Mr. Coates in Paris

October continued. I went around the city nonstop. There was always something to see. Something to do. It was a month of exploration and curiosity.

One of my roommates lent me a copy of "Between the World and Me." By Ta-Nehisi Coates. I still haven't finished it, months later. I savor books, dissecting every word, every sentence, every paragraph for the precise meaning, on a quest to know the exact intention of the words, to learn all I can. 

It's like taking the time to get to know a new friend. Being patient to try to understand someone who might not be...well...an open book. 

The words would hit me. I'd have to stop while reading and marvel at them. When he wrote that race is the child, not the father, of racism, I had to take a step back. Take a step back and think about everything I thought I knew, and then realize everything that actually is. 

I'd gather myself, and start reading again. A week or two later, I heard Mr. Coates would be doing a Q-and-A in Paris, at Musée du quai Branly. What are the odds? I wanted to go. 

I kept reading the book, thinking in vain I would finish it before his talk. One day I sat on the couch reading "Between the World and Me" in the living room. I stopped at page 26. 

"I remember sitting in my seventh-grade French class and not having any idea why I was there. I did not know any French people, and nothing around me suggested I ever would. France was a rock rotating in another galaxy around another sun in another sky that I would not cross. Why, precisely, was I sitting in this classroom?" 

This was a section where he criticized the school system. A school system that, admittedly, was not the factor that ultimately led him to France. And still, the irony was too much. I could barely process it all.

I ended up going to see Mr. Coates speak. It was October 14. I don't remember much, but there was one thing he said that I wrote down. One thing I wanted to make sure I remembered. 

"If you're going to write. Write true. You have to write from the perspective you came up in." 

He signed book copies and talked to attendees after. There was a long line. I had a question to ask him, and had told my roommate I'd try to get the copy of "Between the World and Me" signed. 

The museum closed before I even neared the front of the line. I went back home, only slightly disappointed.

But I had learned one thing that night. That was enough, I think.