"Unsolicited Advice for the End of Times"
by Gracie Bialecki
In 2012, the Mayans predicted the end of the world, I graduated from college and moved to New York to be a writer, and the bookseller Michael Seidenberg began writing a monthly column for The New Inquiry called “Unsolicited Advice for Living in the End Times.” I’d discovered Brazenhead Books, the salon and bookstore Michael ran out of his apartment, during his brief writing stint, and I still remember his one sentence pitch for the column: “It’s short and has pictures.” He told this to anyone who listened, shrugging and raising his bushy eyebrows, as if to say, “What’s to lose?”
As I became a Brazenhead regular, I realized he was right about having nothing to lose and started to read the column. Just like he said, they were short and had pictures, but were also full of wisdom wrapped in layers of funny. Michael’s humor was ever present, in his way of being, as well as his writing, and even if the column seemed lighthearted, what he said had a way of sinking in and staying. Later when I was his assistant, I republished the full collection of his columns on Brazenhead’s website. At the end of his first year, he wrote:
“I don’t want to get all Baba Ram Dass-y on you, but the sage’s great advice to “be here now” was never more timely. Because when now becomes later, you won’t get to be here then.”
When I lived in New York, I made a conscious decision to spend as much time as possible with Michael, and after I moved to Paris, we maintained our deep friendship over email and phone. He was an open-hearted encyclopedia of cultural knowledge and hilarious New Yorker stoicism, and the hours we spent together helped me become the writer and human I am today.
Michael passed away from heart complications last July, and there are times when I want nothing more than to have another rambling conversation with him. Last week, when President Macron announced France’s mandatory minimum fifteen day confinement, with the police issuing tickets if you’re outside without a signed attestation, I turned to Michael’s writing to see what he had to say about the End of Times.
In an early column, Michael wrote:
“One thing I don’t want this column to do is to make anyone nervous or edgy about the upcoming cessation of activity. In fact, the end of things as we know them could mean that we can enjoy life in an all new way, as we have never known it. It’s starting to sound interesting now, isn’t it? Well, the fun is just beginning.”
In strange ways, the fun is just beginning. I’ve moved into my partner Fred’s apartment and it’s easy to keep my writing schedule at the desk we cleared off for me. Some nights after dinner, we practice the steps we learned in our rock dance class and twirl around the living room to Motown. I’ve made cornmeal pizza crust, butternut squash curry, and shockingly delicious vegan fig cookies. My best female friends and I now have a weekly happy hour which spans from Portland to Paris.
“I don’t want to focus too much on the negative. I think it is incumbent on anyone who wants to have an enriched and enjoyable descent into apocalypse to look on the bright side of life.”
A week into confinement, I had a meeting at the Prefecture de Police. My visa application had been approved back in November, now it was just a matter of picking up my physical carte de séjour. Their website didn’t mention appointments being cancelled, so I gathered the necessary documents along with my attestation de déplacement. The afternoon was warm and sunny, and it was a government-approved excuse to leave the apartment.
Biking through a post-virus-apocalypse Paris was surreal. The streets were eerily empty and the Chanel and Gucci ads that had plastered the kiosks and bus stops were replaced by health advisories and public thanks to medical professionals. I ran the red lights at the usually traffic-heavy roundabout of Bastille since there were no cars to stop for. As I approached the center of the city, next to Hôtel de Ville, I saw two police officers standing in the bike lane. The french verb contrôler means to check or inspect in an official sense. It’s also an adjective, contrôlé, and the sentence, “J’ai été contrôlée” translates to “I was stopped and asked for documents.” To me, it all means the same thing—to be controlled.
I was stopped and controlled. The officer was polite and had the build and cheekbones of a male model. He read neither my signed attestation nor the folder of documents I pulled out as proof of my meeting. Even though it went as smoothly as possible, the encounter was my closest experience to living in a policed state, and I was shaky when I arrived for my meeting. The public entrance to the prefecture was messily barricaded with metal gates and there was a tattered paper sign flapping in the wind that said it was closed indefinitely. With the new virus restrictions, I’d been looking forward to having my residence card—an official French ID with an address on it—but now I’d have to wait, indefinitely.
Drawings by Farr Q Daufeen
Instead of going straight home, I took a detour north to water the plants at my apartment, and on the way, I stopped at my neighborhood organic store. “Be careful out there, but mix in a bit of recklessness. You’ll thank me.” We needed produce and there’s something about buying expensive groceries I find deeply comforting, no matter the state of my finances or the global economy. By the time I was heading home, I was conspicuously burdened with chard and brown rice flour. It was well after my appointment and I was not coming from the direction of the prefecture. Any contrôles would be much more complicated than my first one.
As I biked down side streets, I tried to think of a lie that checked the box of a government-approved excuses. I was worried about getting a ticket, not only because of the fine but because of the encounter itself. This was the new law—the one for all of our safety—and I was breaking it.
The street dead-ended at Saint Ambroise, a nineteenth century Neo-gothic church with a plaza and park in front of it. There were three police officers on bikes. I turned left to avoid them and skirted alongside the church, zig-zagging my way down a series of one-way streets.
Even if I’d avoided a ticket, I was worried about the End of Times—how long would our movements be restricted? How long would the police be stopping whoever they chose? What would the world be like after?
When I got home and told Fred about my contrôle and the one I avoided, he was generally uninterested. It didn’t seem like the time to launch into an existential conversation about the future of humanity so I unloaded the groceries with some cursory sanitizing then I curled up on the couch with Michael’s columns.
“My advice will be about achieving a certain state of mind, making peace with the end. So find a good seat and make yourself comfortable. No one knows how long it will take for this earth omelette to be finished. But we are going to break some eggs before it’s over.”
Gracie Bialecki is an author, performance poet, and co-founder of New York City's Thirst storytelling series. She lives and writes in Paris, France.
