"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." --William Shakespeare
03.9.2011
I am a snail
who carries the labyrinth
of this city in my soul.
My soul is a labyrinth
I’ve journeyed to the core.
I’ve heard the twelve voices
turn to colors,
form petals
of the radial flower.
I was born slow.
I turned deep.
I begin to blossom.
Once in a while our posts will turn to our personal myth, the fruit of a years-long vision quest. What does this have to do with life in Paris? You’ll see!
03.5.2011 
A Story in Forty Stanzas
1. C’est l’aube, dawn in Paris.
We have our Immigration appointment.
From our corner, the metal eyes of L’Institute du Monde Arabe[1],
that close on shadow, open to light,
are watching us, and we are watching them.
2. All across North Africa,
people are throwing off chains,
emerging from the shadows.
Across the Pont de Sully, light
is rising in the east. Light is rising in us.
3. Wide Boulevard Henri IV to the Place Bastille. The gold Génie
de la Liberté[2] balances on a golden globe atop a green column.
He’s a naked winged figure, a star on his forehead,
in one hand, the torch of civilization,
in the other, broken chains.
4. A black couple with two children block the sidewalk.
Unhappiness between the parents, misery in the kids.
The father walks far ahead with one child.
The mother struggles to control a younger child
crying behind her. We hurry by.
5. At Immigration, already a long line,
like the visa line outside the L.A. French Consulate
where we waited in the rain.
Wouldn’t it be more respectful to let people wait inside?
The black family gets in line behind us, the father stands separate.
6. The doors of Immigration open.
They weren’t keeping us outside—
they were closed and we were early.
We’re ushered in, passports checked,
shown upstairs, papers examined, told to sit down.
7. The father can’t get change
from the soft drink machine.
The mother sits behind us,
trying to comfort her child so half-heartedly
that the child’s crying increases.
8. They call out my name: “Kaaren Beban.”
A woman leads me to the waiting room, two rows of plastic chairs
back to back, facing doors to examination rooms.
Richard joins me: “Do they have your name wrong?”
“I wondered the same thing.”
9. We ask a woman at the information booth.
“In France a woman takes her husband’s surname.”
“But my surname isn’t Beban,” I say.
“I’m a feminist,” my husband says lightly, in his rudimentary French,
“and I object.” The woman smiles. Ah, ces Américains fous[3]!
10. Everyone around us is quiet. Too much at stake
to attract attention. A big African man comes in,
asks a question in a baritone with an undertone, Do not dream
of treating me with anything less than respect.
And who would dare? And why should they?
11. Names are called. Doctors open the exam room
and usher people in, only partially closing the door.
A medical exam as entertainment?
Richard and I joke, Let’s just poke our heads in
and ask if we can watch.
12. It’s my turn. The doctor is tall and ruddy, looks English
more than French. A merry air, as if he’s playing
a favorite game, Red Rover. He invites me
onto the scale with a flourish, then measures my height.
He shows me the eye chart, asks me to read the bottom line.
13. With my glasses on, I can’t see a thing.
I take them off and can easily read every line.
"My eyesight’s improved,” I say.
A smaller red-haired female doctor comes dancing up
and we banter in French.
14. The male doctor asks me to hold out my finger.
He pricks it and captures the blood.
The red-haired doctor gazes out the window at the sun
and does a skipping dance: “Vent couvert,” she says.
“Covered wind?” I ask. “Vent couvert,” she sings.
15. We talk about the first sun in days,
the first glimpse of spring.
They both seem giddy.
If these French doctors were a drink,
they’d be champagne.
16. The tall doctor leads me to a dressing room, says strip
to the waist. I wait until a lab technician escorts me
to a chest x-ray machine, shows me where to stand.
Her partner puts a clip at the back of my hair
to keep it off my neck. “Hold your breath.”
17. Back in the waiting room, I study the wall posters.
One advises condoms to control the spread of SIDA,
one urges women to report domestic abuse,
a third condemns clitoral mutilation.
Everyone around us is quiet. Still too much at stake.
18. A short female doctor calls my name.
I follow her into the exam room.
She has an air of the Grim Reaper.
On the wall above her desk, the x-ray of my lungs.
There are several tiny stitches on the right side.
19. But what alarms me is the white spot
at the bottom of the left lung.
Grimly, she begins her questions in French.
I answer, pause, and ask her what the white spot is.
“We’ll get to that later,” she snaps.
20. She asks me about my health history.
I hand her a letter I worked on for hours.
She waves it away. “I’m asking you.”
Why is she so hostile?
“I had breast cancer in 2001. Caught early,” I said.
21. “Yes,” she says, “I see the stitches.”
She asks about my treatment.
“A combination of Western and Eastern medicine,” I say.
“I had radiation, but not chemotherapy.”
A frown. “You did not have the traitement classique?”
22. She shakes her head.
I start to tell her about the friend who died on chemo.
She interrupts.
She won’t permit a single word
that’s not a response to her questions.
23. She tells me to sit on the edge
of the examination table.
With dry, impatient hands she paws my chest.
I stare down at her shoes.
Her sad, homely shoes.
24. “Are you depressed?
“No,” I reply, “I’m happy.”
“No one is happy all the time,” she says.
“But why shouldn’t I be happy?” I say,
“I’m in Paris, writing, and in love.”
25. She continues to ask me questions,
sourly. Is she anti-American?
Is she from Tunisia or Algeria,
some colony mistreated by the French?
Is she taking out her resentment on me?
26. Or maybe, it’s my French. I try switching to English.
She answers in English no better than my French.
I switch back to French. The interview over,
she puts aside her notes, and turns to the x-ray on display.
“That,” she says, pointing to the white hole, “is air.”
27. “It’s normal?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
It is now 30 minutes after I first asked the question.
Mystery solved.
She’s a sadist, a killjoy.
28. There’s one in every workplace,
one in every social group, one in most families.
Always someone who chooses petty control
over compassion. She hands me my x-ray.
I’m to take this to my doctor in France, for my files.
29. I go to the front desk.
A cheerful woman with the wide eyes of a flounder,
asks me for my photograph. I find it at the back of a folder,
We chat in her office. “Your French is good,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say, grateful.
30. Richard appears at the door of our office, upset.
He was hoping for the 500 free hours of French lessons
the government supplies, so we could assimilate.
“But the consulate gave us cartes de visiteurs[4],
not cartes de résidents[5].”
31. The immigration woman reassures us,
we can go to our local Préfecture de Police and change that status.
“If that doesn’t work, I have a friend
who would trade French lessons
for English lessons from you.’
32. She tells me of her two years in Vietnam.
How she lived with a family who spoke no French.
The children used to say, ‘She’s stupid,
she can’t even speak Vietnamese.’
But I learned. It’s not that hard.”
33. Richard and I dart into a café for cafés crèmes
and chocolate croissants. We’ve given up sugar,
but not today. We trade stories about our doctors. I’m more upset
by the mean spirit of mine. His wasn’t much better,
but what bothers him is not assimilating.
34. We tell our friend, V., our immigration tale.
She refers me to a friend who works in Immigration.
I call her. She says,
“Are you going to earn a living in France?”
“We can’t," I say, "our income has to come from the States.”
35. “That’s all a visiteur is.
You can change it later to a carte de résident.
If you do intend to make money here,
remember, 70% of your income
goes to the government.”
36. And the French lessons?
"You wouldn’t want to learn French that way.
The classes are held at ungodly hours
way out of town.
Just post an ad at the American Church.”
37. She asks if I was upset at having to disrobe
for the x-ray. “Not at all,” I say.
“Many Americans get upset by that.”
“No, what bothered me was using a hair clip
that others used, the possibility of lice.”
38. “You know why we make women
take off their tops?
We need to see
if they’re being beaten at home.
Some come in covered with bruises.”
39. “Some men from Africa and the Middle East
have to be told that they can have
only one wife in France,
and that she must be permitted
to leave the house."
40. My doctor, who daily examines women who are mutilated
so that they cannot experience pleasure,
who are beaten, and forbidden to leave the house,
perhaps she’s unhappy at what she must witness.
Perhaps, she is depressed.
[1] The Arab World Institute, is a museum for Arabic art, designed in the 1980s by the architect, Jean Nouvel and his Architecture Studio. On the south side, the wall is covered with what seems to be moucharabieh, the kind of latticed screens found on patios and balconies in Arab countries. The screens are actually grids of automated lenses used to control light.
[2] Genius of Liberty
[3] Oh, those crazy Americans!
[4] visitors cards
[5] residents cards
03.2.2011 Flashback: April 2009
We board the Venice to Paris overnight train. Two narrow bunks, a closet and a sink. Legs entwined on the lower bunk, we eat our tuna wraps. Halfway through, there’s only lettuce and air.
We keep having this experience in Italy—lying sandwiches, crooked hotelkeepers. We turn in early, R. below, I above. (Bull below bird.)
At 6 a.m., the porter knocks with a tray of cappuccino and croissants. We throw on our clothes and pack. Line up for a cab.
Paris in the morning, hands clasped in the back seat, eyes eagerly scanning for the filagree of chestnut trees, the first glimpse of the Seine. Notre Dame. Quai de la Tournelle. Our street, our neighborhood café.
There is Hector at the counter, a year older, but young. When, two years ago, we admired an old photo on the wall, a turn of the century view of our street, he had it enlarged as a gift. It is framed now in our flat.
R. signs his book of poems to him. Hector treats us to cafés crèmes. We chat and wait for the tenants to leave.
Midmorning, we pass through the great green doors. There she is, Madame T, our Portuguese gardienne—Hestia, keeper of the household flame.
Dignified, in no rush, she tells us about the trouble with our neighbor. One of the tenants who rented our apartment had children who cried all night. (Half a year ago, as I remember.) And seven Israeli-American women came for the weekend.
“Seven?”
“Yes, seven.” She counts them on her fingers. “They yelled down to each other in the courtyard when they couldn’t figure out how to open the door. The one who spoke French complained that the elevator was too small.” Madame T. raises an eyebrow.
Up in the small elevator with our heavy bags. We wander the apartment in a joyful daze. Let’s go lay in supplies.
We roll our shopping cart up the street to the supermarket, Champion. Strawberries, carrots, zucchini—little photos of vegetables and fruit above the scales. Weigh each. Out comes a sticky receipt. You twist it around the bag. We look for Poilâne bread with raisins. It’s too good—they’re always out.
So many possible kinds of milk: we read the labels until we find lait entier1. Beautiful jars of Bonne Maman jam. What kind? Fig! And Brie cheese. Long and wrinkled concombres2 wrapped in cellophane. Pommes Granny3. Hefty lemons. Joker brand jus d’orange4. Tuna pasta, freshly made today.
First day in Paris, I feel it again: I want to live here, want to find a way. The double whammy of happiness and the quickened desire to write; the aesthetic sense heightened. I want to explore the streets! Learn the history of Paris! A cornucopia of inspiration.
Later I read in Sophie Barron’s “Le 5e Arrondissement”:
Liquid chocolate made its first appearance in 1668 at the Restaurant de la Tour d’Argent.
Right at the end of our street.
Here is where la fourchette—the fork—was first used. And in 1685, the first cup of café.
In spite of little sleep on the train, bumping over the Alps; in spite of being exhausted after the extraverted, action-oriented ten-day cruise (no inward time to read, write and muse—not my natural rhythm), I feel completely awake. This city’s rhythm suits me. It’s Aphrodite’s rhythm, the rhythm of beauty and love. Time to sit and talk with friends. Time to observe the world.
We head up Boulevard St. Germain to buy two bunches of tulips, one red, the other orange flames. The florist adds three pink and white roses, and asks how short we’d like them cut.
A florist has never offered to do this for me, I tell her.
"I love flowers," she says, "and I love my clients."
The spirit of place—its power and persistence! Aphrodite and Dionysus, the ruling gods here.
We knock on the gardienne’s door. She opens with that sly earthy look.
Which bouquet would you prefer?
"Mais non!" she smiles, and picks the flames.
--April 22, 2009 - Paris
[1] whole milk
2 cucumbers
3 Granny Smith apples
4 orange juice
02.26.2011 Part Two: In Which the King is Humbled
Life # 5: Four years later after Marley came to live with us in Venice, we bought a house in Playa del Rey.
Marley roamed the neighborhood freely, just as he’d done in Venice. But here in the suburbs, it was a jungle, at least for cats. Bands of feral cats were fed by several neighbors.
Marley, king of the block in Venice, didn’t stand a chance with this rough trade. He came home with puncture wounds in his neck. His most magnificent feature, a full Elizabethan ruff, had to be shaved halfway off. For weeks he wore a cone around his neck, and the $1300 vet bill came out of his allowance.
When the same thing happened a second time that year, the vet told us we’d have to keep him indoors now. She told us not to worry: “In six months, he’ll lose the desire to go outside.”
Marley never lost it. In the nine years we lived in this house, Marley would streak out any door left open, and disappear. We’d find him a few hours later sniffing leaves in the front yard, or getting good and greasy under the car, and we'd carry him into the house. Eventually, as he got older and slower, we realized that our courtyard was secure enough for him to go outside to get a dose of chlorophyll and bask in the sun.
Part Three: The Four Elements; The Alchemical Trials by Which a Cat Achieves Wholeness
Life # 6: Oh, but the next life, that was the biggest change. In 2011, we sold our house in order to move to Paris.
Marley had been through trials by Fire (the Malibu fire), by Water (the indignity of being shampooed in the bathtub after his rolls beneath the car), and Earth (attacked by feral cats with no manners, no boundaries, on his own turf). But the trial by Air remained.
The French require that various tests be passed before a cat is permitted to be a resident of France.
Back and forth Richard went, three times, from our vet in Santa Monica to the United States Department of Agriculture office (which certifies for the French that the cat has had the necessary shots and tests) in Hawthorne. Twice the vet filled out his complicated French paperwork wrong; the office in Hawthorne closed early. Fees were due, and fees were paid.
During the week between closing the sale of the house and boarding the plane, we stayed in a motel suite with kitchen in Manhattan Beach. David, a friend who had once lived in a house with eight cats and now had seven cats (all outdoors), offered to board Marley in his own suite for the week. This is how a friend becomes a very good friend.
The morning of the plane flight, friend David, and organizer/packer friend, Robi, met up and drove Marley, in a metal cage, to meet us four hours before our flight was to take off, as required by the airline.
For an hour in the freight office, his paper work was completed, he was placed on a giant scale and weighed, and then we said goodbye. He was one and a half pounds over the weight limit that would have allowed him to ride with us in the cabin. From his cage, he’d barely look at us, this most affectionate and straightforward of felines.
Cargo is less climate-controlled than cabin. If it’s too cold in the city of departure or destination, the cat can’t travel that day. No worries in L.A., but Paris? Luckily, there was no cold spell that January day. Bonne chance; the next few days were in the twenties, and RICHARD caught cold from hours of wandering happily and taking frozen-fingered pictures.
The flight was non-stop and only eleven hours, but because of the nine-hour time difference, we left L.A. at noon on Friday and arrived in Paris at eight a.m. Saturday.
At the Charles de Gaulle airport, we gathered up our eight bags at the carousel and wheeled two carts to the entrance of the cargo room. Surfboards emerged. Big boxes with mysterious contents. Package after package. But no Marley.
At last we asked for help from an airport official in a navy blue blazer, a coffee-colored man who had what sounded like an African accent; a good-natured, intelligent man with sparkling eyes. He made phone calls, one after another in musical French. Finally, he tracked down the office where we were to go. “Frêt Quatre.” Fret? Yes, we are fretting about Marley. “Oh! Freight Four.”
We sent out a wish for a taxi driver who was friendly, strong and drove a large van.
And there he was!
A Chinese-French man about 40 with a big smile and vigorous energy. He swung our bags into the back of his cab, and drove us to Frêt Quatre, but which building? He stopped to ask directions from a smiling man. We drove to the building and Richard went in. Wrong building. The taxi driver took us to another building. Richard filled out some papers, paid a hefty fee, and we returned to the first building.
I chatted with our taxi driver for 15 minutes. He told me that the French “don’t like to work. Not like in Hong Kong, where people got things done quickly and efficiently.”
“Well,” I said, “I think the French have another kind of gift. They know how to live. And sometimes efficiency and living well are mutually exclusive. At least that’s been my experience.”
The taxi driver said he intended to work in Paris another twenty years, then move with his family back to Hong Kong. What he missed most was the food!
Richard emerged holding the Marley cage, which contained a miffed white cat. We placed the cage between us on the floor in the back seat of the taxi. We cooed and stroked his fur, unlocking the front cage gate to do so. Marley wouldn’t look at us. He had almost no water left, so I poured the rest of mine from my plastic bottle. He lapped it up in one long gulp. Still wouldn’t look at us. The most talkative cat in the world barely made a peep the whole half-hour drive into Paris.
Finally, the cab pulled up in front of the big green doors that lead to the courtyard of our apartment building. We paid the driver, and I asked him his name.
“Hawk,” he said. Though it was probably spelled Hoc. It seemed a good omen. (But that’s another story.)
Up in the apartment, we released Marley from his cage. He trotted around the edges of every room, sniffing former inhabitants, getting to know the place. Four times he circumambulated. And then he flopped down on the Chinese red rug in the living room, and began to purr. Life # 6 had begun.
Postscript:
We slept in today. Marley padded up to our chins, planted himself between us and started up his well-tuned Harley motor. We watched the clouds drift over the ivied wall and zinc roofs across the courtyard. Already, in the space of fifteen minutes, it had rained, the sun had shone, and now the sky was silver and white. We scratched Marley’s ears.
“Look,” said Richard, “he’s a unicorn.”
From our perspective the gray spire of the Bibliothèque Généalogique formed a horn jutting right out of Marley’s head. As a friend told us, we’re in the land of the fabulous now.
02.23.2011 The First Four Lives
The sun came out today in Paris after a month of mostly gloomy skies. Marley found the brightest patch of sunlight in our apartment, stretched out his paws and closed his eyes. Cats, the sun, Apollo, Leo, enjoyment. Ancient Greek myth, like the myths of most cultures, makes eternal associations.
I think of my mother’s words before we left the United States, “You’re not taking your cat, are you?” When it comes to expressing her opinion, my mother has never pussyfooted around. She doesn’t like cats, finds them weird. Whereas I could start a religion with a cat god. A dog god? No. I can’t picture worshipping a dog. But a cat? Absolutely. The ancient Egyptians understood the mystery and enchantment of these small creatures.
So, about Marley. Marley is a Turkish Angora, white with fawn-colored ears, Van Gogh eyebrows and eyes that were once turquoise and now are navy blue.
Marley is now in his sixth life, having entered our lives in his fourth. This is what we know of his former lives:
Life #1: He had a home in Malibu, until the Great Malibu Fire of 1993.
Life #2: A stranger found Marley as a kitten with minor burns, and took him to a pound. That might have been his final life if our neighbors hadn’t rescued him.
Life #3: Crystal and Gabrielle brought Marley to their Venice (California) home. But then--as Richard Nixon once said--“Mistakes were made.” The two neighbor women next adopted a small black cat named Louie. Louie was as hysterical in nature as Marley was calm. Both cats were allowed to roam our Fifth Avenue neighborhood. Marley strolled around, confident, king of the block. Louie would shoot out the front door and straight up a tree, like a frenzied squirrel on speed. Everything spooked him.
Maybe it was male competition, but Marley decided that living with Louie was just not going to work for him.
He set about canvassing our block, stopping at every house to check out the inhabitants, the ambience and the food.
His requirements were modest: humans who were home most of the day, with no children, no other pets, good food offerings, a sunny, quiet, clean home, and a willingness to give him plenty of attention, if not downright worship.
The night we began planning our wedding in Crete, we had ordered out for pasta. The front doorbell rang. The deliveryman handed Richard our order, and as he was paying, a white streak of lightning shot up the stairs.
We put table settings on the white duvet on our bed, and placed the dishes of pasta on top.
Meanwhile, Marley sniffed every corner of our apartment. As we began to eat, Marley padded into the bedroom and leapt up on the bed, front paws smack in the middle of Richard’s Bolognese sauce. He tracked perfect red paw prints across the white duvet.
Richard shouted and shooed him away. I ran to the kitchen to fetch some soda water. Pouring it immediately onto the marks meant they’d come out in the wash. Richard held Marley’s paws under running water. I spread two towels over the duvet.
We ate dinner, then settled back against pillows to brainstorm. Marley leapt up on the bed again, and onto my shoulders and head, then across to Richard’s head and shoulders, and draped himself over our humming brains, and purred.
He stayed in this position for most of our planning session. It felt like a blessing on the wedding itself, so we named him our Wedding Cake Cat. He was white and orangey-pink, like a wedding cake.
Several weeks later, Crystal stopped us in front of our fourplex. “Would you two consider adopting Marley?” she said. “He won’t come into our house any more since Louie moved in. He’s chosen you.”
We were thrilled. Marley had done his homework, found the only house on the block occupied by two writers who work at home, and who so love cats that neither of us had been able to imagine adopting another when, before we had met each other, our former cats had died. But to be chosen by a cat? That you cannot turn down.
Life #4: So began Marley’s life with us in Venice, in 1997. Tune in Saturday for lives #5 and #6.
iPad sketch by Richard