Excerpted from The Little Black Book of Suicide Notes
I always imagined roaming the streets of Paris and sitting in the quaint outdoor cafés that Hemingway and Gertrude Stein frequented. A Moveable Feast coming alive. The only feast I ended up having was alone in a small café where the waiter and I communicated via electronic translators. Best part of the conversation was when he electronically told me I had such beautiful eyes.
Usually being burdened with an undercurrent of loneliness, I somehow that next morning awoke with a marvelous sense of freedom. I was drawn to listen to old interviews by James Baldwin, whose works I had never read nor heard before. Baldwin said that the joy and the suffering are intertwined. It made me think that my attempts of investing in a state of permanency in anyone of those feelings is the actual exercise in futility and not the futility of life, in and of itself.
I continued to explore various artists, writers, painters, most of whom were addicted to one substance or another and found an astonishing array of beautiful people who impacted this society with their words, color, magic and passion. Then I continued to explore the meaning of passion. I realized it’s synonymous with the suffering. Maybe this journey is the transition through passion, exile and suffering as a prerequisite to becoming free. Maybe I really was roaming those winding streets and smoke hazed cafes with the expatriates of the time after all. Maybe it wasn’t all just a figment of my imagination.
April in Paris- Hotel Lutetia, Left Bank, Rive-Gauche- and years ago…
