De Ce Monde Secret de l’ Amelie Americaine

It was a cloudy Sunday morning. My destination was the art market off of Rue de Montparnasse. where local artists exhibited their wares to tourists and would be collectors. First I stopped by one of the open windows of a creperie and order one crepe with nutella and strawberries. Instead I was given two crepes one with nutella and the other with strawberry jam. They tasted good anyway. I tucked the spare crepe into my bag for later hunger pains.

Found the row of tents where the artists had set up their booths. The quality of art ranged from the touristy paintings of local monuments to portraits and abstract paintings. Nothing stood out…until I came across a print of a collage done by Charles Renaud. I know it was just a print, but it was frame nicely his work had a haunting surreal quality that reminded me of the Dadaist exhibit I had seen earlier. He had taken pieces of printed material and assembled into a Salvador Dali like picture…that was both lonely and haunting…like a dream…it was rooted in a subconscious reality yet…it was fantasy for lack of better phrasing. It wasn‚Äôt the materials he used, as it was obviously assembled from an old magazine, but it was how he put them together and the colors just seem to work as if they were always meant to live on the same page. I bought two of these framed prints. Aside from the lithographs-these were my one big purchase. Much greater high than the designer wallet. I walked away from the street market feeling like I had just struck gold, even if no one else saw their inherent artistic value.

My Grandma’s Key chain

So with my purchases under my arms I started walking. I looked up to the sky and there was the Eiffel Tower looming large. It could not be that far away, right? I decided to walk there as I could not find a nearby Metro station that also went in that direction. An hour later I was still walking through a largely upper middle class residential neighborhood with far fewer cafes and stores…And I still wasn‚Äôt there. Determined to not give up so easily, I continued on.

I arrived at the park (name the park) that lead from the (government building) the tower itself. I walked under the tower and surveyed the cars ascending the tower at each of it’s legs. I walked into a souvenir shop and purchased a key chain, similar to the one that my grandmother use to carry with her.

Now everyday after I returned to Brooklyn…I can now look at my my touristy key chain with the digital clock in the back of it and remember what it was like to be here, and what time it is in Paris. Her key chain had led me here, along with the dream I had of her after she passed away thirteen years ago in December. She came to me and showed me two plane tickets. One for Paris and the other Japan. She told me one day that I would come here, and not to worry about how my life was not going as I had planned. I would make it through this rough spot and that she knew that better things were coming to me.

I decided to return another day to actually go up to the top of the tower. I wanted to bring my camera and film the experience. Today, I had just kind of wandered here…determined to find it. I knew I could get here again, and now I just needed to go have fun.

The Bad Idea Shirt

With any kind of genuine enthusiasm, there exists the potential for real embarrassment. But the best kind of embarrassment is the type that doesn‚Äôt occur to you until two weeks after you’ve made the faux pas, and you realize how bad you really looked. All the while remembering in vivid detail, the sure zeal you exhibited at your worst possible fashion moment.

But tube tops, cuffed jean, frizzed hair, and all other eighties references aside…these insidious moments of indiscretion also have a habit of accompanying some of the genuinely best times of our life; some how making us realize with acute humility that major fashion errors need not be the end of life as we know it but rather, a reminder, of just how good it really was.

Mine came in the form of a slick polyester Euro-trash, trace dance, orange boob shirt. I was walking along Rue de Michel (check) desperate to find a purse large enough to discretely carry my hdv camera. I had walked into every store from my hotel to the Notre Dame looking for a bag that did not scream, ‚”I’m a female tourist traveling alone, please rob me.”

I had given up and stopped to eat in one of the many greek restaurants that line this section of the Latin Quarter (check that it is not il-de-cite) where I found my first meal for five euros, (a gyro and frites). I had enough money for another un double cafe.

Refreshed I wandered some more. I stopped to watch an artist paint his canvas tarp with aerosol spray paint and steered clear of the many souvenir shops where every item was embroidered or printed with the words, “Paris, France” across it. The streets were not at all crowded. I doubt I would have enjoyed myself if this was June. In fact, most restaurant owners and hosts were standing outside their front door greeting pedestrians to try and entice more business.

Except for one. From across the street I could see through the window. In front was a small dance floor where one couple happily danced together as if no one else was around. This was when I first noticed it. The way this French man looked at the women he was with, as if nothing else in the world existed. Not in the overbearing scary, I need to get a restraining order kind of way. But gently as if she was the only focus of his attention, and that her every word and action mattered to him. This is something I, as American Amelie have never experienced. Men in American Amelie’s experience either come off with a certain undeserved pride or they are desperate to make you exactly into what they want you to be, but rarely are you seen or admired for who you are.

If this were some other girl’s story then I would tell you that I entered that restaurant where I was promptly picked up by a handsome stranger and we too danced the night away…but I did not. Try not to be too disappointed.

But something inside of me was unfolding. A new personality was emerging from the pain of last years experience with my now ex-finance David. I was beginning again. What I wanted was gone, and it would never be. What was there left for me to do, but open myself up to the possibility that I was meant to be more than lawyer’s wife. And there is one thing that every new personality needs to express itself: new clothes.

I walked back up Rue de Michel (check) determined another day would not go by without me filming some part of my experience. I needed that bag and I needed it now, along with socks, shirts and anything else that said hello, here I am.

I found a clothing store where the prices didn’t seem too unreasonable. American Amelie is cheap cheap cheap. That is the only way she was able to afford her vacation to Paris in the first place. I found my bag for twenty five euros, and socks that I was certain would shrink after one wash, but I didn’t care. I was looking at my life differently. It was time to embrace that ridiculous moment of youth that had so artfully been grabbed away from me by years of socialization. I tried on the tackiest orange shirt I could find, although it looked fabulous on the mannequin, slapped down my credit card and exited the store.

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