There I am staring over my glasses. One eye always closed to the sun. I don't know why. One of my eyes always closes in the sun and the other closes in the water. Never understood ... sometime people ask me ... as if it were something strange. Well I guess it is a bit strange. Like windshield wipers? No that's a a Kenneth Koch metaphor. Was that his name. Talking about frozen peas in the supermarket, when what he wanted were canned peas. Those were the days when it came ripping out of my fingers. Have I let it all go to waste? Nevermind, go on, go on.
So one eye is open. Looking over my glasses. The day after a party. Out in the suburbs of Paris. We had already moved up to Brussels. This the first year. So it must be the summer of 2005. That first year was lonely. We just did it. We picked up our shit and went to Brussels. We didn't know anyone. We barely knew anything about Belgium. We had each been there for a weekend or two and that was all. But I knew I wanted to get out of Paris. I had been waiting to move for so long. I loved Paris, but I wanted it to stay that way. We just weren't that organized. Somehow other people managed to do all sorts of things and we did not. We got ourselves in debt. We changed jobs and had dinner parties. We were attacked by crazy neighbors and their dogs. People threw bleach at us.
We spent hours walking through Paris. Doing nothing ... just walking. Sometimes the same places. Sometimes halfway across the city.
But it was time to go. I wanted to go. I wanted to see someplace else. Live a different life. I wasn't looking for better, just different, just new. The ultimate new fangled gadget. A new life in a new city.
I got fired and Prague was too far. So Brussels. We decided one day. A week later I was in a hotel already working. A month later we had an apartment like we'd never had in our life. The next summer we were on our way. We both had jobs, we were making lot's of money. We had sold my apartment in Paris for twice what I had paid for it. We had cleaned up all of our debts and still had money in the bank. We had beautiful things and we were buying more. I hadn't realized it yet, but I was going past where my parents had gone. For O it was different, she had already done that. We were not rich, but there were no more worries. We bought what we wanted.
There is a memory of the first New Year's Eve. It was awful. It had begun so well. An absurd taxi ride to IKEA to buy furniture for the apartment. We were laughing. We were doing things right. We were in and out of IKEA in 45 minutes. It was a world record. The taxi driver was laughing with us. We would finally have bookshelves and a desk. We were making our home. And then we went to dinner and were nasty to each other the entire night. She called me a cheapskate. I did everything not to raise my voice, but I spoke to her viciously. We were still so alone. A friend here or there, but mostly just the two of us. Constantly together.
As the summer came, it changed. We began to meet more people. We began to explore the city. We became experts. Our friends came to see us from Paris. We walked for hours on end across Brussels. Eating samosas and oysters and drinking beer at every corner. And the big art deco buildings in the city center became familiar ... easy on the eyes. When you go past that one, you're just about at the café you want to go to next.
And so when we went back down to Paris it was triumph. We were happy and sucessfull. Paris was just to see friends and faire la fête. Life was so much better back in Brussels. I must have been a total bore, expounding on the wonders of the simple life of Brussels. I surely still am at times. And I miss it. Going down to get fries on a Sunday evening down at Flagey. The smell would reach me all the way across the square. Waiting in line, the rich odor ... I would be drunk on fries and samurai sauce. A bottle of Duvel on the way back. The greasy paper spread on the table, the spicy mayonnaise dotted across the fries ... orange and beastly but so delicious.