Revisiting Carina – Part III

Revisiting Carina, Part III:

Failed France

At the outset of my year abroad in Paris, she was in Germany, somewhere in the north, where she had been since her year in Seattle had converted itself into a semester.

In anticipation of a potential visit, I wrote a poem for or about her, which, if only for its brevity, is included presently:

Wine Reflections

You’ve not yet arrived,

but I’ve set aside some space for you -

both here and here – please, take advantage,

as others claim you can.

And I’d hate to see this chance fall through

And I want to believe you when you say it.

My friends have asked to meet you,

which wouldn’t make it easier to go without;

spinning about on this heavenly body,

I’ve so many things to show you.

We could be so many things -

perhaps, above all, together.

—

It took a few weeks after first landing at Charles de Gaulle airport (the wheels touching down immediately giving me a sense of nausea, as I thought to myself, What the hell am I doing here?  I wanted to study in Spain), before I was first able to phone her.  Having procured a phone card, and having begun to catch my stride and make a few friends, it was time to begin the laborious process of keeping in touch.

At the supermarket down the street from my apartment, a chain called Champion, I bought a small, wire, graph-lined address book with a purple cover, and began diligently recording names and numbers (and sometimes arrondissements, or nationalities, as there was a French Felix and a German Felix) of acquaintances old and new.  Having my cell phone stolen twice, this was the thread by which my ability to connect with people outside the classrooms, lecture halls, and cafeterias of the Institute of Political Studies in downtown Paris, tenuously hung.

There was a certain pleasure and a certain sense of alignment when she was the first name that appeared in the book, by virtue of her alphabetical good fortune.  I had carried her phone number and e-mail in my wallet with me from the US; the wallet would fall into disuse as the dictates of French fashion mandated an influx of tighter jeans, precluding the transportation of that clunky Americanism.  And so the address book traveled with me in my backpack or a jacket pocket at all times.  By the side of her name I drew a smiley face.

We connected in September, about a month into my Parisian sojourn.  The sensory overload, my recurrent flirtations (which was fast becoming a steady relationship) with nicotine, and the hormonal imbalances, all of which were onset by the strange institution of study abroad, were finally somewhat calibrated into my fiber, allowing me to reconnect with friends back home and elsewhere.

The Franco-German divide was the closest we had been in over two years in terms of physical distance, time zone differentials, and transportation costs.  The new setting of France, and the molting afforded by this transplant, was cause enough for hope that we would collide at some point, or several points, in the next 11 months.

There are promises one makes to one’s self when everything is new again.  They are usually promises of change, of gross alterations to one’s constitution, habits one will adopt or change.  I had experienced this in small doses when I arrived at College, when I traveled to Barcelona.  Here was my third attempt at metamorphosis, and it was not as much an attempt at growth as an attempt at radical departure from life as it was.

The problem was that I didn’t really have much from which I wanted to run.  I had had a wonderful collegiate experience thus far, had forged some great friendships, and felt like I was on the brink of being intelligent.  So perhaps it was more I wanted to run into new things, rather than run from old ones. The old ones, it was my hope, would be there upon my return from this 11 month liminal state.

The urge to run and redefine was societal, literary, and, ultimately, ill-conceived.

While not on the order of Gatsby’s “Think of necessary inventions,” I did have an unspoken, unwritten, set of rules for myself when I thought about maximizing my time in Paris.  Some of them are alluded to above, but for the sake of being explicit, they were:

1)  Smoke more cigarettes (and not just Camel lights!)

2)  Drink wine.

3)  Remain single

4)  Which is not to say be celibate

5)  Quite the opposite, actually

6)  Be flirty to the point of borderline promiscuity.

7)  Stress less about grades.

By year’s end, 1, 2, 4, and 5 had come true.  3, 6 and 7 are a different story.

—

The idea was that Carina would take the train to Paris at some point in November, or that I would travel to Germany at some point in the spring.  The night after the conversation that sparked the fall plan, I wrote the above poem, translated it into Spanish, and smiled quietly to myself.

The poem sparked little commentary until October, when, during the course of another courtship that happened somewhat accidentally, but not unintentionally, a certain Isabel wanted to scan samples of my poetry.  Upon doing so, she stumbled upon the translated “Reflejos de vino,” and restated Alejandro conviction, but used the present tense:  “¡Tío, estás enamorado!”

I felt like shit for lying about it when quizzed:  “No, no, someone in the past.”

Isabel and I started dating, and the dynamics of the relationship were such that I began scheming of ways to pull of Carina’s visit.

As it turned out, my well-developed ability to lie did not, in this circumstance, need employment:  the closest I came to seeing Carina was on a Tuesday morning that fall, when her doppelganger, dressed as she might have been, locked eyes with me as I missed a line three train on my way to martial arts.

November arrived, but Carina did not; subsequent phone calls delayed her visit until December.  December turned into messages from Paris left on her phone, each time with the closing:  “My number is 00 33 06 20 23 58 57.  Hope to talk to you soon.  A kiss.”

And then a note in December of 2004, one full year after I was supposed to see her, wishing me a Merry Christmas, and returning my kiss.