Blog #2, July 17, 2021
Jim's Musings from Paris
Wednesday was July 14, Bastille Day, the French national holiday of independence. The day commemorates the storming of the Bastille, a fortress that served as a prison at the time of the revolution in 1789, and the overthrow of the French aristocracy. Our new apartment, which we move into in two weeks, is across the street from the Jardin de la Folie-Titon. Supposedly, the revolution began at a factory once located where the park now stands, when the owner decided it made economic sense to lower the workers’ wages. The riots that broke out, in March 1789, slowly made their way toward the Bastille over the next five months culminating in the capture of the building on July 14. This slow journey towards revolution and change reminds me of our own slow journey towards Paris and our new home across from the Jardin de la Folie-Titon.
On 15 July 2020, The University of Akron abruptly ended my tenure as Professor of Theatre based on a bogus declaration of force majeure, dismantled the Theatre Program, and unceremoniously forced me into an earlier retirement than I had planned. Our personal and professional lives were upended. The fact that the world was in the middle of a pandemic helped lessen the blow somewhat because everyone’s lives were in a state of change and uncertainty. But, in a very short time, we had to move my mother to South Bend to be near my older brother, sell our much-loved house on Overwood Road, and organize the succession of CATAC, the non-profit we had built and managed over three decades.
Finally arriving to Paris after the last year of non-stop turbulence has allowed me to take some deep breaths. The tiny apartment with the bright green cabinets across from the Jardin de la Folie-Titon promises exactly this space to breathe. As we gallantly make our way through the famous French bureaucracy of telephone companies and internet set up and electricity and insurance and rendezvous after rendezvous, I know that soon I will have a place to call my own again where we can grow some plants and cook some dinners, entertain friends and family, and offer shelter to those from afar. It’s a much smaller place than what we had in Akron. We have gone from 2100 square feet to about 700 square feet. But it will be a place of love and laughter and Léo (our grandson). A place from which I can stand on the balcony, look across the street where the revolution began, and stir the embers of my own revolution, the personal revolution that Jim Morrison, whose grave is a mere mile from the apartment, speaks about:
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.”
― Jim MORRISON
We have taken the first steps. Now on to the Bastille!
