A Forgotten Post

I find being miserable exhausting. I spent most of the day in a fitful stupor. After a long weekend full of near misses, I desperately wanted today to be good, but approached it with the expectation that it would be good all on its own, that the world is self correcting, that my bad mood would be rectified by affirmations and explanations...what a joke. However well things may be going in this city there is absolutely no one who is more interested in my well being than I am. So why give myself such a disadvantage, to start a week with cartoon wavy rays of anger emanating from my furrowed brow, crossed arms, hunched shoulders. I don't even want to talk to that person, why would anyone else

It's one thing to not need to be friends with everyone, but quite another to not be friends with anyone. You might need to re-read that. Lots of double negatives.

And often it's just a small change of perspective, most often sparked by the smallest of victories, and sometimes just the absence of failure.

Like not being confused by the clerk at the check out for the first time. And while looks from pâtissiers when I mispronounce éclairé are scalding, they are also just a reminder that to be successful you can't just try hard when you're happy, you have to try hard when it's the last thing you feel like doing.

I find that homesickness comes in waves. It's not so much that it ebbs and flows. By waves I mean that it sucks you under, breathless, drowning, a faint light your only indication of the surface. And even then, as you kick and flutter and flip in an effort to save yourself, another wave crashes, blinding you with white foam. It all feels counter intuitive, like maybe it would be easier to just sink to the bottom and find your way out the other end.
And then in some unseen tumult you are thrust towards the surface and in a spasm of energy, coming from some store kept hidden from even you, you burst out like Ariel, thrilled to live on a planet with breathable oxygen and full of confused joy that you've made it. And you celebrate the victory by yourself. That's how homesickness is like waves. It's like the last week in August on the east coast, when the tides promise hurricane season.
Plus tard...

So I found this draft when I sat down today to offer a new post. A delightful, uplifting piece to be certain. Self-indulgent and temporary and incompatible with any discernable creative arc. But I thought it was worth sharing.

When I started telling everyone that I was moving to Paris for a few months to learn French I remember being surprised, or at least slightly jarred by the most common response I received:

"Wow, you're so brave! That's so brave...etc etc."

When I read these messages and emails and texts I remember thinking "well...not really." I mean, I'm my mind, the financial risk was minimal, I wasn't spending money I didn't have; the geographic risk was non existent, Paris is a major metropolitan area with all the presumed comforts of modernity; the language barrier was kind of the point, I wanted to learn French; and the social risk could be no worse than returning to suburgatory for a year after college, at the very least there would be other people my age.

It became clear that very few people registered those changes the way I did, and in recent weeks it has become clear that these well-wishers seemed to understand something that I didn't. Risk doesn't have to be irreversible to be real. Investing emotionally in a path or a particular version of the future is just as potentially devastating as an emptied bank account or being alone.

And what a lovely way to think of myself, as being brave. Because its not all that easy to wake up every day with the resolve to give 110% to something that I don't really know how it's going to work out. So bravery then just becomes the choice, the decision. I'll take this risk. I'll miss friends and family and peanut butter in a healthy way. I'll walk towards an end that I can't see.

Smiles All Around

I don't think I have ever been as aware of the intentions and effects of my American smile as I am in Paris.

My very first day in the city of lights I headed over to my school to pay my arm, leg, and first born child among other similarly delightful formalities. The final step was taking my picture for my super duper official Sorbonne ID card. The lovely woman who herded me through the process kindly notified me that I could smile, an important reminder since throughout my entire visa and entry process it seemed to be a universal rule that smiling was forbidden is such official matters. Partly out of relief and partly out of overcompensation for a hot summer day and jetlag I have her a big grin. "Ahh there's that American smile!" She observed astutely. "Americans really know how to smile." Kind of in an unintentionally offensive tone that we don't know how to do much else. I left a little confused by my oral oddity and generally thankful for her help.

But she was the first clue in a long trail. My thousand watt American smile is a peculiarity. It's also an instinct. I make eye contact with people on the street, because we're all staring at each other, and I automatically smile, saying "hi! I'm not an axe murderer!" Or I'm racing down the metro steps because I "hear my train coming" (jokes, it's the other direction you fool) and I smile at the figure stooped at the foot of the stairs, shaking his measley 47 cents at me, saying "I'm sorry, but my poverty level is too dangerously close to yours for me to help you." Or I'm walking through le jardin de Luxembourg and I see an adorable spaniel running around with a stick, whose owner is using a rectractable leash to give him the illusion of freedom, and I smile at the dog saying "damn your life is good! How did you get so adorable?"

But generally I think these are read as "she's going to attack me! Why is this joker rip off staring at me?!?" And "she's going to give me money!" And then "cruel cruel world..." And "stick! Dirt! Tree! Owner pulling me away from weird foreigner!"

And it's not like I'm a smiley person by nature. I have to consciously make an effort to smile more often when I meet people because my resting face looks manically bitchy or suicidal. But it's an American instinct. "Stay calm parisians, I come in peace" I mean to say, but instead I apparently express my interest for men to approach me with all varying degrees of flimsy excuses. Sir, there is no way that I, an obvious foreigner, know the metro better than you. Leave me alone.

And how could this be? Is a smile not a universal symbol? A natural human express in? I guess now that you mention it the French do seem to all walk around with this neural grimace, the facial tick of a perpetual observer I suppose...is that the French equivalent to a disarming grin? Seems unlikely...

And yet, new friends smile when they greet me (and kiss me on both cheeks, how Parisian am I ?!?), my landlord smiles hello, our professeur is bubbling with energy and laughter, so maybe it's a personal divide. Another pleasure relegated to the private realm of France, reserved for those deemed worthy of the residual wrinkles. An interesting solution, but not one I have any confidence in adapting myself. Even in foreign language, the gratitude of Merci commands a small upward pull on the corners of my mouth. How could everyone not feel the same?

They just don't. A smile means something slightly different. I have yet to test if coke has maintained its correlative relationship. But, regardless of the implications, a smile is still contagious. Not in all cases, maybe more like a yawn than an airborne illness. But buying my dessert at the bakery, trying so hard on my French accent, the lovely boulanger hands me my change and I give her the whole nine yards: the full cheeks, the tilted head, the slightly lifted soldiers, as if to say "I understand how annoying I am but I am so grateful for your patience in both baking and language" and she smiles back, eyes twinkling, as if to say "d'accord."

Contagious and controllable. Last night I went to a picnic armed awkwardly with deux baguettes and a Bordeaux, none of which were touched. C'est là vie. Si i returned awkwardly armed with a full baguettes and 7/8 of a baguette. And then I passed a man on the stairs at my metro line shift pleading for change. I paused for about a billionth of a second, my only second thought being what if he is offended. You see French bread is incredible fresh, but it's fresh for about two hours. So there's no way I could eat that much, nor should I. So I said, with a humble smile, slightly bending, "Bon soir, monsieur." Pulling the baguette from its crinkly sheath "vous..." And using the formal, respectful you and an lifted brow I handed this man the bread. He nodded almost imperceptibly, not because it was a slight movement but because his smile, the relief, the joy, the gratitude, was blinding. Including the home video where I got puzzle place pajamas for my 5th birthday, I have never seen anyone in my entire life look that happy.

So they do smile in Paris after all. Maybe it's reserved for those big little things, like warm bread on an empty stomach. Not like weird foreigners on Rue des Écoles.

Who needs the World Cup?

I am trying to get by spending as little as possible here in the universe's most expensive city, which is more challenging at some times than at others. For example, when I get the majority of my weeks 's worth of groceries for 8 Euro? Easy. When I pay 2 Euro for water because I forgot my bottle at home? Hard. When I read enough Hemingway that I feel full? Easy. When I pass the billionth pâtisserie in a row? Hard. You get the idea.

But something that makes it very easy is all the free entertainment. I suppose that most parks are like this in most real cities, especially in the summer, but indulge my suburban bias. I could sit in the Jardin de Luxembourg for hours and hours, and if, miraculously, I tired of it, I could go sit in another park for a few hours more. It's not just people watching, it's everything watching. The children running away from their nannies. The traveling families having budget picnics on the benches. The ducks! They're so colorful when they flap the water out of their wings and Bob their beaks under water. The purple and green. Gorgeous! Who knew? Probably everyone, but they still delight me. There are the flowers and the fountains and the innumerable statues. The old men reading their newspapers and the children shouting on the playground. But my absolute favorite thing to watch and the world's most generous offering of free entertainment are the sports.

There's everything. Tennis and squash courts.  Basketball. Soccer anywhere that two stationary objects lie close enough together to resemble a goal. And I feel that I'm constantly discovering new corners of trodden down greenery where completely unfamiliar or entirely made up games are being played. The act of discovery is an adventure unto itself, without even mentioning the delightful pleasure of watching. Perhaps this is a bit voyeuristic, but I choose to embrace it as one of the many luxuries afforded the solo traveler, and free luxuries are not something I pass on quickly.

Today I sat for some time and watched a game whose name I do not know. I want to call it bocce, but that's a largely unfounded temptation. There's a set of...plots, I'll call them plots, under the shade of the trees by one of the western entrances to the jardin de Luxembourg. Its divided in two and surounded by a 9 inch high wooden wall. The whole space is roughly the size of an elongated basketball court and it's split in two by some coat racks, because, I suppose, the French men are nothing if not gentlemen. The winner of the previous round flicks a small neon sphere of plastic across the gravel, and from what I could gather there are two teams and each man has the challenge of getting his brass balls as close to the speck as possible, throwing these (pretty heavy, if I were to guess from the thud they made when they landed) balls from a prescribed circle. That's the basic premise.

Beyond that there are two ways to throw and two ways to play. There is the high arching, tip toe climbing, beautiful toss of the get-it-as-close-as-possible. It looks like a man releasing a bird he has personally nursed back to health only for it to turn to splatter paint at the moment of release. Why does no one make statues of this? Then there is the low to the ground, straight shooting, aggressive, full of targeted precision. The men cycle through their superstitions, grind their teeth and aim with confidence, knocking enemy brass out of their territory. An upsetting if not useful truism for life: there are two ways to live: lightly, concerning yourself with your own success, or heavily, ensuring your accomplishments by cutting down those who threaten you. At least in this there is an obvious winner.

But there is a third option, which brings me to my other favorite spectacle. Across the street from my apartment there is a croissant shaped park that hugs the corner. On the right side of the smile are benches and flowers and small looping footpaths, big enough for a children's bicycle race. On the left side of the smile is a playground in the corner and a large staircase, sweeping might be apt, that curves down from a building I have not been able to identify with four walls of trelices and finishes in the park with a fou rain marking the mid point between four well defined goal posts.

Every day there are games: Boys v girls, brother v brother, older siblings v younger siblings with the youngest toddling around in their elders' shadows. A few days ago there was a great game between  a group of 7 ten or eleven year olds. They picked teams by putting their arms around each other. They rotated goalie when the goal tender got bored. The younger sister who watchmen from the fourth step up within one of the goals was not abused or reprimanded. When a goal was scored everyone smiled at the play well made. No threats were made against the goalie. No gloating was to be had. And the game was ended not with a score or an injury, but with a call from home to watch the masters perform in the world cup game. And so we have the third option, the best of all. Live in such a way that others' joys are your joys, that individual happiness becomes group happiness, and you will be both light and successful.