Dear April III: Easter

Dear April,

Today is Easter Sunday. It's one of my favourite holidays. But it's my favourite holiday for reasons that have been stripped from me this year. Family, seawall walks, an abundance of chocolate, a big roast dinner, curling up on the couch with a cup of tea and my favourite people in the world. Nevertheless, this easter proved to be amazing in its own way. Thank you for giving me that, April.

I awoke to a glorious 10 am after early morning shifts all week, and tore the brown paper from the package sent to me by my mum through my aunt. This is what was inside:

Brunch was a vegetarian croque madame (avocado, brie, and a bunch of other melty goodness wrapped in a chewy pastry), with a salad and the tastiest baked beans, and a pineapple and mint frappe from Tuck. April, I am learning how to go to cafes alone. I am learning how to be wedged between strangers wrapped up in their individual conversations, english on my left and french on my right. I am getting used to overhanging the lovers who twist their fingers around each other's, like the vines that crawl around the doorway. I am becoming accustomed to sipping drinks in solitude between lines of prose, between paragraphs scratched in my notebook. 

The canal was lovely today.

I saw Divergent after the canal, my next lesson in solitude. I've never seen a movie by myself before. It was a strange and wonderful experience. I had a faltering moment of crushing love for this city as I walked home. Paris, you will be sorely missed.

April, another skill I am learning is how to cook for myself. The fan blew the scent of curry out my open window as I simmered veggies and created a sort of alchemy in my tiny kitchen. There is a calming ritual in the preparation, in the consumption at my desk, staring out my tiny window into the parisian sky, my sixth floor view unobstructed, tegan and sara playing in the background as the notes of spice and aubergine dance on my tongue.

All in all, it was a pretty successful Easter, my family hundreds of miles away, my friends all dispersed around Europe on holiday. I am happy I have learned how to be okay with myself, by myself, but it is definitely a work in progress.

Love always, 

Coral

Dear April II: It Got Colder, Easter, Cafes and Canals

http://blog.freepeople.com/2014/03/monday-quote-awake/

Dear April,

I think you got a little carried away after my praise in my previous letter. You were frigid today, a mere five degrees this morning, and my sleep-deprived muscles seized up like they tend to do in November and I felt cheated by you. Easter is tomorrow. It's weird being away from home during a celebration so central to family and days spent at the beach hunting for tiny eggs wrapped in milticoloured tinfoil. But there is a tiny package wrapped in brown paper on my bed and that will suffice for my singularity this easter sunday. My friends have dispersed around Europe but I have refused to be lonely here, and I have devised a plan that makes my heart sing, which we will discuss tomorrow, April.

Today I painted easter eggs with watercolours and had a croissant for breakfast from my favourite bakery and a picnic for lunch with P. We huddled under a picnic blanket on metal chairs by the pond in the Tuileries and I read her Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aloud. We decorated her apartment for easter and listened to Of Monsters and Men.

After work I walked to the canal. I sighed into a chair by the window of my favourite cafe and read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close while sipping a marvelous chai tea latte and carving away at a gooey brownie aux noisettes.

The rain began to patter the street halfway through my cafe meditation and it brought a sincere happiness.

I don't mind if you rain, April.

Love always,
Coral

Dear April I: Tuck Shop, Canal St. Martin, and Ducklings

http://blog.freepeople.com/2014/04/monday-quote-breathings-heart/

April, you have been lovelier than I am used to. Back home I am constantly repeating the mantra of april showers bring may flowers, but this year, in Paris, you have been wonderful. An abundance of blooms in vast arrays of pinks and violets have graced the streets of this city I now call home. I have vowed to explore with a wider heart during these final two and a half months, and I believe I am succeeding.

Last weekend, a dear friend introduced me to a lovely cafe along Canal St. Marin called Tuck Shop. It is vegetarian and filled to the brim with muesli and quinoa. On Sunday I had bought a pineapple and mint frappe with my brownie but was disappointed to find out on this Thursday afternoon that those were a weekend specialty, and settled on a hibiscus iced tea instead. I will be returning here for breakfast soon, if not tomorrow, April. I sat in the sun on a wooden picnic table outside and sipped the tea while reading The Bell Jar. This place reminds me of home and I am still very far away, so little pieces of Vancouver-likeness are very welcome, even in the form of Australian-run vegetarian cafes.

I wandered over to the canal after purchasing a tiny box of raspberries for 2.95 and settled by the water to finish my book and do some writing. I was graced by the presence of two families of ducks, the ducklings peppering the green canal water with their tiny, fluffy bodies. I worried about the many cigarette butts, corks, and empty cans littering the stream and fished out a pop can to prevent any tiny heads from becoming ensnared. I hope people think of ducklings before discarding such harmful substances into the lovely canal.

April, you have brought with you an explosion of greenery and lined the canal with lush trees, overhanging their full boughs in archways of emerald over our heads as we sat in the tenth arrondissement of Paris.

You're halfway over, April, and I am shocked to the core by the speed of time. I only hope to be blessed with more days like today and yesterday (a picnic in the bois de boulogne) and Sunday (Tuck and an artists' collective) and Monday (the Marais and Le Loir dans la Theiere and lounding by the river and Lush and  huge bunches of lilacs bought by street vendors), sun-soaked and blissful.

Paris, je t'aime.

Love always,
Coral

On Self Love

This isn't something I usually touch on.

Perhaps I felt as though it were already receiving enough media attention, or perhaps I convinced myself my confidence is one hundred percent solid, that yes, I have flaws, but this isn't one of them. Perhaps I viewed myself as higher, as untouchable by the influences and regular abuses of the world against positive body image.

As it is, I am not. I am not above it. I am not above staring myself down in the mirror from time to time, searching out flaws like a bar code scanner that will not rest until it has accumulated a list of shortcomings so long it will take hours to forget. Hours to erase the value placed on my skin and bones due to its beauty or lack thereof.

As a dancer, I was never short of time spent eyeing myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors glued to an entire wall, sometimes multiple. Of course, these mirrors are in place for a reason, they are technical and necessary, and we could not improve without them. But staring at myself in these mirrors, day in and day out, distanced myself from my body in a way. I began to look at myself not as myself, a human being with flaws and inconsistencies, but as an object, as a masterpiece. As a painting, able to be brushed and sponged and washed into perfection. Altered so drastically from its naked shape that it would become unrecognizable, inhuman, machine-like. Legs must be stretched, waists must be tapered, rib cages must be narrowed, thighs must be lengthened. The list was infinitessimal, because once one shortcoming has been corrected, another would always come into view to replace it. And so it goes. There is a vulnerability in staring at your leotard-and-tights clad frame for hours on end, day in and day out.

This is what it was for me. For some people it is television, for some it is magazines. For some it is the opposite sex or even parents and guardians. For most, it is a wonderful conglomeration of all of the above. We internalize every word of every line of every article explaining why we are not enough and how we can fix it.

Except we can't fix it.

Because we are enough.

I will never forget the day I set out to consume a mere five hundred calories. I think I was fourteen. I will never forget the day someone told me to put my feet at hip width, and then together, and asked me if my thighs touched. So directly, as if I was ticking boxes on a medical chart. I will never forget the stomach-twisting anxiety over noticing an inch gained around my waist or my arms or my legs. I will never forget the times, at sixteen, when I placed my fingers in my throat and tried so hard to rid my body of the things it needed to exist.

We are taught to make our existence so tiny, smaller and smaller until the number on the scale reads a resounding and impossible zero, until our jeans are a double zero and until we are nothing more than the sum of our unsatisfactory parts.

But we are so much more than that.

I won't lie, I still stare at my body with disapproving eyes from time to time. I still am not confident enough to go completely bare faced (all though I have cut nearly everything from my usual long-winded routine). I am not above feeling sub-standard.

But that's the thing. It shouldn't be a battle. There shouldn't be a standard.

Today, one of my best friends posted an article on self-love. I encourage you to take some time, every day, to be thankful and appreciate your body and your entire being. I love my body for its ability to dance and to move. I am thankful for my senses and my completeness. I am thankful for my perfect heart and my healthy blood and my strong lungs. I appreciate my creativity and my thirst for knowledge and my open mind. I am thankful for my ability to write and read and create. And I try to remind myself of these things every time my eye catches a flaw in the mirror.

If you haven't heard it today, you are enough. You are loved, and you deserve to love yourself.

Think about what you love most about yourself, and share it in a comment if you feel so inclined. Maybe you'll inspire someone to think in the same way.

Love forever and always,
Coral

Sundays and Other Stories

I don't know what it was on Saturday, but I could not wait for the weekend (my weekend is Sunday and Monday). It was to the point where every five seconds I had to envision the two days of freedom ahead and plan, in detail, what I would fill those 48 hours with. Yesterday marked 90 days left in my Parisian adventure (I know, right?!?!), and I promised myself I would carpe that diem and not let another weekend slip by under my duvet watching Scandal (can we please have a moment for that show). I think I've been so exhausted after late night metro rides home from midnight shift ends, that come the weekend, I can't seem to drag myself into the hustle and bustle of Paris on the weekend in the spring.

Sunday turned out to be the most marvelous of days. It all began with a picture-taking stroll around Le Marais with Lorena, after she had so very kindly given me two rolls of 36 exposure film. I loaded my Canon FTb hungrily, after having not used it since September. Film is crazy expensive here. We walked through St. Paul, me snapping away, until we arrived at Republique. With Lorena on the hunt for the metro, we found the Marche des Enfants Rouges, which I've been meaning to get to forever (a phrase I find myself using more often than I'd like to admit).

After bidding Lorena farewell, I got a bus to St. Germain and strolled through the sixieme to St. Sulpice, a beautiful church surrounded by a lovely square with a huge fountain complete with fleeing pigeons and poetic looking people sitting around its edge.

After walking along Boulevard St. Germain and snapping some pics of Cafe de Flore and wishing I was a French socialite, I settled on churros and took a half an hour bus to the Bois de Vincennes, a beautiful wood in eastern Paris where I like to go to de-citify my brain and breathe in some earthy, oxygenated air. I found Lac Daumesnil and sat beneath a cherry blossom tree, whereupon I dove into The Bell Jar and felt quite at ease.

Upon arriving back in my apartment, I made myself an actual meal of spinach curry (not completely from scratch but hey, it's better than noodles), and skyped with my bff back home, during which we debated the merits of a toaster versus a skillet set versus a knife set and I was very, very happy.

Today, I ventured to Poissoniers to drop off my film at Negatif+, a photo shop which develops film and gives you a CD and prints for 14 euros. Not as good as walmart, but better than FNAC no doubt. They won't be ready until tomorrow evening right when I have to pick P up from school. Of course. I must be getting more accustomed to the inconvenience of this country because the 30 odd hour delay didn't vex me as much as it would have in September. But god, walmart is going to be nice to return to. Seriously people, walmart is a very underrated entity.

Armed with my more convenient digital camera, I took the metro from Gare du Nord to St. Michel, where I found Abbey Bookshop.

Okay. So. Abbey Bookshop is basically my Canadian Shakespeare and Company. It is a tiny, ramshackle bookstore tucked away on Rue de la Parcheminerie. I didn't notice it at first, its entry covered in books spilling from cardboard boxes, a Canadian flag floating in the breeze above the doorway. But oh, how lovely it was. I will let the photos speak for themselves, but all you need to know is that it's run by a Canadian, it's lovely and narrow and filled to the brim with every kind of book you could wish for (in English), and it serves free coffee which is rumored to be infused with maple syrup. I found a Lonely Planet travel guide to British Coumbia and broke into a wide grin as I scanned the section on Vancouver. Man, I am excited to be home in three months.

After leaving the shop, I strolled through the quartier latin to arrive back at St. Sulpice.

A lovely little church by the shop

I spent the rest of my afternoon reading more Sylvia in Place St. Sulpice as the lazy afternoon sun beat down on my shoulder. I leaned against the fountain, the book I had bought from Shakespeare and Co. back in September propped against my knees as I glanced up to people-watch from time to time.

There was a thunderstorm when I got home.

It was a good weekend.

Film photos to come soon (tomorrow hopefully).

Love always, miss you all.

Coral