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Published: November 16th 2006
It was early in the morning. A black sheen glared into my eyes under the mellow lit lamps. Their yellow cast stretched over a moistened street from the evening’s dew where shadows continued to play in frozen momentum. With unseen grace, the figures within their alternate world crept infinitesimally upon the asphalt. It was an easterly direction where shops were grated and the
boulangeries, patisseries and
brasseries were dark with their interiors. The sun was yet to rise.
Within the early hours of the city, only the busying street cleaner in baggy green jumpers with a green wiry broom stirred his puddles with intention. Streams of water rose from flooding drains; the liquid bubbled and gurgled, assisting the balayeur’s routine, and as my fellow morning birds and I stepped over the collecting pools, his lips whistled to an internal melody. Paris slowly woke before me as my feet rose to new beginnings.
Carrying The Keys In the stark hours of day, tightened with the sky’s dark cold, I found that within the playing shadows and the flowing rivers I shared a commonality with this street cleaner, or
balayeur. He had a key to his day. I had a
key to mine. He, before the traffics of persons and motors crowded the boulevards; he—the workman—turned the switches to release a momentum of force. It assisted him. It cleared the side alleys and carried away the waste of yesterday’s time. The water came up from below, bubbled and gurgled to the surface, and washed away the filth compiled.
And what could I possibly relate with this system?
My mind young—my spirit awake with the new scenes, adventures, ideas and moments through time—now delves into the undertakings of another language. It has been swept through with an abundance of experience, emptied and reinforced with passion and the thrill of potentiality.
My mind is cleansed.
The streets are cleansed.
I have purpose and reason to carry my desires.
The workman in his jumpers, prepared with his broom, carries out his duty. He scours the asphalt with that rainbow sheen; one of a denser waste then the paper trash and cigarette butts afloat.
The mind harbors intention. The
balayeur harbors his intention. Each cleanses to thence create room for the masses. It is a system interrelated in the abstract whole of the Universe. It is a
vast opening for potential.
My pocket watch read 6:59. I was on my way, through the sweeping roads and ebony curbs, to my first French language class with the keys in my hand.
Seeing Through the Ages of Life Keeping this momentum of fluidity, my thoughts fled passed the experiences in twenty-two years of living. They raced through the adulesence and razed the stages of feeling lost. They entered a youth of innocence where school was play and classes were intriguing among the many stories never-before heard and the illustrated tales never-before seen.
The mind was a moment of classroom education where we were all young, free and open to the world. We were there with anticipation. And likewise, our friends were there. They sat next to us. They wanted to be there because we were there. We wanted to be there because they were there.
I remember outside, the air cool and crisp—wholesome and untainted from the day’s busy exhaust. Similarly, the sun had yet shone its face; it was yet to cast its lucid rays through the canopies’ greenery. Years back, I stood waiting for the bus, or I rode with the wind
in my face, steering my bicycle off dirt jumps and risen slabs of concrete. I even walked alongside my sister. We were quiet in the birthing morning as adults emerged from their lighted doorways, collecting newspapers or leaving off for work. We were school children, heading into our education.
This memory struck me that morning in Paris. I was on the street at twenty-two years of age, and despite this presence, at that moment I was away, starry-eyed and wide in distant memories where my youth took me from a mother’s womb and implanted me upon this planet: I was young. I was buried beneath an oversized backpack. It carried few books, a binder and a brown paper lunch sack with the treasures of a mother’s homemade sandwich.
Now here I was, across the globe in France, walking Paris:
I was older, but I wasn’t.
I was different, but the same.
I was that same child of youth, eager for the day ahead, but I wasn’t learning math, American history, crafts, or English. No, I was learning French.
Turning the Key: Boy, to Man, to Student and Back It was a fifty-minute walk
from the place I call home to class. But time went without notice because I was in Paris living abroad and attending the
Accord French Language School. I was in transition in a life of travel, taking time to undergo the education of a foreign language. Never before had I studied French. Never before had I spoken a complete sentence. It was of utter originality. I was returning to my youth.
In this homecoming, as the mind was young and fluid, I suddenly no longer remembered who I was. With the fluency of the conscience—where I came from, what it meant and how it all came to be on this street within Paris—it was absurdly visionary. I returned to youth to have it all erased with a snap of the fingers. The street cleaner inserted his key and turned the switch:
A boy; he blurred in the daylight, drifted into the deep night and then rose anew, brave and courageous, yet as unsure of himself as one blind man feeling the trunk of the elephant and another feeling the animal’s leg.
Lin Yu-t’ang wrote of life’s journey:
A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going, and a perfect traveler is one who does not know where he came from.
Absence of boyhood struck me. It was like I instantaneously
engendered into human form; something coming from nothing. Uncomforting, I felt like digging into the air, turning to the worker-man to probe him with personal queries. I quenched to switch on a screen in search of a trace of my past—of the elements of a mother and a sister who accompanied and nurtured me.
In my mind, the family tree was winterized. It was bare, stark-naked like a corpse prepared for burning. Upon the pyre, with the persistence of the flames, images and—more importantly—feelings began to resurface.
Reconnecting & Returning: An Ageless Time With the passing of time as the day began, little peculiar memories appeared like odd seating arrangements in open space. They were like waves crashing on the shore from a ship’s wake when not a single vessel was in sight. They were like tracks in the sand on a deserted beach.
From my present being, from the Cameron Karsten I knew at that moment, that boy was a mirage of youthfulness in a world now dominated by responsibility toward future goals. But he appeared.
The boy was chubby, goofy, determined and full of strength. He liked silence, but sought rough terrain with
the prospects of risk. Stealthy, but too clumsy for his hidden desires, the boy found the woods and soil as a playground where rocks could be hurdled and trees climbed. I fancied him on my walk. I fancied his freedom. Then, I suddenly connected the past to the present.
The boy was hurdling rocks, he was climbing trees and discovering new modes of adventure, of risk and stealthy suspense. He now added flight, flight of passion and the ardor of determinacy to progress in a stagnant world of personal development. Within me, through the paths and trails of experience; school with the brown paper sack, to the road-trips and cages of reptiles and amphibians, I quaked to fly higher. I yearned to soar deeper and further into the very passion of Soul.
Returning to Paris that morning, I stepped through the doorway and entered the school.
From within, the boy smiled at me as the street cleaner swept on. Both visions were clearing; the face and the surfaces smoother, with a thickly row of whitened teeth, shining asphalt, a crystalline gaze of blue eyes and the light of the sun peering above the horizon.
A wink
clarified my unknowing. It was an assurance about being where I am with who I am and not requiring anything else to substitute. I didn’t know where I was going, except in that present moment. I had not a clue as to what would be waiting for me and how I would react to a new language. I only wished to suck it in with cyclonic force. So I brought all my Self and Soul with an abundance of passion into the classroom. Boy, man and l’etudiant merged as one, carrying the keys for the rest of a lifetime.
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Becky Stracener
non-member comment
Wow
Cameron, you are an amazing photographer. You could be published if you ever choose that. And your insights are beautiful. Thanks for bringing us along with you on your travels. Its a gift. Becky