Four Things I Never Travel To Paris Without

the universe, not the devil, lies in the details

I did a writing consultation this week, and one of the things we discussed is how the universal lies in the niche. This is something I talk about in the personal essay workshops I do (the next one is in October). So often writers, particularly women, are encouraged to be relatable. When I was working on the proposal for No One Tells You This, I was cautioned many times, and then asked during editorial meetings, how this book would be “relatable.” What they really meant was, how can you make your story less rare, or more attainable, or some nonsense like that.

I think relatability is bullshit. I do not read cooking memoirs, or surfing memoirs, or memoirs about flying across the ocean in a small plane in the 1930’s because I want to relate to the experience. I want to the writer to allow me to experience something with them that I may otherwise have no access to. The goal is to tell an honest, engaging, story. And part of that, a large part, is in the granular detail. The more specific you are the more the reader will be able to travel with you, and see themselves in your travel, even if your travel is on the top of a hundred foot wave.

I bring this up, because this week I suddenly ran out, or am running out, of three of the four items I never travel without and I was thinking about what these items say about where I am, and who I am, at this stage of life.

I also never travel without my bike helmet. I see so many of them on the road now! This wasn’t always the case, but Paris has become a BIKING city. With my all-the-way-through New Yorker heart, I wish Zohran even a modicum of the impact Anne Hidalgo has had here. Mayors are important!

I write about Joan Didion’s in/famous White Album packing list in ENJOY, and the ways in which replicating it keeps certain corners of the internet running. In ENJOY, mine was a long (long) list of all the things I’d brought with me on that trip because after a year-and-a-half alone, I no longer had a strong sense of who I was, so I packed all the versions of me.

I packed quite light for this trip to Paris, especially considering it spans three seasons (summer, fall, and the transition), plus The Blue Hour Paris Workshop. But the best laid plans (packing cubes)! Now, quite suddenly, I find myself without.

Sania Vucetaj eye brow pencil. I profiled Sania for the New York Times last year (I still hear about this piece on the regular). Since then I have literally not left home without one of her eyebrow pencils. Like, I don’t walk across the Park to have drinks without one in my pocket. (I’ve gifted them to friends here in Paris, who are now equally obsessed, so it’s not just me.) I sacrificed my eyebrows to the cult of Carolyn Bessette more than 25 years ago, along with many others. Why? What was 23 year old me trying to access through CBK’s eyebrows? The older I get I realize it was some version of New York City that she personified and I couldn’t otherwise articulate. It’s a weird memorial to a silent person’s legacy but here we are…eyebrowless. I packed TWO of them for this trip, and this week they both ran out at the same time. Not exactly an emergency on the scale of this past week in the world, but not insignificant in the world of me preparing a face to meet the faces that I meet.

(North) American deodorant. French deodorant does not contain all the chemicals American brands do. At least, this is what I was led to believe the summer I was here and forgot mine at home, and picked some up at the pharmacy…and then spent weeks sniffing under my own arms confirming that, yes, that smell was in fact me. Fewer chemicals is presumably a good thing. But whew. I actually packed a brand new Secret this trip, but it’s one of those soft solid ones that you twist up, and it’s already about to run out. (If you are a person in Paris reading this, and have some inside knowledge about better brands I should know about, please advise!) It is a reminder, however, of how inured we’ve become (in more ways than just this) to the natural state of our bodies. I spoke with Zerlina Maxwell this week for her radio show, and I was recounting the starvation of touch during Covid. But also the strange experience of not smelling people, and not being smelled, how dehumanizing it was.

Massage ball. Yes, it’s come to this. I’ve reached the age where if I don’t do 25 minutes* of stretching every morning I will be hobbled for the rest of the day. (*the length of The Daily, which I often listen to against my better judgement, but here we are). I can sometimes get away with two days off, but on the third…hello Hunchback of Notre Dame. The issue is a weak TFL, which is many of our issues. It’s weak because my glutes are weak. And my glutes are weak because we all sit too much. And when you sit too much and then stand up suddenly and walk a lot it’s bad for your TFL (this is a good time to remind you I am not a doctor!), which triggers hip problems and knees problems and turns you into a person who needs the railing to go up and down stairs, among many other things. The longterm solution, I’m assured, it glute strengthening exercises (glute decisions!). The short is to release the TFL with a tennis/massage ball. The immediate relief is nothing short of magic (intense magic sometimes!). My massage ball is actually a Petanque ball I picked up one year on our way to the island out of desperation, but it works and now it lives in my travel backpack.

Patyka Élixir Nuit Régénérant I’ve written about this before. It was once suggested to me by one of the attendants at Citypharma and I haven’t been without it since. I didn’t actually forget to pack it, I brought one that was nearly done because I usually restock here. And now I can’t find it anywhere! Has it been discontinued? Quelle horreur. One of the defining experiences of our time must be the constantly shifting, destabilizing, nature of literally everything. Companies and corporations are forever updating things under the guise of improvement; email inboxes change, social media shifts, algorithms reprioritize, the truth loses its truthfulness, your favorite red lipsticks are continually discontinued. Anyway, I’m going to try a Caudalie night oil…stay tuned.

Speaking of Citypharma, Joanna Scutts and I stopped by there the other day after lunch, and a lovely young woman told me that if you use Micellar Water to clean your skin and remove make-up (which I do!) you should always use a toner after, because otherwise the Micellar Water will continue to work and dry your skin out. New information for me! Also, my skin is always deadly dry in Paris…in part, I think, because the water is harder here (“does New York City really have the best water in the world?” the lovely Citypharma attendant asked me. “It has the best of everything,” responded the unrepenting NYC junkie that I am)(it actually does have excellent water). She also remarked that the Caudalie Vinoperfect Glycolic Peel Mask (another fave of mine) gives your skin the “Bride’s Blush.” Isn’t that delightful?

Some links

I appeared on the Boy Sober podcast talking my favorite subject: Knowing what you want! It was a really fun conversation.

Suddenly, it seems like everyone is talking about hair loss in women. Speaking of unruly bodies! Here are some solutions.

“What if I were that person? Where would I be going? What will the world think of me?” I had the great fortune to grow up in the Toronto area in the Eighties on a regular dose of Jeanne Beker’s Fashion Television, which is to say, I am not a person who ever approaches fashion with the attitude that it should be practical (or relatable!). Still, I thought this suggestion from WaPo critic Rachel Tashjian was a terrific distillation of how to approach “fashion” and also plenty of other things you might find yourself questioning the value of.

“It is rude of me to say all of this, because we live in a culture where manners are often valued more than truth….There is no requirement to take part in this whitewashing campaign, and refusing to join in doesn’t make anyone a bad person.”