1. WINNER - GAGNANT

I would like to say I never win anything, but the truth is that for someone so unfortunate, I am very lucky.
or maybe it’s because I’m unfortunate that people take pity on me and offer me these opportunities.
(I’m questioning a lot of things, but we need to press on.)

As a twenty-four year old, who had never been anywhere but had watched a lot of television, I had ideas of what this trip would be; I would be put up in a hotel, travel Paris and the south of France, I would look sophisticated, I would take stunning photos and maybe fall in love.
at twenty-four, I am self-aware enough to know that I’m an idiot.

At the airport, waiting for the Trip Facilitator from the consulate, a man approaches and asks if he can drive me somewhere, I say, no, thank you.

Weeks later, my mother asks me to watch a movie her nurse gave her.
After a few minutes, I understand that this is an educational film night.

LIFE IS NOT LIKE TAKEN, I WASN’T GOING TO BE SOLD INTO WHITE SLAVERY
YOU DON’T KNOW THAT
I DON’T THINK I’D BE WORTH VERY MUCH.

And with this last point, she doesn’t argue.

Still left at the airport, Rita, the facilitator, arrives two hours late to pick me up.
After a tense metro ride during which she makes it clear she’s annoyed by my existence, we’re at the hostel and I’m introduced to the other award winners from around the world.
There are five other Canadians.
Irina from Russia asks if we know each other. we don’t.
Canada is a big place.
One of the Canadians asks me if I know his friend Jordan.
I do.

Canada is a small place.

During this brief, awkward gathering, the Canadians inform me we’re the only photographers, and that the rest of the group won for other reasons, but only photographers will get credentials for the photojournalism festival, everyone else will just attend the exhibitions and screenings.

I tell them I’m not that kind of photographer. I’m not a journalist or documentarian, I’m a… what’s the art genre word for weirdo autobiographer? To put it in french terms, I’m a Calle, not a Bresson.

Well, then you’re shit outta luck.

I think maybe my kind of luck is the monkey’s paw kind. There’s always a catch.

We leave from the hostel, taking the metro to Champs de Mars for a picnic. The sun is too bright and hot and I feel like I’m dying.
I need to get to a bed.
After convincing everyone I can take care of myself, I make my way on the metro to the hostel after only having been there once for five minutes. I have an eidetic memory that is useful in this one specific circumstance and pretty much never again.
I crawl up the stairs of the hostel and land on my knees in the first stall of the common washroom and vomit sour airplane orange juice and oxycodone into the toilet.
I haven’t had to take that many since tearing a muscle in my back. I should have remembered the result—my memory is selectively vivid.
It’s four in the afternoon, I shower and try to pull myself together but my teeth are chattering.
I weakly make my way up to the top of the bunk bed and, with my face a disconcerting distance from the ceiling, I pass out.

2. FORESHADOWING

The next morning we are given the assignment for the duration of the trip to create a work that reflects our time in France, intended to be shown to a cultural committee in Perpignan.

For our last day in Paris we set out sightseeing.
As we wait on a metro platform for the train to come, a drunk man approaches us, angry, he grabs one of the Canadians by the neck and swings him around.

I step in front of Ivana, a Serbian translator who is much smaller than I am, and I sandwich her against the wall, I instinctively protect tiny people, which is extremely condescending of me.
Rita steps between the Canadian and the drunk and diffuses the situation in French. The train pulls up and he enters another car and this incident is never spoken of again.

As is my method, I am shooting everything and anything hoping something will come together in the end.
I am heavy with books from the Pompidou. my camera wrapped in a sweater, placed in a nylon shopping bag.
We’re told we have four hours of free time to wander the city alone or in groups.
I choose alone. Or alone chooses me. Even now it’s difficult to tell the difference.

4. STAND ON GUARD

I am walking back to my abandoned sandals along the empty metro station platform when a train pulls up and a group of four teenagers see me barefoot, crying and approach me.
They are from Belgium. sophie is the only one who introduces herself, but they all accompany me to the nearest police station. My nylon shopping bag rests against my shin, camera safely contained. I always found the branded gear packs most photographers travel with to be a glaring danger, and here I feel vindicated that this inconspicuous bag stayed with me.
As we ride the subway, I stand quietly in shock, and Sophie tries to keep me talking

where are you from?
Canada…
oh! I have a cousin in Canada, maybe you know her?!

in that moment, like I know Jordan, I want to know Sophie’s cousin. I want there to be some astronomically unlikely event that would make all of this fated and in no way my responsibility.
I don’t know Sophie’s cousin.
This is all my fault.

5. ACCESSORIZE

In preparing for my exciting first trip anywhere ever, I make two purchases I think will make me look as if I am a sophisticated traveler: a pair of flat coach sandals that are a little loose but were 70% off at winners, and a fancy leather bag that will fit my second camera and all of the things I insist on carrying with me every day but have nowhere else to put because I never wear pants and so don’t have access to a pant’s pockets.

the purse has a large flap, easy to lift for instant access to my camera.
or, if I’m being slammed repeatedly into a wall, my wallet.

6. WHAT ARE THINGS, AFTER ALL, OTHER THAN STUFF YOU MIGHT NEED

The policewoman asks me to describe him, prompting me further with what translates to
How dark was he?
He was white
I see. why, if I may ask, did you have so much money on you? What were you planning to buy?
Gifts.
For yourself?
For friends.
You must have many friends.
in addition to the casual racism of on a scale of brown to black skin tone swatching, this is weirdly intrusive and I don’t answer.
I do have a lot of friends.
I have an amazing personality.

He hit you, are you hurt?

I say no at this moment, bu tbeyond the bruises on my back I will later discover in the shower, I don’t yet know
that having chased barefoot after the thief, I will slowly develop an infection from a small cut that moves deep into the tissues of my foot and just as I leave France, will hit my bloodstream.
I will spend the flight passed out on strangers, shivering and burning, and when I land home in Toronto I will immediately go to the hospital.
In the days leading up to this, I will attempt to turn the robbery into a lesson about material attachment.
I try to get super zen about it all.
but I don’t think there was a lesson.
Other than:
no one respects flight attendants anymore.

I am trying to be normal. you will notice how normal I am. look, I am eating, I am smiling. Normal.
are you crying into your cereal?
no.

(I am crying into my cereal.)

It’s okay, breakfast makes me sad too.
I’m just more of a yogurt person.

Ivana looks at me very seriously.
Everything is going to be better when we get to the south, you’ll see.

SNAP, CRACKLE, POP.

Where did you go
I don’t know, sometimes I’m like this, just a bit elsewhere
Well, there is not much time left, I miss you when you go like this, Bubble 
Ivana calls me Bubble
she tells me she also has terrible luck traveling
and so I joke that we should both live in one like hamsters

come back

I’LL TRY

8. IT’S GONNA BE A GOOD NIGHT (IF WE SURVIVE)

Eight days in and we can’t escape I Got A Feeling
Everywhere we go, the radio is playing this song

We travel in two suspiciously cult-like white vans that I will not mention to my mother after watching Taken.
Driving through the narrow winding roads of the south of France, I grip whatever handle I can reach.
Having ditched our backup facilitator in Paris, we gained a second one in Perpignan. His name is Mohammed and he doesn't drink or do drugs, when determining shotgun arrangements it was best to call dibs on him. Those of us who successfully claim Mohammed say our goodbyes to the Rita passengers with the gravity that implies this will be the last time we see any of them. Mohammed tolerates light shenanigans like group singalongs (to I Got A Feeling… over and over and over) and is probably not skimming our food money and blowing it on wine at the border to Spain.

9. THIS IS MY BIOLOGICAL DEFENSE MECHANISM

We’re in the office space downtown for the evening, working on our projects.
I’m reading a book as Joël, one of the Canadians, tries to quietly photograph me. I have a sixth sense for when a camera is pointed at me, and I will find any way to move out of frame or hide.
Frustrated with the book I have put up to block my entire face, he says
come on, it’s only fair, you’re in everyone’s face all the time
this is one of the first indications I have on this trip that I’m annoying, but it’s not the last
I give in, but as he angles me in the light, I warn him that I do not photograph well, the lens will always dissolve the bones of my face and show my true form:
a potato

after a few frames, he reviews his images, sighs, and gives up
potato