The Penitent Mann

Leaps of Faith & Literary Perfume Preferences

In the 1989 film classic Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford’s titular character finds himself in the Temple of the Sun attempting to pass three ancient trials in order to reach the treasured Holy Grail. His father, Henry Jones Sr., played by the legendary Sean Connery, lays bleeding in the dirt after being shot by the evil Nazi collaborator, Walter Donovan, in order to elicit Indy’s compliance.

Set Scene: Indiana Jones hesitantly climbs the passage stairs towards the entrance to the first trial: The Breath of God. He comes upon dead bodies laying at his feet, casualties from previous attempts. The camera cuts back and forth between Indy and his father, both whispering over and over, “Only the penitent man will pass.” A hushed breeze stirs the cobweb-covered passage ahead of him, and at the very last moment Indy exclaims, “Kneels!” and does a tuck and roll out of the way of two giant spinning saw-blades that cut through the corridor on opposing diagonals. He comes through relatively unscathed and collects himself for the second trial: The Word of God. Indy intuitively knows this implies the name of God, Jehovah, but when he steps onto the rock carved with the letter “J” he punches through the surface and finds himself dangling by his upper body, his legs struggling in mid-air to find purchase back on solid ground. He chides himself for not taking into account that in the Latin alphabet Jehovah starts with the letter “I.” He makes a second, more calculated attempt with this information, and swiftly maneuvers from one carved letter stone to the next. Onto the third trial: The Path of God. Resting his hand over his heart, Indy attempts to calm his nervous breath. He slowly lifts his left foot and extends his leg out straight in front of him. Then steps off the ledge into the vast chasm of nothingness…

This is a perfect depiction of what it feels like to apply for a French visa.

The stakes are high, the obstacles are abundant, and the entire event culminates into one giant leap of faith. From what I determined during my application process, there are various types of visas one can pursue and the elements necessary to fill the specified requirements vary slightly depending on the type of visa. Some common elements across all visa paths are:

1. a valid passport

2. proof of health insurance

3. proof of lodging (at least temporarily, preferably 1-3 months)

4. a butt-load of savings

That last qualifier can make or break a person’s ability to relocate to France. On top of having to pay the cost of application fees, passport, birth certificate (do you know where your original is ?!), health insurance, FBI background check (if you’re starting your own business) apostilles for all official documents, and the cost of the Visa itself, you must provide copies of your three most recent monthly bank statements to assure the French government that you have enough savings to survive without being a burden to their system. France currently requires proof of the equivalent of twelve months of their minimum wages, or roughly $21,000.

As someone who has never before had any significant amount of savings, it is not lost on me what a privilege it is to have access to that kind of capital. As the result of a series of unforeseen events this past year and a half, I found myself in a very comfortable financial position for the very first time in my life. A little while back I made the hard decision to change jobs only to find myself laid off out of the blue a few months later. But lucky for me I was quickly brought aboard an incredible team that paid me fairly for my hard work and creativity. Earning a living wage in a town like Telluride is rare and the amount of stress that was relieved by procuring that position is priceless. I will forever be grateful for that opportunity. The year prior I had been most fortunate to find affordable and incredibly adorable housing in the nearby community of Rico, and my monthly expenses were no longer bleeding me dry.

My home in Rico, Colorado for three wonderful years

In addition to all of this newly found stability, my dad died in July of 2024. After the complicated and painful process of attempting to address my responsibilities as next of kin, I ultimately ended up sending my aunt an email begging her to take over the planning. Even though I had vowed to get everything done according to his wishes if it was the last thing I did, a week of sleepless nights and tear-filled days made the potential for being utterly destroyed by the process feel inevitable and not at all hyperbolic.

Making cremation arrangements for a man who very rarely acknowledged my existence is a level of grief I had never experienced. And after driving all the way to San Jose, California from Colorado to handle his estate only to have my entry into his apartment blocked by the illegal conspiring between my aunt and his building manager, I turned tail instead of calling the cops on them. Any interest I had in seeing if he had kept any photos of me dissolved in the hours of tears I shed while laying in the back of my van alternating between a texting war with the building manager and phone calls to the San Jose Medical Examiner.

So when I emailed my aunt to ask her to take over it was at my absolute weakest and most defeated moment. My dad had long ago deflated any measure of confidence I had embodied and attempting to show up for him now short circuited something inside me. I was devastated. Not so much by his actual death as he had chosen not to be a part of my life decades ago, but because the hope of things ever being any other way had died too.

My aunt eventually sent me an email apologizing for any harm she may have caused me in the previous month and she asked me for my mailing address in order to send me a check for some money that she found amongst my dad’s accounts. A few months later I was holding the largest sum of money that had ever been signed over explicitly in my name. But all I could hear in my head the whole time was him shouting at me, “You’re a money grubbing bitch, just like your mother!”

This money made me very angry.
And then it made me incredibly sad.

A few weeks went by and I found myself discussing my options with a friend while we were working at our perpendicular desks. She offered up that I could invest it into a new Toyota Sienna minivan to upgrade Hazel-Grace, or put it towards a down payment on property or some kind of home. During our discussion something clicked and I became very certain that this was my moment to try to move to Paris. And just as quickly as the excitement about this actual opportunity arose in my body, it was replaced by a fierce fury. I did not want my father to play any part in my ability to realize my life’s dream. I became determined to prove that I could do it without his help. I set the money I had been given aside in a savings account and week-by-week and paycheck to paycheck I watched my own tally rise to match his monetary presence in my life. And then I surpassed it. Every penny I scrimped by staying in instead of eating out, by abstaining from any and all unnecessary amazon purchases, by taking on as many side-hustle design projects as I could get my hands on, and selling all my worldly possessions, added up to a number that could stand alone toward my visa application. I had done it without him. To explicitly spite him. The initial spark may have been ignited when I received his check, but I stoked the flames myself until they were lapping the highest heights. I built this my-god-damned-self because, Fuck You !!!

Life is not rational, it is just mad and full of pain. -Anaïs Nin | Henry and June

I am currently reading accounts from Anaïs Nin’s journals about her passionate involvement with both Henry Miller and his wife, June Mansfield. Amidst the tangle of sexually explicit details and intellectual debate she also writes about her father, whose abandonment of their family was the impetus for her initial journal keeping. She writes, “My father did not want a girl. He said I was ugly. When I wrote or drew something, he did not believe it was my work. I never remember a caress or a complement from him… I got no love from him. I suffered with my mother… His face showed he did not want us. What he meant for mother I also took for myself. Yet I felt hysterical sorrow when he abandoned us… I was amazed that a child’s confidence, once shaken and destroyed, should have such repercussions on a whole life. Father’s insufficient love and abandonment remain indelible.”

Anaïs also includes references to appointments for medical treatment she received from prominent French psychoanalyst, René Allendy, who despite going on to collapse all ethical, therapeutic boundaries, offers up here what I consider to be a very relatable analysis of her lack of confidence and its direct correlation to her experience of abandonment. He tells her, “You wanted him to be there. You wanted to dazzle him. At the same time you were frightened. But because you have wanted to seduce your father since you were a child and did not succeed, you have also developed a strong sense of guilt. You want to dazzle physically, but when you succeed, something makes you stop… I have no doubt that if you should succeed in your writing you would also give that up to punish yourself.”

I feel that all so viscerally. Both in relation to her childhood and also to her newer desires. Engaging with these pages is transcendent. I too would like to be “wrapped up in books and in trances.” She documents the growing love between her and Henry Miller and its firm foundation of intellectual equality and the white-hot heat of their mutual attraction. They pass their time together reading each other’s manuscripts, engaging in long conversations over meals, and undressing one another. I picture them lounging on opposite ends of the same sofa with their legs entangled, otherwise entirely engrossed in the individual literary worlds they hold in their hands. Until one of them initiates and they “devour each other like two savages.” Such romantic missives written to one another in their absences, the intimacy of such a common consistency, and then to come together in the holy trinity of intellectual, emotional, and physical compatibility. “He closes the door, and our talk melts into caresses, into deft, acute core-reaching fucking.”

Henry Miller & Anaïs Nin (1930's)

While the rest of the world is busy watching Heated Rivalry I’m living in a country that runs a little behind on their streaming releases. So instead of watching delicious hockey smut I’ve been kicking it old-school, sitting in a crowded cafe and blushing from behind the binding of my erotic paperback. “He falls asleep with his fingers dipped in the honey. To sleep this way I must have found the end of pain.”

I decide right then that I will settle for no less than being read to and ravaged.

One moment I am reading about Henry’s distaste for Anaïs’ perfume because he believed it to be too delicate, and the next I am downing the last sip of my latte, slipping my newly procured Paris Library Card into its safe keeping slot in my computer bag, and heading out the door enroute to Galerie Lafayette. I Googled Mitsouko to find its maker and made a beeline to the Guerlain kiosk. I have found a new and next-level-nerdy way to inhabit Anaïs’ writing. Created in 1919 Mitsouko is described as La légende d’un amour impossible, union secrète de pêche, épicée, et de patchouli. The vast space is an assault on my senses. Fragrance from every direction. I spend a moment arranging the bottles on each of the three tiers in front of me aligning their bases precisely within the boundaries of the dashed lines that mark each individual bottle’s home. Labels facing forward. Nothing askew. Only then do I delicately place my hand around the glass bottle of the Mitsouko and lift off its sturdy, glass cap. I hold the spray nozzle just under my nose without my finger threatening to press down and breath in deeply. I do not find its fragrance appealing. I would never describe this scent as delicate. I am disappointed. Not that I would have bought the bottle if I had enjoyed it. I have a very loyal relationship with my Bath & Body Works fine fragrance mist. I have worn the same scent since my senior year of high school except for the brief span of time when it was discontinued. Back then it was manufactured as a bright yellow liquid and was called Touch of Sunshine. I vividly remember walking through the mall and smelling someone as they breezed by me. I stopped them in their tracks and demanded to know what they were wearing. And then I marched into the mall’s Bath & Body Works, grabbed a bottle of Moonlight Path and held up its purple contents to the cashier and pleaded, “Did this used to be called something different?!” The poor kid was so confused at my desperate inquiry that he called the store manager over to intervene. Long-and-ridiculous-story short, I had in fact found my old reliable scent resurrected with a shiny new rebrand. I have stockpiled bottles ever since.

During the time that it was discontinued I tried out other perfumes but never found something I was so instinctively drawn to. Scent is very important to me. It has the power to draw me in or completely throw me out of a setting. I recently switched shampoo and conditioner brands (because Paris) and every now and then when my hair tosses just so, I will catch a waft and feel unrecognizable to myself. Some days I like to layer a hand-crafted essential oil alongside my Moonlight Path. My friend recently brought it back for me as a gift from Mexico and I find the notes very comforting and complimentary.

Standing at the Guerlain kiosk I spritz two sprays onto an embossed paper card. Maison fondée à Paris en 1828. As I spray, an older woman standing directly beside me says in French, “Ooooooh, Mitsouko is a classic ! But I am partial to my Shalimar.” And she holds up the bottle for me to investigate the intrigue. I decide to share the details of my nerdy side-quest with her and explain about Anaïs Nin and how I came to be standing there in the department store. She laughs at the way I have said Anaïs’ name and teases me for clearly being an anglophone. She then asks if I am British or American and I am instantly elated to know that my accent doesn’t just scream purple mountain majesties.

Exposition Les Mondes de Colette at BnF-François-Mitterrand & ma carte de bibliothèque oficiel

She explains that if I like literature and art and architecture, then oh boy does she have a list of treats for me. She reaches for another perfume card and instead of writing down a sampling of her favorite spots for site-seeing, she looks me in the eye and asks, “Are you all alone here?” And I describe to her my recent déménagement. And she thinks better of her list and writes down her full name and phone number. Annie who makes a fancy shape for her #1’s. And she asks me to text her when I get home and to be sure to include my name in the message because she doesn’t mess around with unknown numbers.

She hands me the card, tells me she was born in Nice and moved to Paris forty years ago, and that she knows Paris comme sa poche ! And soon I will too, she assures me. “Don’t be lonely. Call me!” she says patting my arm, and then she is gone.

I am left there alone in a sea of strangers, holding a perfume card in each hand, and thinking to myself that I sure am glad I’m weird enough to not only wonder what Anaïs Nin smelled like, but to actually execute the mission to find out. I lean my head back in acknowledgment of the absurdities in the universe because even though I don’t believe in a biblical God I still direct my spiritual inquiries heavenward.

The Galerie Lafayette Art Nouveau Dome and Glasswalk | The Galerie Lafayette Rooftop View of the Eiffel Tower and Sacré Coeur | Lavirotte Building - Example of Art Nouveau Architecture & Private Residence

I find myself standing beneath the intricate ironwork and stained glass of the Galerie Lafayette’s celebrated Art Nouveau dome. La Coupole rises up above the gallery floor approximately 140 feet (43 meters) and hosts a suspended glass walkway some-ways up which offers an unparalleled vantage point from which to view the luminous dome and its intricate architectural features. From my perspective on the ground I can see the soles of tourist’s tennis shoes as they edge themselves out onto the Glasswalk bridge. I have found The Path of God.

Paris is one big leap of faith after another and my footsteps continue to be met with safety and support. Headed out the heavy glass doors of Galerie Lafayette I point myself home towards Sacré Coeur. Esmé, my heart, is waiting on me to go for her walk. So I put one literal foot in front of the other and ascend la butte de Montmartre. I am proud of myself for passing today’s trials.