always wondering what would have happened had I had enough money in my youth to just hop that plane and leave the US (for ever?) for Paris.

Damned money, and the lack of opportunities.

~Mlle Collette (my pseudonym-- was my confirmation name)

Comments

new-age nomad

on Feb 26, 2004

Hats---ROCK!

Anywho, forget Paris. Go to Italy. It's all about Bramasole! France never appealed to me, but I know what you mean. My aspirations are along those lines.

Here are some tips one of my teachers passed onto me:

1. Travel by train at night. This accomplishes two things: You get where you want to be, and you don't have to pay hotel fares. Plus, trains are mega cheap!

2. Travel while you're in college and you're broke off your ass; you have nothing left to lose and your trip will be intisified by your freedom.

3. Forget the makeup, put on a baseball cap and backpack baby!

Maybe we could go together (also not a lesbian). I'm definately going...I don't know how serious you are about it.

Trinitie

Tangled Wishes

on Feb 26, 2004

I'm deadly serious.

Hmm that sounds all wrong.

Let's see... Well, it's the ONLY goal I have in life.

That's how serious I am

Tangled Wishes

on Feb 26, 2004

PS. Well we very well could!

Mlle Collette

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