[Many of us are caught in the following predicament: we have tremendous pent-up wanderlust, but we don’t feel that it’s quite safe enough to travel yet. So, let me present you with some excerpts from my book A Writer’s Paris to help slake some of that wanderlust, while at the same time providing you with lessons of values to writers and all creatives. These essays also connect to my recent book Redesign Your Mind, as they present new ways of thinking about the creative process and the writing life.]
During the Paris winter, it can rain and rain. Weeks and months of a ferocious gloominess can descend, eradicating hope and the will to write, virtually extinguishing the City of Light, inspiring you to drink whiskey continuously. Even if you quit smoking five years ago, you may suddenly find yourself with a pack of Gitanes in your pocket. Even if you’ve fought your marijuana habit to a standstill, the old cravings may return with a vengeance. Watch out for the rainy season and what it can do to your nerves and your intentions.
You’ll buy an umbrella. But a ferocious gust of wind will turn your umbrella inside-out and destroy it. Your second umbrella will meet a similar fate. Next, you’ll invest in some real rain gear, fancying yourself a Marseilles longshoreman during mistral. You’ll budget for more hot chocolate and more café time and return to places that feel warm and inviting. You’ll put in brighter bulbs in your room. You’ll fight the urge to flee to the Spanish gold coast or some Mediterranean island. And, if the darkness hasn’t destroyed your libido, you’ll think about taking a lover.
My first time in Paris, I turned down sex out of shyness. Before it moved to the D’Orsay, France’s collection of modern art was housed on the right bank at the Jeu de Paume, a museum that still exists and that today houses contemporary art. I was sitting in the café of the Jeu de Paume one afternoon, smoking a cigarette, when an attractive French woman came a very long way from her spot among her friends, passing one smoker after another, to ask me for a light. I lit her cigarette but couldn’t quite meet her eye. I still remember her smile. It said, “You fool. What do you suppose I’m doing here?”
But it wasn’t just shyness. I had been married and knew about messes. My wife didn’t make the mess and I didn’t make the mess; we made the mess together. I knew that a lover would help with the rainy-day gloom but perhaps at the terrific cost of opening the door to another dark relationship. Rainy day lovers, so warm, so delicious, also tempt us to give in to our shadow. They help us fall where we are primed to fall.
A writer in Paris told me the following story. Every day her husband would make a point of asking her, “When are you going to make some money at writing?” The only reply she could think to make was, “I’m trying.” One day she sold a book for the quite decent advance of $15,000. She couldn’t wait to tell her husband. He heard the news, sat down at the kitchen table, and made some calculations. “That comes to about twenty cents an hour,” he said. “You’re still a parasite.”
Should he shoulder all the blame? No. We are coconspirators in our miserable relationships. We each make more than half the mess, accounting for a mess larger than the sum of its parts. If we aren’t writing and have decided to pick up a lover, that body beside us in bed is not the place to point the finger. We already weren’t writing, were we?
The skies have darkened. The rainy season has begun. The broken window pane that amounted to cheap air conditioning in July is now letting in gusts of wind and rain water that puddles on the window-sill. You find that you’ve started picturing razor blades and nooses. Steady now! Run as fast as your shapely legs will take you to hot kisses and undressing in the gloom.
Just be careful. If her dramas begin to interest you more than your novel does, if evenings in his circle attract you more than your pen, if you throw over your writing life and blame him or her, slap yourself hard. It wasn’t the rain; it wasn’t your lover; it was your own secret wish to throw in the towel.
Love is good. Sex is good. Intimate relationships are good. Have these things. But if you happen not to be writing, do not glance even once across at your lover. Look in the mirror. It is never someone else’s fault that we aren’t writing.
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