Anthony

Café des Sports, 17h23

19 January 2010

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. . . . . . . . . I've been writing this blog in my head all day, getting (in all truth) worrisome that I wouldn't be able to do my experience justice once my words hit the computer screen. Which started me thinking about why it can seem so much easier to write with artistic simplicity about negative events, lending humor and irony to heartache, embarrassment, anxiety and critique, then it is to write the proper life and energy into happiness or chance or love. The cheese-fest involved in describing the latter detracts greatly from the experience at hand -- one does a disservice to one's own good-fortune.

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For the misfortune, however, it would seem that art (in every which way it is channeled) is not only imbued with a quality of ease but necessity -- this being perhaps the key to understanding the disparate artistic value of good and bad times. We strive to comprehend the emotional boundaries of pain through its semantic (or visual, or otherwise artistic) boundaries. That is, we seek to find a finite end to negative experience by making it subject to the limits of human comprehension (one's grief cannot be greater than one's words are strong; one's loss cannot be more violent than one's brushstroke or chord).*
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To apply this theory then to positive experiences, it would seem that we rather choose to leave experiences unnamed and limitless; that their joy might resonate without the pressure to conform to pre-existing semantic values. Which would indicate that the inherent cheese-ball factor in the relay of good news, is really just self-sabotage, one keeping oneself from disclosing too much and boxing in fate's gracious serendipity and its consequent limitless, intransient delight.

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Anyway, I've found a place to live. The apartment is a one bedroom, shared with a Mexican architecture student. She invited me over for a vegetarian lunch with organic veggies and brown rice to discus the details of the apartment.** Rent is equivalent to less than $500 a month (including charges). The apartment is across the street from the Parc Buttes des Chaumont. The quartier reminds me of the Astoria of Paris : It is extremely diverse and safe and not terribly expensive. The bartender in the café on the corner talked to me about cachaça, then went on and on about his love for this neighborhood, then bought my petit café and told me if I ever needed anything to drop back by. "Elated" cannot begin to describe my mood just now.

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"La vie, elle est belle parfois."

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*Likewise, it's interesting to note that great artistic accomplishments are measured by how far one can push that limit, i.e., how much one can expand the limitation of expression when it comes to anguish or joy.

**This says A LOT when you know that the only thing I love more than food is organic, vegetarian food.