Nouveau Départ

“An Existence Without the Anxiety of Existence.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Paris is lovely, as one would expect. I have been here just over a week and have already finished two books.

The first was The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante. It is a brutal, intimate novel about a woman whose husband leaves her and their two children for a younger woman, and what remains after the shock. I was struck by the force of the story and by the way Ferrante renders the cost of abandonment without apology. It is not a light book. It begins:

“One April afternoon, right after lunch, my husband announced that he wanted to leave me. He did it while we were clearing the table; the children were quarreling as usual in the next room, the dog was dreaming, growling beside the radiator...”

The second was a biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein by Anthony Gottlieb. Its intellectual rigor had me read many passages twice before feeling I had any grasp of them. Wittgenstein was a tortured soul, and the intensity and brevity of his relationships struck a chord with me. He would go away for months at a time to be alone and reexamine his life. I found that oddly comforting. He was seeking “an existence without the anxiety of existence,” but seemed to find it only at the very end of his life. Which is fine. It doesn’t matter to me when, or even if, I find the answer to my desires, only that I pursue them. As Wittgenstein so aptly said, “Even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.” Sadly enough, three of his four brothers died by suicide, as did his brother-in-law, Jerome Stonborough, who was married to his sister Gretl. As an aside, Gretl had her wedding portrait painted by Gustav Klimt, and it is magnificent.

I have also begun The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster, and the title is apt for this stay in Paris. And, as if I didn’t have enough books already, yesterday I went to the Paris Book Fair at the Grand Palais. Most of the books were in French, unsurprisingly, though I did find myself tempted by a history of the Kurds, translated to English, before deciding instead to buy a new pen. I am, apparently, as much a bibliophile as a pen enthusiast.

There is something satisfying about a well-made writing instrument, especially one with blue ink and a narrow point. I delight in taking notes while reading and scribbling marks next to passages I find especially intriguing. Washing dishes by hand in this apartment gives me something similar — the warm water, the quiet rhythm of it. These are the kinds of physical acts that keep me from floating too far away from myself. Strolling about Paris serves the same purpose. The weather has been good, and I have been walking two or three miles a day. I feel better for it.

I am not a tourist, although I do the occasional “touristy thing.” Still, I am a tourist in the deeper sense that I am not yet settled here. My lack of French speaking ability contributes to my sense of aloneness and apartness. One can certainly get around Paris without speaking much of the language, but the version of the city one gets that way is filtered and often opaque.

I tell myself this is an experiment in the slow alchemy of withdrawal, a deliberate stripping away of distractions so that something more essential might emerge. But sitting in a café with an open book, I sometimes notice that I have not turned a page in several minutes. I am thinking instead of how this might later be recounted: the man alone in Paris, reading, thinking, becoming. It is a version of this life that is pleasing to imagine. I am less certain how much of it is actually being lived.

It is an uncomfortable question: do I want to be changed by this, or do I want to be the kind of man who does things that look like change?

There are moments when the distinction feels thin. Walking along the Seine, I convince myself that I am confronting something fundamental, when in fact I may only be passing time in a more beautiful setting. Reading for hours, I call it discipline, but it may just be avoidance with better lighting. Even my “letting go” has the faint outline of control: I’ve chosen the city, the books, the lessons, and defined the terms of the experiment. It raises the question of whether I am truly relinquishing anything at all or simply refining the way I hold on.

Still, I find myself wanting at least one point of contact with the place that resists abstraction, something that requires me to be present rather than reflective. For that reason, I have begun a series of individual French lessons. An hour and a half at the nearby Coutume Café with my instructor Chloé. I am older and fear that my mental acuity is not what it once was. Nonsense! Of course it’s not. But that doesn’t mean I can’t improve my French! Mon Dieu!

By spending time in a different culture, without the noise of the familiar, I hope to become more alive and more conscious, but also kinder in a way that does not depend on an audience. I want to be more sympathetic to the man who washes dishes alone and takes notes with a narrow blue pen. I want to be gentler in silence. In short, I want to know what happens when a man removes the scaffolding from his life.

Too often, my affability has felt like performance: easy in company, harder when the support disappears. Like Ferrante’s abandoned woman, I am hoping solitude will close that gap, so that the warmth I offer others becomes something structural, rooted quietly inside me even when no one is watching.

But it has only been a week, and self-doubt has already begun.

“Philip, this is stupid. Go home.”

“You could read books at home with less discomfort.”

A thousand voices rise urging me to return to the comfortable and the familiar, to seek the flat certainty of normal days. Still, even without a clear idea as to where this is headed, I am staying. For now.

There are many ways to avoid solitude and the anxiety that it brings: food, entertainment, scrolling, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, travel, and shopping. Even reading voraciously, as I do, can become a form of escape. To be alone without activity, without a plan, without companionship, is difficult. The circle of an empty day is its own cruelty; by night it can close around your throat.

So why do this at all? I do not have a simple answer. Perhaps I was called here without a plan. Or perhaps the plan is simply to let go of every idea I have about my life, what it has been and what it still might be. I need to quiet the voices inside to explore the architecture that is hidden. And to stay long enough to find out what remains.

The process is simple, and difficult. I remain confident that the answers are on the way.

Let’s call this the first dispatch from Paris and leave it at that.

Petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid.