From Paris to the Farm and Back

by Clayton Violand | 2007

I miss the farm. If a reincarnate could be conscious of his past life, then that's what I feel like.
Does reincarnation exist?

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I'm at this table in Paris, at this restaurant I've been going to day after day for almost a week now. It's called Le Tourville. It's off of metro Ecole-Militaire. I've been coming here out of comfort rather than appreciation. Because I know nothing else and I can get there easily. Sometimes you need that to keep things running smoothly. Maybe that's an excuse, but the place is real and the food is good and I like that one waiter who is enthusiastic about serving me because he wants to learn American phrases like "hey dude," and "coming right up, man." There're Parisians around me smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and eating lunch. I'm doing the same thing because Paris makes you Parisian whether you want it to or not. I want it to. The French got the whole culture thing just right, I tell myself.

But for this moment the farm is on my mind: the farm in Maryland, in America. I'm thinking nothing of Paris and they don't know that and I like it. They only know what's on the outside and on the outside I might as well be Parisian. It's a little game.

I'm thinking of these things: the old tractor frame laying in the cow field, full of weeds, bonfire supplies and broken glass; the hospitality that lives in every crevice of the burnt-red-colored house; the historic whisper that silently screams out of decayed and musty barn walls. I'm picturing George Washington standing on top of the red barn in his white wig and knee-high white stockings scoping out land or doing something appropriately out-of-date like that. Maybe he's scraping around the field where the horses are, searching for water with his divining rod. The fulfillment of this recollection and imagination—of remembering the farm—is overwhelming. I smile.

It won't ever be the same. This is so sad but I dwell on this sad feeling and it becomes nostalgia and then I dwell on this new nostalgic feeling and I begin to love the feeling and I become fixated on it and I get butterflies in my stomach. I begin to love the feeling. This happens often for me.

When I say the farm will never be the same I mean that things are different now. My old friends are either out of my life forever, or just for now, or they are far away or right near me and I don't care that they are. And I've loved (however a gross exaggeration this might prove to be in the future) and have been defeated (I'm sure) and this is something a person can't recover from. He carries with his loss an association with things of the past. I feel this: Nostalgia.

My ravioli comes on a square white serving plate. I've ordered the same before. I say Merci. He winks. I take a substantial gulp of wine, move it around in my mouth, and put out my cigarette. I'm a fake smoker. I'm not really legit. But they don't know that.

The farm is autumn. I'm recalling this at the table as I eat. The farm is driving home north after the first month of college while almost blowing out my 24-year-old car's 24-year-old speakers on almost full volume. I played the same song again and again. I still do the same thing when I get attached to a song. I'm obsessive.

The farm is comfortable cold and health and a welcoming return to a family I don't genetically belong but am in some disconnected and comfortable way a part of. It's the old diesel—the Mercedes that smells like weekend excursions to the driving range with my Dad, with the fake leather that stained his skin with an appropriately father-like scent after he returned home from work.

It's only now that I understand his frustration and attitude towards his commute in that car. I now understand the mixed emotions of love and fear that must be so normal to all sons when their fathers return after commuting home on the Capital Beltway from an intolerable day at the accounting office. My Dad's an accountant. A CPA. "A Certified Pain in the Ass," he would tell me.

The farm was my last perfect comfort before the onset of real pain and worry that all humans perfect by some age and never can erase. Now I'm speaking so melodramatically, I think. But I keep on going with the thought.

Paris is the antithesis of this farm, a thesis of harshness and congestion that is impossible to take lightly. This is the pain, but thank God, also the beauty of Paris. Cities inspire self-inflicted pain, but healthy pain, and I think I'm addicted to this pain. I don't know what event or series of events or genetic strand has caused this addiction but it is unquestionably there. Rain alone can make me cry in a city, damn it.

I miss the farm. I once laid a dead bird on the silo steps after pointlessly and regrettably killing it with a BB gun. I remember checking months later. The bird's body wasn't there anymore. It probably fell or more likely was eaten. Or I guess it decayed. I miss that regrettable BB gun hunt.

I miss that silo. Maybe The Eiffel Tour can be my silo. But Le Tour Eiffel is too high, impersonal and unfitting. Maybe Le Metro can be a dirt bike, the small Yamaha 100. But I can't crash Le Metro into Dr. Glenn's Mercedes and then try to convince the only witness, his youngest son Luke, to let the event pass without exposition to his dad. Les Champs de Mars is the horse field. But I can't achieve absolute solitude there. I can't spin in circles with my girlfriend with whom my relationship is deteriorating, and I can't use it as escape from the overwhelming attack of forgettable high-school classmates of whom I am apathetic and they of me. They'd be just across the field, meeting and greeting near the bonfire that blazed smoke that would almost touch the airplanes flying overhead. It's interesting what stays with you: a white bathroom with organized toiletries and a distinct fresh smell; a basement bedroom damp with wet stone walls and that plastic fan circulating stale basement air; a young and energetic grandmother gardening her flowers and walkways, looking involved and content and spent and frustrated all at the same time; the thump of a rooster flying blindly into the corn-crib wall; the heat of the day soaking my shaggy and overgrown hair, making the simplest things a chore as a I piece it out of my face (why don't I cut it? It's still here!); rust on an old tractor; the kindness of an unfinished living room (and knowing the family, it could easily never be complete). This is the nature of the farm: growing older, warmer, always changing, never finished. But always settled.

I'm no longer at a restaurant in Paris; I'm at the farm in Maryland, in America . . . from the front porch I hear the sound of four rubber tires on gravel crossing the creek bridge. But then, like a quick wind, there's something else.

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It's the meow of the cat. He's emerged to rub against my bare and dirt-stained feet.

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