Existentialism Explained

Misdiagnosis of the day: Liver cancer.

Actual affliction: Minor lower back pain

Duration of orthopedic condition: 30 years

Time spent worrying about cancer: 2 hours

Ratio of reality to fantasy: 101,400:1

Conclusion: I'm a fucking baboon.

Yesterday I didn't leave the apartment. S has gone to Germany to explore and I stayed in Paris because I love the city and wanted to do some walking/writing/reading/isolating. I listened to music, read an early novel by Sartre, browsed the news, ate a salad. By 9 p.m. I had decided that I'd wasted my life, the news was dismal, I ate too much, and Avant Garde jazz was making me jittery. The Sartre was terrific, though. In 1964 he became the only person to refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is a great novelist and philosopher and I've been deeply caught up in his “Roads to Freedom” trilogy. It's an extraordinary literary experience, but I wonder if perhaps I've been influenced by his occasionally dark observations and malaise. Was I suffering from a case of unconscious existential anxiety.

I went to bed at midnight determined to awaken early. Early, in Paris, is between 8 and 9 a.m. The sun doesn't come up until then, the construction next door doesn't begin until 8:30 and the only people on the streets are those who look like they're just getting home. Nothing opens before 10. I've shifted easily into a Parisian schedule, but most mornings I have to set my alarm for 8 o'clock just in case the guys next door don't show up due to a strike or surprise holiday and the muffled pounding of hammers doesn't reach through the wall and provoke me into semi-consciousness. I've learned to appreciate their efforts. In a city this old, there is constant rebuilding and restoration. I'm glad they care.

This morning the unseen workmen were right on time and by 9:15 I was dressed and ready to leave, feeling good, feeling rested, preparing to overcome the previous day's indolence and get involved in Life, goddamnit.

I hit the street at 10-ish and decided that I'd walk to the bookstore near the Concorde. I'd ordered “Iron in the Soul”, the last of the Sartre trilogy, and they'd sent me a text informing me that the book had arrived. It would be a good hike, three urban miles from Le Marais, through dark alleyways, past drunks and beggars, along the lovely and picturesque Seine, into the courtyard of the Louvre and the length of the Tuilleries; the weather was dry and cool and I was sure that I'd feel better, active and oxygenated, from a good brisk walk.

I was right. Nothing like a little exercise for a welcomed re-set of all psychic and physical levels. I stopped in the gardens half-way through the Tuilleries and had a coffee. At Place de la Concorde I crossed the street and entered the bookstore on Rue de Rivoli. It wasn't too crowded and I browsed the shelves for a few minutes.

I am a big fan of another famous and important French writer named Alain Robbe-Grillet. He is one of the originators of the Nouveau Roman, a radical modern approach to the novel and I'm astounded by his writing. It's strange, disturbing, but also hypnotic and brilliant. I've looked for his book, “The Voyeur”, but haven't been able to find it. I didn't see it on the shelf so I decided to ask if they had a copy.

The severe, thick-browed short woman at the information desk ignored me for a few minutes while she pretended to look at her computer screen. That's cool, I'm used to it, all French service personnel ignore everyone for a while, French, American, Italian, everyone, just to let the customer know who's in charge. I get it. I've learned to be patient while being disregarded. Fine by me.

She eventually looked up, glanced away from me and said, in English, “Yes?”

I asked for “The Voyeur” by Alain Robbe-Grillet. She immediately corrected my pronunciation, but started tapping on her keyboard.

“No.”

“No? No what? You haven't got it or you won't give it to me?” A bit prickly, but I was starting to feel a tweak in my lower back, on the left side. A wave of concern washed over me.

What the hell is that pain, I asked myself?

“We haven't had that book in the store for four years.”

I placed my hand on my left flank, massaged my lumbar area, searching for a tumor, a tender spot, inflammation. I wonder if it's cancer? I hadn't thought about cancer for several weeks and was dismayed that it, the thought, had come back. I had hoped it was in remission.

The store had not had a single copy of a book by one of France's most celebrated modern novelists in four years. I would have engaged her in critical conversation, but I was preoccupied by physical discomfort and a growing cancer scare. I shrugged, which is an acceptable mode of conversation in Paris; it communicates all manner of dismay, disapproval and sarcasm. I'm getting good at it.

To obtain the book I'd ordered, the Sartre, I had to go upstairs, down a long hall, turn left and wander around a poorly-lit room until I saw a desk designated “Customer Orders.” It was staffed by a woman who resembled her counterpart at the Information Desk; short, stocky, unhappy. She was on the phone. I pressed my thumb deeply into the area below my bottom rib, probing.

I waited, with increasing concern regarding my medical status, for a full six minutes before she ended her call. She was speaking French, but I've learned enough of the language to know when someone is making lunch plans with a friend. I lapsed into my reverie, recounting all of my acquaintances who have died of cancer in the past forty years.

Finally, she asked, in English, what I wanted. I told her my name and the title of the book I'd ordered. I could see it on the shelf but she kept going past it. I directed her, in my rudimentary French. “A gauche”, I said, and she went too far. “ A droit.”

After some time she found it and placed it on the counter.

“Twenty-seven euros.”

I knew the price when I'd ordered it a week ago, but Jesus Christ, that is thirty-four dollars. All the books here are terribly overpriced. The same book, titled “Troubled Sleep” in an English version, is fourteen dollars from Amazon. As a bit of an obsessive-compulsive reader, I had to have it, can't get American Amazon to work here, so I paid my twenty-seven euros and left the store. I wondered if I'd be able to make it home; the sharp pain in my back became worse with every euro I spent, every person I bumped into on the street, every instance of neglect I experienced from a clerk. I decided to take the metro. The Concorde station is right outside the bookstore and goes directly to my block. I got on the train, stood against the rear door and felt massaged by the gently rocking car. I kept my eyes straight ahead, looking at my reflection in a window across the aisle. Cancer. That man has cancer. That man is me. C'est moi.

I felt very existential. Deep underground in a rattling train filled with other insignificant creatures, on my way to an empty apartment, over-charged, under appreciated, contemplating my own obscurity, doomed, diseased, barely sentient.

As I exited the St. Paul metro I saw that “Aux Desirs de Manon”, the local, spectacular boulangerie, was opened and I stood in line for a baguette. While waiting among the well behaved patrons, examining the colorful, delicious pastries, inhaling the aroma of fresh bread, I remembered that I might have cancer but, miraculously, it was no longer troubling me. While climbing the stairs to the apartment I recalled that, for thirty years, I've had a chronic back problem and once or twice a week it gives me some discomfort. It comes upon me, and it goes away. It always has. My first thought, even after all these years, is catastrophic. Cancer. Cirrhosis. Emphysema, Aneurysm, Kidney Stones, Ebola.

I know that chronic back pain affects the majority of adults. Most times, there is no definite cause. It starts, it stops. Following a lazy day of indolence and morbid self-reflection, it is no surprise that it manifested after a long walk in a busy city and being overcharged by an unattractive, disrespectful clerk. The cure was a short ride on a crowded yet efficient transport system and the purchase of fresh bread.

I spend a lot of time alone and I've been told I think too much, which is bullshit. I'm just glad I don't have cancer, today, and I'm really looking forward to digging deeper into existentialism. I've got the book and the baguette. What could go wrong?