The exercise of packing exposes me every time for the dumb-ass optimist I am. I always blithely assume that, regardless of the circumstances (cross-country move or weekend out of town, makes no difference), whatever I need will fit into a rollaway suitcase. And maybe a duffel. And that I will glide out -- of the house, the situation, the chapter -- wholly unencumbered.
It never works out that way. My nomadism (nearly 40 street addresses in about as many years) seems to have bred in me a recurring amnesia. Nothing ever fits in one suitcase, let alone five teeny tiny moving boxes. Duh. Packing up my place in Paris this summer was no exception. This ought to have come as no surprise, because of course I had made the same blithe (ac)counting error a scant six months prior, in February, when I had moved in to the new joint. I had been so sure that it would be two -- maybe three -- trips in a cab to get myself moved. No. Can you guess how many cab rides it took?
Six. Six-plus, in fact. Six cab rides. Plus one ride on the 91 bus (with the contents of my refrigerator balanced in a box on my lap).
Leaving the country, however, I simply couldn't afford six-cab-rides-worth of international shipping. So much of my moving time was invested not in packing and wrapping but in sorting and prioritizing my belongings. (In French you call it doing "le tri." Which comes from the verb "trier," to sort. Hence, "triage.") And how. I made gifts of many of my household items. I donated clothes and blankets to charity. I took my x-rays to the recycling center (that would be one of my chest, required for my carte de séjour, and several views of my [broken] left foot, taken in December, 2006).
And even after (what felt like) that heroic effort, there were still these piles of paper. Living in a digital world of e-Nouns (e-Transactions, e-Statements, e-Commerce, e-Gregious) has not fully removed the paper trail from our lives. We are evidence-collectors by nature, in addition to being scared shitless of being caught without documentation. (That goes double in France, a republic that loves its paperwork and worships at the altar of the official rubber-stamp.)
I had attracted bits of paper the way a big magnet (a horse-shoe
shaped one, like in a Warner Bros cartoon) attracts metal shavings. Over
here was a photocopied stunt-double of the most expensive fan I ever used, and in this file there a good four pounds of paper from Credit Lyonnais. In the bottom of a filing box I found a surprising number of receipts from my vegetable vendors, Team Tan Sir Ti (Weds, Fri, Sun in the Place Monge and Tues, Thurs, Sat along the Blvd Port-Royal).
And in every drawer, every coat pocket, and seemingly every random corner I found canceled metro tickets (having learned my lesson the hard way not to throw them away too soon).
So I sorted, made a "to keep" pile, and then, lacking a shredder, tore and cut -- by hand, because I am an idiot -- piece after piece of paper. Flaunting statutes of limitations in both the United States and the European Union, I dispensed with old health insurance policies and deposit slips. I stuffed interesting-looking receipts into ziplock bags. Uninteresting ones I simply balled up in the household recycling bin. In a slap-in-the-face to the subjunctive, I tossed handouts from my French classes at both the Catholic Institute and the Alliance Française.
It was work. And perhaps most sadly, it was work that couldn't be done while drinking. On the other hand, precisely because the job required sobriety and focus, I was better able to appreciate how many of these pieces of paper were in fact paving stones that had led not only through the streets of Paris, and others still had lead the way from California in the first place. Here are a few favorites:
The Rap Sheet
In September 2005, as part of the required documentation for my long-stay visa, I went to Police Headquarters in downtown Los Angeles to obtain a letter certifying that I had no arrest record. I waited on an iron chair in a linoleum-floored, fluorescent-lit hallway while they typed it up. I had a strong sense of déjà vu, probably from any one of a dozen cop shows I'd seen. If Dennis Farina or Joe Spano had suddenly burst through the doors, with a cursing, spitting, handcuffed tranny in tow, I wouldn't have been at all surprised. But you will not be surprised to hear that indeed I had (as the law enforcement pros say) "no priors."
Why I thought I'd ever need 10 copies of this letter, I still do not know.
The Wells Fargo International Money Transfer Form (Customer Copy)
Without the trust and generosity of a woman named Martha, I would not have moved to Paris when I did. I was a total stranger to her, and yet, based solely on the introduction of a former professor of mine (with whom I actually hadn't spoken in over 18 years), she offered to rent me an apartment for a year. I leapt on it. I remember absolutely walking during lunch hour in that blinding Los Angeles sun along Wilshire Blvd from my office to the bank branch in the back of the Ralph's. It was the first week in July, and I wouldn't be arriving in Paris til the end of December. I wired Martha the first month's rent as a deposit, and spent the rest of the year with my stomach tied in knots.
Oh, and back in those golden days of 2005, a euro (€) cost only $1.19. Sigh.
Directions from Waterloo Station to the Fleapit Café, 49 Columbia Road, London E27 RG
I woke up very early one morning in October 2006 to catch the Eurostar to London, where I would take a master class with Sally Potter. That day, I made the acquaintance of Murielle, who had also come from Paris that morning, and who was a fellow fan of "The Tango Lesson." About 18 months later, it was over a lunch at Sizin (on the rue St Georges) that I told her I would be leaving at the end of the summer.
I didn't think that such news would make her -- or anyone else for that matter -- cry.
I was wrong.
The most compelling evidence of all is not what I take with me, but rather who I leave behind.
