What Moving Really Means
by Elena Chen
Two months ago I started a new job at a restaurant that I really wanted to work at and have been crushing on since the first time I saw it. It is a small, quaint and very French bistroesque resto that offered so much promise compared to the place I was working at before it. I applied, thinking very little of my chances of working there, and got the position as host. It was exciting for me because I had never properly worked as a host before and never at a place so in keeping with what I wanted from a workplace. The staff is so friendly and wonderful, they have an ethos of serving really good food and it has a general handmade-DIY attitude that I love. The chef and co-owner designs, creates and cooks the menu (with the amazing back of house team) and his wife and co-owner puts together the flower arrangements, ceramic dishware and finishing interior touches. In one week, I will be leaving this restaurant, the lovely people there, and the country. This is the reality of moving. It is saying goodbye as a reflex and learning to never stay still. Staying still is the cost of experiencing difference and I suppose I have always chosen the latter.
When I first moved to LA, I told myself I would try and make roots here. Somewhere. Anywhere. Before arriving in California, I had moved continents once a year for the last five years. It was especially disorienting because they weren’t necessarily new places, just with new people. I would shuffle back and forth between Shanghai and London and then find myself needing to make new friends and routines. Making friends in your 20s has proven harder than I imagined. Without enduring the same, monotonous and often tedious schedules of school life, most people just don’t have as much to feel connected over except with their jobs. Even as I started working again after I settled more into life here, I made some friendships but they were mostly superficial gossip sessions. The truth about the move is that I’m doing it for a city and I’m doing it for love. I feel particularly bittersweet about this move because I seem to be finally setting in some roots with friends, a job, and crochet/fiber opportunities but we’re moving. Of all places, I’m moving to Paris, the most romantic place I’ve ever been to, that I once vowed to live in before I turned thirty.
When I started studying French a year ago, I really did not believe that I would be moving to France. It felt like a good skill to acquire and I liked learning languages and French culture is so rich it was fascinating to get a peek into it. Now that boxes are turning up, furniture is disappearing and unseen flooring is revealing itself, it’s all becoming real. I’m actually going to move to a country where I won’t speak the language fluently and where I really don’t know anyone apart from the people I’ve known through my partner. Whilst I’ve moved many times before, to different countries where I didn’t know anyone, I’ve never lived in a place where I don’t fully understand the language.
Everything is going to change when we move, including our relationship, and my relationship to myself. I don’t know that it’s going to be as glorious as I hope it will be. That’s the whole point of moving as well, it’s to see how I’m going to fare with this new place. How is this city that has been so written about, so longed for and so romantically etched into our modern collective consciousness going to treat me? 🔮
I have learned a few things from moving so much though, and there are some things that stay the same no matter where you are. I will have to get a phone sim, open a bank account, and find my favorite grocers. I will have to speak with strangers, ask for help and venture out of my comfort zone. I will have to be a student again and learn about all the ways in which feeling lost can be at once an orientational and a metaphysical issue. So many people hear “Paris” and follow up with: “Are you excited to be moving there?” with the full expectation that I simply respond “Yes”. I think the romanticization of Paris is largely warranted and it is an incredibly beautiful city.
It is also a lot of fun. But I know what lies ahead will be a lot of very practical, bureaucratic and tedious tasks to overcome my status as a foreigner and my still rudimentary understanding of French. Paris is also a rainy, cloudy and cold city. Compared to the sunny California climate that I have grown too attached to for my own good. I relish in the fact that the most consistent part of my day is expecting a generally warm, sun-lit day with the occasional chance of cloud and even rarer instance of rain. This helps my mental health, it helps me stay motivated and helps with the photography I have to do for my small business. Everything is going to change when we move, including our relationship, and my relationship to myself. I don’t know that it’s going to be as glorious as I hope it will be. That’s the whole point of moving as well, it’s to see how I’m going to fare with this new place. How is this city that has been so written about, so longed for and so romantically etched into our modern collective consciousness going to treat me? We’ll have to see, nowhere is perfect. I haven’t ruled out moving again after several years. I actually have a romanticized notion of living in Thailand or Vietnam. Saying goodbye has become inherent to my lifestyle. It’s something that I’ve grown accustomed to. The bike I’ve been riding almost every day to work, isn’t mine anymore. These sights and smells that I’ve learned to associate with home are going to change. The beauty is having so many things to call home.
So many familiarities that nostalgically crest over my memories. It’s not wistful to feel longing if it’s part of the parcel of trying to live as many lives, meeting as many people, forging as many memories as possible. I will surely reminisce over the delicious meals at those restaurants and bars.
I am certain that when I get a whiff of a certain perfume and it will bring me back to Los Angeles, or London, or Shanghai. It’s quite a beautiful experience and one unique to our era. Why not take advantage?
