My Parisian life of dog poop and glamour
Wherever I have gone, life is still life
Catch a boat to England baby
Maybe to Spain
Wherever I have gone
Wherever I've been and gone
Wherever I have gone
The blues are all the same
—Jackson C. Frank, Blues Run the Game
When I think about how other people might view the trajectory of our lives over the past several years I think: Huh?
I mean, we moved from Durango to Sofia, Bulgaria. Then, after almost going to Santiago, Chile, we opted, instead, to head for the olive groves, tsipouro, and sardines of rural Greece. After a year of sparkling Aegean sunshine we have now landed in … Paris?!
Wait. What?
I suppose for those who don’t know us very well we may seem like cosmopolitan jet-setters living a life of glamour.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Glamorous? Umm, sure, if glamour includes reassuring old Parisian ladies (pas l’inquiet!) that our Greek rescue dog (Molie) is not going to gobble up (Elle est gentil!) their miniature schnauzers while I’m down on my knees on a Parisian sidewalk picking up a steaming, stinking pile of the mutt’s copious poop while the other dog tugs erratically on the leash in an attempt to escape a killer awning.
Killer awning? Yes. See, the Bulgarian stray (Lada) has le grande peur of boats, umbrellas, awnings, street signs, and just about everything else except for cars and buses, which she darts out in front of in order to escape all those other things she is afraid of. I suppose she may be picking up on my anxieties when it comes to trying to speak French or properly pronouncing “croissant” or really interacting with any human beings in any big city, especially one where the folks who work the garbage trucks are ten times more faconnable than I ever could be.
Every morning we head out at 7 a.m., in the dark, to take the dogs on a run-walk to the park nearby, dodging various obstacles along the way. Then we come home, Wendy goes to work at her school, and I go to work
in our 330-square-foot apartment that is in a sort of brick, sunless hole: I occasionally can see the sun shining tantalizingly on the apartments above us, but it never reaches our windows.
Mornings are a frantic scurry to get my High Country News and Land Desk work done before 1 p.m., when I begin the two-hour frenzy to gather and compile Western energy items for the Energy News Network’s daily newsletter. Did I say I drink coffee? I do. Black tea, also. And sometimes dark chocolate.
Wendy comes home around 5 p.m., which is my signal to end my workday, or at least pause, so we can take the dogs out again. What should be a leisurely stroll is fraught with peril, from haughty, well-dressed people who turn up their noses at our street dogs, to well-dressed people who turn up their noses at my style, to well-dressed people who just, well, turn up their noses. And then there are the metal construction grates along the sidewalks on one of the streets we go down. Lada’s terrified of them, meaning Wendy has to walk her in the street, itself. Lada likes to poop in the middle of this particular street. It’s also a busy street, car-wise, which often means Wendy has to clean up the poop then dive out of the way to avoid getting creamed by a bus.
Eventually we get to the dog park, or the Petit Ceinture (little belt) of the 16th Arrondissement. It’s a segment of a former rail or tram line and is long and narrow, fenced in, lined by trees, and one of the few places we can let the dogs off the leash without worrying about them running into traffic. In the afternoons it’s crowded with other dogs. Molie, a canine socialite, loves it; Lada not so much. Sometimes Molie loves it too much, and in her eagerness to get some haute couture designer dog to play with her she gets a little aggressive, which upsets the owner, who screams and yells and later can be seen inspecting his dog’s well-groomed coat for nicks or blemishes for which we certainly will have to pay. That’s when we leave. Quickly.
I am so grateful for remote work and the ability to do Western U.S. journalism from Europe. At the same time, it can sometimes be taxing. We arrive home from the dog park shenanigans at about the exact time my U.S. colleagues are getting into the office and just when I’m ready for my first glass of Bordeaux, the emails and Slack messages start pouring in, I remember that I have scheduled a meeting or interview at 7 p.m. my time, and my second work day begins.
No, this isn’t a pity party. Far from it. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people in the world to have been able to be so mobile, to live in places I never even really imagined traveling to. It can be a little whiplash inducing. And the culture shock and climate shock and landscape shock can be acute, but a good glass of wine and some gooey French cheese makes it all a bit better. And, sure, Paris is glamorous—I’ve learned via the New York Times that Fashion Week is playing out in odd ways just around the corner—but living here doesn’t make my life any more so. I firmly believe that my glamour peak occurred in 1997 when we were living in Silverton, Colorado.
Whether in Paonia or Paris, Sofia or Silverton, life is life wherever you are—the food’s just better in some places. You still gotta wake up and put your culottes on one leg at a time; the work never stops; nor does the dog poop. As Jackson Frank put it: “Wherever I’ve been and gone, wherever I have gone, the blues are all the same.”
