When I'm home in California, I do the same types of things that I do when I'm home in Paris: I go to the pool; I cook spicy Mexican food with the radio turned up high; I do Yoga; I go out for coffee.But life is so different for the other "me"-- as Nancy Huston puts it in Nord Perdu--living on the other side of the Atlantic.
While the LA me enters empty swimming pools and square stucco coffee shops with quiet, coffee drinkers in khaki shorts politely typing on keyboards and sipping skinny lattés, the Paris me kicks though crowded pool traffic to be greeted by winking café waiters busy serving middle-aged women mid-morning chardonnay and working men stout pints of beer.
My two universes aren't completely parallel, though, because the two "me"s come together sometimes. Like in yoga class when my eyes are closed. Or when I bite into a really good veggie burrito. Then I can fade out the glittering ocean or sparkling Eiffel Tower; smiling, wide-eyed English voices and mischievous Parisian wiles--and just feel home.
Paul Hogan as Mick Dundee. [Online image] 1986.
