It's in the sincerity of their shining faces as they crowd in my kitchen donning their coats and thanking me for my hospitality.
So much that their jeers at the carefully arranged salmon rolls against pale yellow plates "YOU made this?" could never be taken as anything other than acknowledgement that I can be something other than a clown.
Looking back at the pangs of a year ago, the loneliness in thinking of myself as nothing but entertainment with carefully flung arms and twisted phrases to the crowds of partying friends, that emptiness was something I was seeking to escape in leaving behind the too-many-shallow-acquaintances of Montreal.
Instead of escaping it with the city though, I somehow stumbled into home.
My appartment is home. It has become that way since I learned to invite people into it.
"Welcome to my home".
And part of that comes from David, of course, and the slow realization that maybe to him I'm not just the entertainment, I don't have to keep up some act... The slow actions taken, inspired by him, to write to the list, talk to friends about *me*, not just the ultra-cool things I do but maybe just a little of what I think about them.
And a lot of it was in the striking out entirely alone in a too-large city,
and even more seems to be a clever gathering of the erinye as well and the encountering of people with so strong a sense of hospitality that it was contagious.
I knew there was something more important than matching lingerie that I needed to learn here.
Welcome to my home.
Now that I have one, it is as though there is a great tree growing at my back, supporting me from the roots.
I have roots. Roots that tie me to many cities, and yet slowly the names of the cities are ceasing to matter.
And Vanessa and Florence (pictures will be up the moment I get off me arse to develop them) are barely anything but casual acquaintances, and yet I have finally learned to share warmth with them without their having read the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
And Arnaud and Mapie, comfortable enough in my home to invite other people over, call me up and announce that I'll be having a dinner party next week...
I can't explain how huge a compliment that is.
And the food turned out perfect. And it's all gone. And...
...there's a cat driving me absolutely insane right now.
Mapie brought over her freak cat (that loves to play fetch and eat pasta) for a couple of weeks while she re-does her appartment and then leaves for a week in Spain.
Nice to have a warm little beast rubbing up against me all the time but BASTARD is a lesson in re-learning patience a little more profoundly.
Dropping off to sleep near to four in the morning after an evening of solving all the riddles that Mapie and Arno left me with, I gave up and mailed the list about the last one (I can't believe I missed it but LEMMETELLYOU I solved a few doozies and pointed out the physical impossibility of another one, after finding the right answer) and attempted to crawl into bed with my brain finally at relative ease.
But noooo, Willow wanted to play. Again and again and again.
Finally, crushing him to my side thinking it would anger him and he'd leave me alone, when he instead stretched out beside me and began the most roaring purr I've ever heard in my life...
I lay awake the rest of the night thinking.
About this cat-for-a-week thing and how I'm learning valuable lessons slowly. About things I've always known about begging for loud displays of attention and how to soulage that.
About how after a youth spent learning things too fast too intense, passing my lifeguard exams the same week as my swimming instructor exams and CPR exams and the EMT course...
About spending three months swallowing everything I could find about programming algorithms only to find myself bored my first year of University and losing out on important lessons because I went too fast and didn't listen when it was time to do it again...
Taking things slowly now, I am far more patient with this cat and the last one, with their mess, with cleaning their litters than I was with my menagerie of animals in Tony's appartment, the forty plants, two cats, boa constrictor, iguana and birds...
I am re-learning the responsability that I forced myself into too fast too hard when I moved out so young and in such strange circumstances.
I've been pushing all my life towards burnout and am finally recognizing it beyond the way the word ricochets about as an excuse to not go out tonight.
And learning to learn better. Slower. Harder.
And I wonder if this is the atrophying of my neurons or simply a beginning of balance, the dreaded maturity word, balancing out a few of my excesses, learning that doing GREAT is good but not the same as trying to do it all at once.
Maybe part of what failed with Tony was trying too hard, too fast, him not strong enough to stand up to the battery of my frantic personality and just ask me to stop.
Somehow David has been instrumental in learning the need for balance (I secretly admired his careful nature long before I told him I loved him, as much as some people have professed to admiring my intensity) just as John was instrumental in helping me prove to myself that I CAN do anything, so maybe I don't need to keep trying so hard to prove it all, all the time.
I'm still interesting even though I never made it past the primary coloured belts in too many martial arts that I drove into too fast and ran into the same wall in each one.
I'm still beautiful despite the fling with anorexia that left me with a metabolism that I will always have to fight with, fifty pounds heavier than I began. Seeing my reflection in David's eyes and suddenly the weight doesn't matter so much and it's easier for it to fall away, a few ounces a month at a time.
Always learning to learn. I love that phrase. This is not an excess, I don't think, but a path. SOmetimes a struggle, but not always, and not always to excess.
But when the days become manic, and the rollercoasters are cresting, the excess still comes and I lose control.
But less and less often.
And I know that despite my unease of bars due to the burnout of tri-weekly gatherings at Foufs and various gothspots, despite so many things I've crushed to the ground by trying just a little too hard...
The important things I still have so much time for.
And there are still so many lessons that I learned along the way, that although I missed a few important ones, I'm incredibly fortunate to be learning them now, so young. Soon though, maybe I will listen to myself when I claim that it is never too late anyway. I am young and fortunate, but it isn't the youth that matters after all the sucess stories fade into the decades and my age stops counting as a meter to be measured by.
Even little things like how to learn to use buzzwords, despite having fallen into the commercial sector too immature, spiteful, unready, and nearly ruined my chances at ever using them with more power than my floundering managers. Despite years of having to believe myself right and others wrong in order to just be able to believe that being different was okay... I am learning to admit new errors to myself. New faults. New inadequacies.
And I will always be learning.
Healing. I am healing. And this one thing to excess I will always do - believe it possible to heal, and keep the lessons and the scars but not the symptoms, not the lashing out.
There is so much else that ran through my brain last night and this morning, the e-mail exchange with Red that reminded me of my first unconscious prejudices, the e-mail exchanges with Steven that somehow I always manage to learn something immense from, everytime I open my fingers to explain myself. Last night, when Arnaud read his signature quote over my shoulder and noticed that it was attributed to *ME*, the contempt-disguised awe in is voice shook me.
I remembered my first perusals of BBSes, seeing taglines and realizing that some men are great enough to be quoted and yearning to one day have words of great enough insight and importance for the same.
Only at the same time I was yearning for fame. Seeing my name in Steven's sig gave me something entirely different.
That I have said important things, become someone with the occasional worthwhile insights, that perhaps my manic years served to teach lessons that may have stretched far enough to be worth the painstaking relearning I am doing now.
That maybe, I've already said worthwhile things, maybe I don't need the fame or the narcicisstic belief that my meagre adolescent suffering guarantees my greatness.
Thank you Steven, David, everyone, and cf - for getting me to write it out over the past two years and pre-empt the need for a therapist...
(greatful how I have discovered my own staggeringly high tendencies towards a few things to set about repairing them myself. One at a time. In writing. In thinking. In admitting it to myself and setting about it an organized plan at a time)
You have taught me so much.
And I would go on, but I have already overdone it, started too many threads that perhaps don't need elaborating after all.
The pixies are playing on Paris' rock radio station and I have a resum� to transalte into well-spoken business english and there is a purring cat in my lap, film to drop off at the developper's, a parcel to fetch from la poste, and a few dishes left to wash from last night.
And perhaps if I take it slow enough, I will get it all done before the panic rises up and freezes my limbs to the floor.