Teacher Snow Day

This is the closest I've ever come to seeing the face of the big man upstairs.

(I'm obviously not speaking literally, because I live in a one story farm house that rolled off a SEARS delivery truck in Arkansas plus or minus a hundred years ago.)

So figuratively. Literally, the joy I experienced when it was confirmed that I had today off gave me such a surge of endorphins that I couldn't fall back asleep for half an hour. That's some serious joy, my friend. That's physical, scientific joy.

Now this is a strange way to check in after 7 months of unpunctuated absence, and it's most certainly misleading. Joy has consistently been among the top 5 emotions I've experienced on a daily basis since entering the classroom in August. The other 4 rotate among  confusion, delight, love, regret, grit, coffee, and exhaustion. If you don't think those are all emotions I encourage you to write me a well crafted persuasive essay that reflects close, thoughtful reading and research. I have my responses ready.

The point is, I love this job. It is sheer insanity how much I'm expected to do, how much I actually do, how much my kids are capable of, how much gee dee work it's going to take to get me from right now to the teacher I want to be...but I know that this is the lone of work I want to work in. And by "work" i don't mean, clock in/clock out, earn a living, or coast. By "work" I mean put in 12 hour days, grade until I can't see straight, love hard, fall asleep AND wake up thinking about the kids I need to do better for. This sin't necessarily the hardest thing I've ever done, but teaching is the hardest thing I've done for the longest period of time. And while I believe the hard is unrelated to what makes it good, it is absolutely related to what makes me good.

There are other factors that correlate pretty directly to my success, by which I mostly mean my students' success. Coffee is way up there. As is patience. Pollen count is hit or miss. Love. Access to a copier. Sense of humor. Hours of sleep the previous night. Hours of sleep the previous week. Sleep. Just as a general blanket statement. Blankets. Weight and texture. Quality of school-unrelated reading. Lots of things contribute to me feeling good, being good, and being good to my students. Which is why this mystical gift from the Arkansan gods (I imagine them as characters from a Diego Rivera mural) is so graciously received.

Today I have done the following:
Wake up
Make coffee
Add milk and cinnamon
Eat half an apple fritter left over from yesterday crushed under books in my teacher bag
Read and read and read
Make super fancy pesto mozz grilled cheese
Day drink wine
Make cookies
Read and read and read
Catch up on correspondence
Read
Write this blog post
(and there are margs and fajitas in my future)

This is basically a recipe for transforming back from exhausted, bitter January teacher to real life human, ready to drown my kids in love. And that love looks like high expectations and second chances, and patience, and individualized lesson, and energy. And excitement and passion for every aspect of preparing these kiddos for the lives they want.

It would be impossible for me to recount the subterranean-extraterrestrial rollercoaster that has been my first 6 months of teaching, but I think this sliver of a day gives you some pretty solid insight. A lot of emotions, not  a lot of time. Definite celebration of the small things, like snow days.

Stay excellent.

Merci et on y va

This year I learned the power of a noun. Sometimes an adjective. Suprisingly frequently a verb. I am a writer. I am American. Oui, I speak French.

In pursuit of a goal I stripped down my life to what felt like less than the bare minimum and I moved 6000 miles away, where I knew no one and I knew nothing and while I definitely brought something in that stuffed luggage, it was a whole lot less than I was used too. Then I ate less, decorated less, did less, and slept more. And then it was time to start adding things back in.

That was what French was: a mechanism to distill the gunk and figure things out, figure me out, even if I didn't realize that's what I was doing. I had realizations and ideas all the time in English, both passing thoughts and heavy moments of truth, but I frequently found that truth nestled in a kernel of French. French. A language that I was building up from the rickety base of 3 mispronounced, unrelated words. And yet, only a few weeks in, we arrive at a point where my prof can say, and I can understand, that Dana, Elle est ecrivan. At the time I had never earned a penny for my work and by no stretch of my imagination could I imagine it being my identifier, and yet here I was, with the ability to say so little, leaning against this enchanting proposition with a timid Oui.

It is a wonderful feeling, to feel special and unique for all the right reasons. And it is truly a gift to be able to give that feeling to others. It's something I received on so many occasions over the past 11 months, from this incredible, chic, brilliant gaggle of international friends and classmates and teachers. And the most incredible thing is how powerful their words are. I hold on to them like prayer beads and cycle through the kindness, starting over when I get back to the beginning, because my gratitude never quite overtakes my disbelief, and the only cure for my imperfections and confidence seems to be to trust that what they've said is true. I love them for so many reasons and respect them for so many more, so I seem obliged to internalize their gentillesse.

That I'm special. That I'm a writer. That I have a big heart. That I'm going to be a great teacher. That I'm going to be ok.

As somebody who has always been a little too self reliant I now find myself asking and listening more than ever before in my life. Swimming lost among the hungry harks and jelly fish of la subordonée du temps and le subjonctif can do that to you, make you reach out for a lifesaver, make you lean on others for wisdom and cues. I learned to come second. I learned to enjoy being bad but still being my best. I almost learned to cut myself some slack. But I learned to let my outstretched hand be a step up for someone else, that if my failures help someone, even if it's not me, great. I want us to all make it. All for one. One for all.

And that's really what conversation is. It's a team effort. It's two or four or 10 people working together to share their emotions and ideas and go somewhere new together, arrive at a new realization. It's hard to see that in English, in America. There I talk to catch up, to fill the silence, to be heard...but to distill those words down to the most basic communication...there aren't enough words to shoot the shit. You have to economize, save your words for the big things, the important things. The things that are necessary for survival. Food, education, love. And in doing that, you find that talking and expression unto itself is necessary for survival. Each and every one of us is so spectacularly different, and how can we celebrate that if we don't share ourselves with the world?

There are so many nouns that weren't important to me before that are now. American. Writer. Artist. Liberal. Jewish. The list goes on. Things that were always a part of me, but which I never felt this acutely until now. But the most important thing is that I didn't discover them alone. Language is social. Life is social. And in surrounding myself with people who challenged themselves, with people who have high expectations, who believe in themselves and in me, I was able to become the best version of myself, and tear myself away from an incredible city in pursuit of a new adventure. Donc merci et on y va.

Grief at the Blades of Edward Scissor Hands

I got a bad haircut.

Actually, I got an incredible, luxurious, skilled haircut, but I hate it. And it is destroying me.

I know, I know. You think I'm overreacting. And I agree! How could such a marginal difference (literally no one has taken notice or made a single comment) have such a massive impact on my life? How?!?

But it has. And I refuse to believe that this is a condition specific to me. It very well may be specific to the so-called first world, but not to me in particular. It feels like the Grinch came under the cover of night and stole my hair. My thick, strong, ambiguously Eastern-European locks were shredded and sheared within an inch of their life so I'm left looking like some thin haired basic who feels cultured when she eats sushi. Kill me.

He stole a part of my identity when he stole my hair. (You may find it to be misused, but I'm sticking with my verb). This may sound weird, but I've never really felt like I had "white" hair. I never rocked the blond hair blue eyes thing, nor did I really want to. My hair was this rich, dark brown, fuller and shinier than that of the other girls in my classes. Was it spectacularly different? No. But I felt a part of my family history, of my culture, in this defining difference.

So not only am I just aesthetically dissatisfied, I actually feel as though I've lost a part of myself. And how could I not? People have been commenting on my hair and my eyes since I've understood English, and potentially before. My bowl cut of childhood could have actually served as a soup bowl for someone down on their luck. It was that substantial. And now I'm left with a third of the thickness and some exponentially smaller portion of my confidence. And I know that is not the way a grown woman should respond when things don't go her way, but it is. Sue me.

The point is that we internalize how people see us. My parents never put a high value on beauty. That's probably in part because we don't collectively look like we just walked off a J Crew catalogue shoot, and also because, and I REALLY believe this, there are no fewer than a billion things that are more important than the way you look. And believing that doesn't mean that I can't enjoy putting together a good outfit in the morning, or care about the way I look in a bathing suit. It just means that the things that I do like about my appearance tend to count double, because I really care about so few of them, and I'm not ready to loose the hair. I know that at the end of the day what's inside my head counts more, but I also know that the confidence that I derive from liking the way I look, from looking like I have my shit together, impacts the way that people receive me and my ideas.

It is, of course, entirely possible that the magnitude of my reaction is a projection of these other big life changes on the horizon. I'm moving countries, moving states, starting a new job, starting a new life for what feels like the fourth time in 6 years. Is that a part of the "catastrophic" cut? I'm not ruling it out. But I retain the right to freak out about whatever I like.

So whether it's a bad haircut or 3 lbs of waterweight or a bad grade on an exam, let me have this one. Sometimes its just SOO much easier than confronting the real thing, and so much more therapeutic as well. I'll continue to do my pre-work and make packing lists and not freak out about what I've gotten myself into, but asking me to not have any crisis at all...? What do you want from me? I'm only 24.

Ready? Get set. Go!

This one post a month thing has been working for me. As I've learned French and lost my finesse in English, it's just about all I can manage. Mais, c'est pas grave. On y va!

So I'm not saying goodbye to France just yet, but I do officially have an exit strategy, and I thought that news was worth sharing and dissecting. Returning to the roots of this blog, a quarter life crisis blog, I think that major life choices and changes are always on the menu. So I'd like to explain mine, mostly to me, but since you happen to be here, feel free to tag along for the ride.

Maria always said that the beginning was a very good place to start, so I want to rewind to last March. I have been rejected from 8 PhD programs. I have no prospects. I have little money saved and no idea what to do...keep pursuing this goal? Quit while I'm behind? Tutor full time? Quiet all of my reservations and just join corporate America for the paycheck? I mostly went with "drink wine" and "visit professor giving talk at Columbia," listed on your multiple choice exam as "e: none of the above."

After more internal turmoil than was probably necessary and definitely less contact with the outside world than would be advised, I landed on France. My instincts, my rejections, and my professors guided me toward the realization that my project, one of layered identities in literature, was not an English project but a comparative literature project. And to study comparative literature I needed languages. Like French. And almost as simply as that (if you call two months of wallowing misery simple) I got my financial backers on board and planned to head for France circa Summer 2014.

And then I did. After many many visa struggles and tough packing choices and indefinite good-byes, I got on a plane with my one way ticket and headed to France. This is roughly where our France narratives begin: finding an apartment, being American, making friends, etc. And they've been interesting and thrilling and terrifying all at once. But the most unsettling part of the whole thing has undoubtedly been not knowing how, when, or why I would leave. I came with the intention of applying to a master's program in Europe and then hopefully picking up another language and then making my way back to the U.S. for my PhD. But this year of language acquisition from the most over qualified teachers I'll probably ever have was...eye opening. I've always known the risks of going into academia: an indefinite education, terrible locations, long lonely hours, and a fruitless pursuit of the jobs you really want all to teach intro to British lit for the billionth time. Less than ideal. And my responses to my professors' warnings were always two fold:
1. For the love of literature.
2. (In a quiet voice, overfed by American exceptionalism) maybe I can beat the odds!

And I think it was only in living the pursuit of these goals that I could begin to unravel those attempts at logic. First off, you can love and pursue and enjoy things that are not a part of your job. And you can love your job without it including all of your favorite things. Second there was the realization that I didn't actually love literature. (GASP!) I mean, I do, but that's not what gripped me about all of my favorite classes and concepts. That's not what got me excited. It was always this issue of identity. Of layering all the parts of ourselves and watching them all fit together, in whatever illogical or messy way they could. And yes, perhaps I could succeed in studying this in an academic office on [insert mediocre college campus here], but the reality is that kind of work would be literally, metaphorically, and ideologically isolated. And maybe one day those are the experiences I'll want, but right now, what I really want is to talk to people, and to support them in loving and appreciating themselves.

Enter Charlie Hebdo. I think I gave this tragedy a few lines, as there are much more educated people than I with much more meaningful commentary on the events, but here I want to give you my very personal reaction, which was to ask, "didn't their teachers ever teach them to recognize and interpret satire?" It struck me as such an obvious failing of their education. If their parents wouldn't teach them, why wouldn't their public school educations prepare them to encounter the world in a responsible and meaningful way? There were a few other moments in the weeks before and the weeks after that tightened this focus on the societal role of education, but by the end of January I had applied to Teach for America, ready to move back to my country and learn to be a part of the solution.

It took us a while to arrive at this punchline, but c'est ca. I want to be a teacher. I thought I wanted to be a researcher too, but as it turns out I'm not sure that I need to be compiling data and reviewing books to feel that I've discovered something new and meaningful in my life. And I'm excited to take some time off as the representative of all things American and support some youngins in their exploration of their own identities. It's going to be good.

So after several rounds of interviews I was accepted to TFA Arkansas, teaching (probably English) in upper elementary or junior high, and in a few days I'll know exactly where I'm moving in just a few weeks. Definitely one of those life changes that I didn't know I was looking for until I found it. A question I didn't know I had until I found the answer. And while I will miss these international conversations and chance encounters and art and café life and used books...it feels really wonderful to be moving towards something that I want, with all of these incredible experiences from the past year to make the journey that much more pleasant.

Wish me luck! (Ou merde a le treisieme pouvoir)
Either way, I hope that every step you're taking towards your goals brings you that much closer to a future where you're excited about tomorrow, whatever that tomorrow brings. Because can I just say, it feels great.

Less is More

Ok, so at first glance this title may seem like a justification of my lack of posts for the past several months (which now that you mention it, I guess it is) but it's also a genuine life lesson and truism I've found to be remarkably fresh and true in my Parisian life.

People are always ready to tell me what I'm like and what I like for the reason that I'm American. Everything from 50 shades of Gray to peanuts to being racist to being puritanical. You see one Fox news report or one episode of How I Met Your Mother and you think you know me. That's fine. But that's not actually why I brought this up. My point is that my reference point, the things that I find to be genuinely different from my American life, are not at all what people tell me is different. Variety and choice are actually the most marked differences for me. 

When I buy something in the U.S. I'm accustomed to having nothing but options. Peanut butter, you say? Here are 7 national brands plus a store brand each porting 3 to 5 sizes and bottle styles with a minimum of crunchy and creamy, but likely to include other varieties like all natural, low sodium, and reduced fat. It's almost insane. I mean, we have a whole aisle for cereal. Is that really necessary? Someone asked me, "but how? There aren't that many cereals..." And when I thought about it, I also wasn't really sure.

In Paris, the most international city in France, if you want peanut butter you have one choice to make: yes or no.

I know this seems like a bad example, because France is historically on the wrong side of peanut butter history, but it really clearly illustrates their approach to choice and variety. In the U.S. if you're selling anything, you're selling at least two brands, two varieties, two sizes, two something! There is always a choice to be made.

Living without this call to decide has been working fine by me. I eat less. I buy less. I waste less. And not just with food, but with everything. It is liberating to just choose yes or no without the million gradations between black and white.

Speaking of which, I can't help but feel that the international adoration of those black and white portraits of Paris are an extension of this philosophy. To simplify, to reduce an image to its barest emotions, to its purest sense, is to tap at something bigger and more universal. I don't need to know the color of her dress or the contrast of his tie to know that their kiss is passionate and willful. I don't need the color or an outrageous size or some trick, I just need the people, in their purest form.

My sister was visiting this past week and I finally made it to the catacombs, which had been on my list for a while but which I had been putting off for some time. But they were incredible, and an ultimate test of this less is more philosophy. If you don't know, during the 19the century bones were dug up from all over Paris and relocated to this nameless crypt. Skulls and femers are piled up into patterns of various intricacy, with hips and fingers piled up behind, filling out these damp underground caves. In French fashion, historical and literary quotes in the meaning of life and death mark these nameless tombs. 

At first glance, these piles of bones may seem grotesque, crude, inhuman. But for me they were something different. These nameless Parisians would be underground either way, without name or marker to signify their life to future generations. But here, in this sort of art, they rest together, building patterns in the walls with their own heads and arms and legs. They are contributing to something bigger with what is left, and they are calling out to future generations, to us, "we have lived! And you should too!" It's direct and powerful and true. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

L'enthousiasme

Long time, no see! Have you lost weight? New haircut? I dunno, something's changed...

Oh, me? Not much. I successfully avoided posting about Charlie Hebdo. Plenty of people had more informed, thoughtful, poetic things to say than I did. Happy to let their collective impressions stand in for mine in lieu of contributing to the white noise.

Moving on. I spent what felt like all of January prepping for, taking, and recovering from exams. (That last stage is actually misleading, it took about .5 milliseconds and some wine/beer/coffee.) Anyway, it was two weeks of me failing practice exams and butting heads with my professor who was selective in when she could pretend to tolerate me. It was literally waking up, 5 hours of class, going home and spending a few hours with a text, and then a few more hours trying to tease logic from some essential grammatical concept that after 7 months I had failed to make a dent in. Good times.

Eventually, the dark morning came (dark because I woke up at around 6 am) when I rolled out of bed and onto the deserted streets of the quartier Latin, making my way for the somehow more deserted RER (suburban train). I rode that vessel out of the city to a testing center, which was, I believe, built based on a composite of the nightmares of college juniors taking the SATs. They didn't let us in the gates until about half an hour after our hopelessly lost professor told us to be there, and then we weren't let into the room until the very moment we were originally told the exam would start. Vive la France.

But, in the end, the exam was fair and I think it went fine, (and in the beginning I was too nervous about failing to care about the bureaucracy) so all was forgiven. 3 hours later I was free to cafe hop to my heart's content.

This was Saturday, and then Sunday I spent holed up in a cafe reviewing for my oral exam, the decided dark horse of the two. The scene: a professor who hates my Anglophone ways and a complete stranger posted behind a desk, ten pieces of paper with ten French texts scattered, face down. Me, the student, entering nervously, fearfully, selecting one from the tumult and after a few minutes of preparation rising from the ashes and delivering an eloquent, complete, correct response to an elementary question concerning the text. So, in short, a piece of cake. Laced with rat poison.

The preparation stage was only difficult or frustrating because as we prepared ourselves to discuss these texts, all of them, we knew that we would only have to discuss one. Meaning that roughly 90% of the work we were doing would be a complete waste in 24 hours. Not an impossible mental block to overcome, but also not a state that makes studying any easier.

So I went early, in hopes of getting it out of the way. I reread all the texts and the in class notes and my own summaries. Twice. I ended up going later than my originally scheduled time, but that didn't make much of a difference. I got into the room and my Americanness took over me. I greeted the procters and selected my text ("memoires d'une jeune fille rangee" de Simone de Beauvoir) as gregariously and warmly as I've ever done anything in my life. I set to work, outlining my argument, something esoteric about how Simone was writing about the sense of community in academia to make an argument for solidarity in 1950s French feminism, which is when the book was published. Blah blah blah. More successful as some moments than at others.

But, gosh darn it, I was enthusiastic about it. When I read my assigned selection aloud I adopted the voice of a PA announcer.  I made lots of eye contact and hand gestures and smiled more than was necessary. I talked about what I knew I needed to, but also what we had never discussed in class, meaning the facets of the texts that were genuinely interesting. I finished, having spoken too long to leave any time for questions, and the professors asked me a few questions about my plans. They offered some advice and summarized the general sense of my exam with a rollercoaster motion with their hands. Up and down. Great, then terrible. But, I was enthusiastic! And that counted for a lot. Their parting words were to hard my enthusiasm, to hold on to it. Whatever my other failings may be, this energy could curb them. A worthwhile trait.

Learning French has been exhausting and terrifying and incredible. This is about to get braggy, but it has really been the first time I've had to be bad at something. When you're learning a language, even when you're really good, you're bad. And I'm not that kind of bad, I'm just bad. And it is a shaking experience, but also thrilling. Throw off the bow lines and head straight for the iceberg my friend! I still have strong cravings for gold stars, but in general, being completely devoid of aptitude and skill has left me looser, calmer, and happier. C'est la vie! Que sera, sera! I don't know why why we want to say these sentiments in French, but there's certainly a strong link for me now.

In a language that is no rules and all exceptions, it has been liberating to fail. It has been fun to struggle. And it has been rewarding, not just in language learning but in settling into a new and different life, to remain enthusiastic.

The Body of Evidence

So this post is coming from a lot of different places, but the two sources that are easiest for you to access (and that I highly recommend) are the phenomenally creative and thought provoking novel The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt and the unprecedentedly engaging and entrancing podcast "Serial." These 2 projects came in to my life within a week of each other, just after Thanksgiving. They are...completely different. Like based on every superficial metric they have nothing in common, and I can't even imagine that the audience overlap is significant, but they do share this one important premise: Let's sit down and take everything, all the documents, and half-truths, and records, and opinions and articles and lay it out and see what story emerges, see which story is true. Which, when you think about it, is not so different than the way we live and edit our own lives. So as I've been devouring both of these projects and witnessing the accumulation of crap and subsequent purge that carries us from Christmas and through New Year's, I can't help but wonder...what kind of trace am I leaving? Am I leaving one? What do my objects say about me, and why does whatever they say seem to be so loud?

So. Here we are. Meditations on consumerism, capitalism, and the illusion of self-growth, in short,  the importance of stuff. How we accumulate it. How we let it go. How it becomes important. (Note: I will not answer all of these questions, at least not today. For today, the questions are enough.)

Monday night, actually on my way home from my book club discussion of The Blazing World, I lost my class ring. I have been wearing it on my left index finger, and even there it was a little loose. But I've been wearing it nearly every day since graduation, and especially during my year of underemployment it was a totem, a touchstone, a reminder that I had once been well, and with a little time, I could be well again. I have a, I guess you'd call it a tick, where I twist my ring by dragging my thumb through the space between my middle and pointer fingers. So as i was setting down my stuff on my desk and I was absently mangling my fingers, I quickly realized that my ring was gone.

My mind actually jumped almost immediately to Serial, because in one of the early episodes Sarah discusses our inability to recount details from our day. A pain stabbed my chest and I thought to myself, could I retrace my steps? could I remember exactly which bridges I had crossed and allys I had taken? My instinct was "nearly," but slowly pacing cobblestones in the dark of half midnight was not a proposition that particularly interested me, especially considering the futility of such an undertaking. I called the bar. I told my landlord. I tried to move on.

I tell this story mostly because I was surprised at how upset I was. Having so little going on right now I feel pretty centered, but losing that ring was like a stabbing. And maybe it was because I've been investing less in worldly possessions (emotionally and economically) that the loss of that petite scrap of metal hurt. Before I had cared for everything a little bit, and here I was left with a hole in my heart because I had transferred that interest to a very few objects, without losing any passion in the transfer. But, self criticism aside, everywhere I went and everything I read I was receiving the same message: Stuff matters!
Money might not buy happiness, but it does buy something, lots of things actually, and all those big and little things add up to something significant.

At the British Museum there is a piece entitled "Cradle to Grave" on display near the American tapestries by Susie Freeman, Dr. Liz Lee, and David Critchley, a trio otherwise known as Pharmacopoeia. It's a burlap quilt of sorts, really a blister pack that runs the length of a gallery, fashioned of a loose mesh and protected by a glass box. And upon closer inspection there are actually two streamers, side by side, loaded in a gridded and orderly fashion with pills. A man's and a woman's medical history. On display is not only every pill they've required over the course of their life, for reasons ranging from hay fever to birth control to pre-natal vitamins to heart attacks, but also personal trinkets, including family photos and 3rd place canoeing medals and etc etc. The idea being, there's more to wellness than the medicine, there's the personal stuff too. And to represent that sphere, there are actual objects, which on their own mean very little but hold the wight of very much.

In fact, it's not just this installation. The entire museum, all museums really, are glorified warehouses. We're looking at things, collections of objects that once meant so much that by extension they still meant something today. We don't save the coffins of every culture, partly because so many of them have disappeared or disintegrated, but also because sometimes we don't care. But the sarcophagi hanging out in the British Museum tell a different story. It was an empire with the means to preserve its own history, it was a rise and fall that the British were interested in, that they felt was somehow part of their legacy, and by means of archaeological work did actually become part of Britain's identity. And now tourists from the entire world can come to put finger prints on glass boxes that protect these incredibly old objects.

Now for contrast, cut to my room: desk with a Pisa-esque pile of folders and notebooks; 1-3 item receipts litter my desk; water glasses and half full mugs; a stack of one pound coins; paper flowers falling out of reused wine bottles. Swivel to my book shelf: piles of acquired souvenirs for family and friends, soaps shaped and scented like macrons, prints from boquanistas; books from expats who have already moved on to their next exotic locale; french children's books; my very own Larousse; and the notebooks, both completely empty and completely full, from courses finished and trips completed. And swivel, tight shot on that closet, undoubtedly the fewest pairs of shoes I've lived with since infancy, and I doubt that even as a newborn I had so few articles of clothing in my possession.

So here I am, amid my objects. No placquards or glass cases for tourists to mark with fingerprints. There are some bangles from Jaipur, and a postcard of Georgia O'Keefe on the back of a motor-cycle. There are colored pencils and a brand new pair of brown boots that I'm in love with. And all these things mean nothing. And everything. If the building burned down tonight in a fire, what would I miss? My journal. I could never replace that. But otherwise...

And yet, my sense of permanence is attributed almost fully to this...stuff. My very own piles of papers and projects in progress. That, and getting to fill out my french phone number and address on forms, that's when I feel like "wow, I actually live her. I have a life here." So it all means essentially nothing, but at the same time it means essentially everything. Is it my capitalist upbringing? Do communists feel less defined by their possessions, I wonder? Hard to say. But regardless of how important or impermanent my suitcase sized life is, it's here. And right now, it feels like my Larousse and my Petit Marseillais soap say everything you need to know about me. Oh, well that and my class ring, which in the end was found by a neighbor in the foyer and was graciously returned to my landlady who graciously returned it to an ecstatic American. So, maybe it's ok to be loosely defined by our possessions. To be honest, I don't hate the story my stuff is telling right now. That can't be a bad sign.

Language Barrier

To be honest, though my Parisian life feels crowded with my daily errands and meetings and events, the vast majority of my time revolves around trying to learn this Godforsaken language. It is...challenging, to say the very least. I told someone today that "I don't think any single activity has induced as much self doubt as learning French." Which is probably true, but I'm actually not sure that it's fair to classify this immersive project as one singular activity. It kind of feels like I've taken ever aspect of my life and rotated it 90 to 180 degrees, which is a dizzying prospect to consider. So on top of spending hours a day in class and hours after class writing compositions or reading free newspapers or listing conjugations, I attempt to take advantage of every opportunity to practice my "French." I say "French" because even after 6 months of intense study and for no lack of effort on my part, I think that when I speak, even with a generous estimate, it only comes out as intelligible French about a quarter of the time. Sometimes it's franglish. Sometimes it's nonsense. But I'm trying. 25% of 1000 phrases a week is a lot more than 25% of 100.

So here I am, running full speed towards an illusive barrier. And this is still the grammar/vocab/conjugation/word order barrier. The thing that makes it so much harder (and it sounded so easy to start with, right?) Is that beyond this 5 story high steel force field is not, in fact, an open French meadow of lavender and bottomless onion soup. It is a 1.5 foot wide trap, enclosed on the other side by a bullet proof glass barrier that is so clear it appears to not even be there. This is the language barrier of which I will write today. The cultural language barrier. The wall that I fear I will not, or even more depressingly, potentially cannot be crossed.

I had a very good childhood friend visiting me this past week, and i was surprised to find that despite the fact that we could have both medaled in the sarcasm Olympics in our earlier days, nearly everything she said, nearly every joke she made, went completely over my head. Like I'm not talking I lunged and it was beyond my grasp by an inch. I'm talking I was in the nosebleeds behind home plate and she hit a homer out of left field. Like no register. No connection. How could something that once came so naturally be so completely foreign now? (And I'd like to take an opportunity to issue a formal apology to all of those whom I have upset or made uncomfortable with my sarcasm. Trust me. I get it now.)

And then, catching up with a friend on fb chat, she made an allusion which completely eluded me, which she explained only by saying that "oh, how funny, you don't get it because you're not here!" Which did not sit too well with some bubbling homesickness.

This is all just to say that as I walk down the infinitely long road towards French fluency, I walk farther and farther from the cultural component of English. It's kind of infuriating, but mostly because I know that I'm in no place to be compensating with French cultural fluency. Will I ever understand a french joke without a 5 minute explanation?

And I feel like I have enough of those anecdotes to fill a book, much less a blog post. But I'll treat you with an overarching and positive one: when I first met my now-landlady, she was a little cold (by American, not French standards). This is back when I could only say "bonjour" et "chic" et "un petit chien," all of which you can imagine are very useful in everyday Parisian life. Jokes. Anyway, fast forward three months, I can string a sentence together, however tenuously, and she gives me crème brûlée on a regular basis and we share our coffee and she talks to me about her country home and teaches me the word for wheelbarrow...in short, she likes me. She told me to tell the French bureaucrats that I am her American cousin if they gave me any trouble. 

Umm, what? We're family? We went from you not saying hello to me to being family? And while the French are notoriously moody, I think there's a bit more to this swing. I speak French, now! And despite the fact that I know that it's not very good, Liz complements and encourages me. She switches to English if she thinks I haven't understood. She teaches me phrases that I never would have learned in class. All because I can conjugate in the present tense! C'est un miracle, vraiment.

In reality, there is much more to the cultural language barrier, especially in French where the written and spoken forms are practically two languages. Slang and tone and double entendres can still elude me. But this idea, that we change, that we open up, depending on what language we are using, is fascinating, and also lasting. It's an "in," so to speak. It's a shared hobby or interest, a favorite film that you have in common. But it's also so much more, because it's not tangential or fleeting, but rather...your whole life. I don't know how else to describe it besides saying that it's the light at the end of this tunnel, and also the bane of my existence. 

Mais, c'est pas grave. 

Joyeux Thanksgiving!

There's obviously no standard french thanksgiving greeting, so I went with that. If you disagree, I don't really care.

Hi! I had the intention of posting something much sooner after the fact, but my Parisian Thanksgiving was so lovely and lasting that I feel as though I've only just recovered. Thanks for understanding. It was an adventure for sure. Something between an elaborate scavenger hunt, a chic soiree, and a money bonfire. Seriously, draw a triangle between those three points with convex, zig-zagging lines, and you'll get a pretty good idea. I did not buy a 100 euro Turkey complete with gobbling neck and tail feathers. I did buy a 29 euro pumpkin pie. This is just to give you a general sense of how Turkey day goes down here, which is to say with great cost.

So I'm very lucky. I have a lovely/brilliant/social Canadian/Chinese/American classmate who volunteered to host a few us at her host family's home for a very close approximation of American Thanksgiving. I'm going to say that the only missing components were unlikable relatives and an early start time. We are in Paris, after all. So, I spent La Fete du dinde with a few classmates, and my host's other awesome American friend and awesome host sister...did I use awesome enough?

I fear that you'll think someone else wrote this. It all sounds a bit too upbeat to be me. But I swear, It's me! Thanksgiving has never been the most meaningful holiday on my Calendar. I don't have a large extended family, and what I know I don't necessarily like (aaaand she's back) and the Thanksgivings of my childhood were spent/are remembered as pin-balling between my mom's relatives year to year, where they demonstrated their hospitality in ways varying from having us child gremlins eat in the basement so as to avoid soiling the white carpet ranging to refusing to prepare to make a kosher Turkey for my family. In short, the alleged sense of cooperation and familial love were notably lacking.

The food also didn't do much for me. Until well in to my teens I hated all sauces: dressing, ketchup, thick soup...it was all terrible. And the dry base of thanksgiving is really only made edible by the various gravies and goos. And I think we can all agree that Turkey is just the worst. When do you ever go to a 5 star restaurant and see Turkey on the menu? Oh, what's that? Never? Right, because it's completely devoid of any redeeming culinary qualities.

So this is all to say that by the time we made our family friends' meal our annual tradition, there was little sentimental significance to be gleaned. And then college came, and I went 3000 miles away, and having no idea how home sick I'd be we all decided that I didn't need to come home for Thanksgiving. Which was no big deal. I went to the home of a family friend whom I'd never met before. And it was actually really nice. She served cornbread (my favorite!) in terracotta pots. 10 for plating. And I met new people who I liked to varying degrees and had a lovely day. And then every other year brought some entertainingly new and non traditional solution. The change and surprise became a tradition unto itself, and I'll admit it was infinitely more enjoyable than my sister criticizing what I was wearing while trying to chew through the driest poultry known to man.

And, in that way, this Thanksgiving was no different. It was an opportunity to celebrate this Parisian moment in my life and these new people that I have the opportunity to get to know and eat the classiest potluck of food my palette has ever come in contact with. In short, it was a real opportunity to give thanks. It was easy to be aware of my situation (the contrast to last year could not be more clear) and it was so...pleasant, truly delightful, to spend upwards of 7 hours with a group of people who I really only have two things in common with:

1. We're in Paris
2. We celebrate Thanksgiving

And with a holiday that can so easily be corrupted by parades and Disney and football and Walmart, how wonderful is it that I got this opportunity to acknowledge what I share with these other people. It really should be a holiday that celebrates what we have in common, and nothing makes this more clear than being so far from home. A sense of belonging is definitely something to be thankful for, and french red isn't too bad either.

A Great Miracle Happened Here

Hi. I've kind of been a mess these past few weeks (in that I'm doing more social things and I'm still adjusting to being in class until 6:30 two nights a week, NOT that I'm in any kind of dangerous head space) so this post is going to be about thoughts that have been stewing for a few weeks, maybe even months? Maybe even my whole life, who's to say.

So the first outdated piece of the puzzle comes from a few weeks back when I had a French breakthrough. The final installment in our first round of presentations, in which we had to present our passion, was a topic right up my alley: a discussion of the history of Asian immigration to the U.S. and a discussion of contemporary Asian-American culture. (I am very interested in immigration and, more specifically, the Venn diagram of identity presented to immigrants and their children.) Anyway, not the point. An "often-wrong-never-in-doubt" type in my class (I guess in an effort to show how aware he was of current events in France?) broke our discussion of Asian-American acceptance in the U.S. to ask our professor about antisemitism in France, which quickly devolved into chaos by means of a few powerfully mal-chosen mots. He has a tendency to confuse dissimilar things, like when he confounded Arabs and Muslims. This time he called antisemitism racism, and then tried to save himself be shouting at us that he has Jewish blood. And, by some veritable miracle, my bubbling fury at the Nazi era classification was funneled into patient, coherent, thoughtful French...it's several weeks later and I can still hardly believe it happened.

"No, your blood is the same as her blood is the same as her blood. In Eastern Europe they may use the word race to describe a part of your heritage that you don't otherwise have a word for, because it no longer functions as your religion, but it's incredibly offensive, and loaded, to call Judaism a race. Because it's not." (because race is a social construction, but even working from that point, Judaism wouldn't be a race) It was a bizarre moment, both because I suddenly had the ability to express my fury in French and because I couldn't believe that someone would take offense to something as scientifically empirical as the fact that Jews are not a race. "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT I AM!" he shouted irrationally in English...fair. But also, I can. Because you can call yourself anything you want, but that doesn't make it true.

For kristallnacht a few weekends back I spent Sunday afternoon at the Shoah museum here with a mixed group and a free guided tour which I would have happily paid for. He was excellent, particularly in that he was clearly impassioned by his work. I'll skip the first 2.5 hours to when the American couple left. They were the only anglophones on the tour (besides me) and they gave me a very clear sense of what it means to be an American tourist. They were New Yorkers with a certain audacity, not that they thought the world belonged to them, but they seemed to have a sense that they only had to ask, which is so markedly different from the social isolationism of France that I can't even get in to it. Anyway, they were VERY interested in our French guide's perspective on current anti-semitism in France, which he was willing to give in private but reluctant to give in front of the group, primarily because it's not at all the purview of a  holocaust historian and (as he revealed to the group after the New Yorkers left) because there is such an irreconcilable difference between the Anglophone and Continental concepts of religious freedom and religious tolerance.

In the U.S. it's all about being free to openly practice whatever religion you choose. In France it's about having the freedom to practice whatever religion you choose without it being anyone else's business. The French census doe not ask about your religion. It is illegal for employers, real estate agents, schools to demand this information. Religion, like so much else in France, is private. And, if you want to wave your Jewish/Muslim/Protestant flag, that's on you.

The guide had dozens of anecdotes from WWII about the ineffectiveness of German antisemitic propaganda on French citizens. There were elementary school boys who made fake yellow stars for themselves so their Jewish friend wouldn't stand out. Then and now, it's not about Judaism. There's no problem there. The problem is with zealous observance of any kind, displays of faith if you will. Which is still a problem, it's just a different one than the NYT conceives.

And this has all kind of been reeling through my mind as Noel approaches. It's beautiful here, lots of tinsel and boughs of ivy dusted with snow, Christmas markets with wooden stalls, understated but merry. And I love this time of year: any reason for people to consciously be kinder to each other is just fine by me. But, I also feel transplanted back to third grade. Let me explain. It is VERY difficult for an 8 year old who waits all year for Santa to understand that somebody doesn't celebrate Christmas, and even once they wrap their head around that bombshell, it's inconceivable that this poor Jew wouldn't be devastated. And I would just respond the same way I did in middle school when people asked incredulously how I could have lived without eating a bacon cheeseburger: "It's never been a part of my life, so I don't miss it. It's no big thing." And then they console themselves by saying Well, at least she has Hanukkah, and I think at some point I gave up trying to explain the lack of importance of the festival of lights.

So here I am, in Paris, without any Jewish friends and I suspect there are several people in my class who, whether they realize it or not, have never met a Jew before. And I'm happy to spread awareness on 80 year old misconceptions about race, or about the laws of kashrut, or about the holidays...but something about it feels off. It's not true, but it feels like I'm the Last Jew standing, and there's something in recounting these vibrant through-lines of my life for the cultural education of others that feels a little too much like recalling a lost civilization, which especially in Europe hits a bit close to home. And the good news is that it's not true. The bad news is that that's not necessarily the way I'm living, and I'm not sure what to do with that just yet. But, Hanukkah is just around the corner, and since according to my classmates it's an important moment, maybe there's another miracle, or even a moment of clarity, just around the corner.

C'est la vie? C'est MA vie

GAWD I hate this whiny bitch. I mean, it could be because the writing isn't that good (let's call it repetitive in an uninspired way and uninspired in a repetitive way) or it could be because technically I haven't been 23 for 27 days or it could be that I very actively made life choices to avoid living my way into these cliches. (Fear is an excellent motivator.) But the part that really gets me is the cheesiness at the end. Seriously? Neither you nor your audience deserve this coddling, and you haven't for nearly two decades. Get your shit together. Or at least take on your shit with a fresh approach.

Speaking of dealing with metaphysical angst in new and exciting ways, the Picasso Museum reopened here in Paris after an (unexpectedly long) five year renovation. (Now that's what I call a transition.) Picasso,"the insider who was always an outsider," lived in Paris for most of his adult life and though I've never seen a curator call him Parisian, he was certainly in conversation with these enclaves of otherness that populated the city of lights (all the way from gas to electric) in the 20th century. And it's kind of funny that we associate artists like Picasso and Hemingway and Stein with this City when their experience was probably closer to an occupation than an immersion. They hung out with other expats and did expaty things and sure, they patronized local businesses, but cafe creme and vin rouge do not a Parisian make.

And I'm really no different. There is a constant struggle...struggle is the wrong word, it implies that my life is hard...a constant tug between blending in and embracing the aspects of my otherness that make Paris all the more exciting. When I see a picturesque alley curving into a softly lit corner, can I take a picture? Do I want a picture? Should I pretend that this is normal, or feed my own aesthetic delight? At the end of the day there are no wrong answers, and the choice is really mine to make what I want of the experience.

And here's the secret: that is not a condition particular to Parisian photo ops. As a member of the universe's most coddled generation I feel like, much to my disappointment, it might be necessary to remind my peers that 23 (and 22 and 24 and all the way up, as high as you care to go) is not an incurable disease. Your early 20s are not an illness or temporary psychosis or punishment. This epoch of our lives is a boundless realm of opportunities, which can either be squandered whining and watching netflix or experienced at the hands of the world that exists beyond the triple locked doors of our tiny apartments. (Note: there is in fact room for both, it may even be a necessity, I'm not ruling it out)

Well you make it sound so easy...like I have complete control over my own destiny, like I'm the only one to blame if shit's not going the way I want it to...Well...yea! A little extreme, but hate to break it to you sunshine, all the excuses people have been making for you are now being showered upon the next generation of over/under achievers. So put on some Sara Bareilles, and then some Beyonce, dust yourself off, and be honest with yourself about your life. Acknowledge the things that make you happy. Revel in them. Change the things that don't. Yes, CHANGE! You can do it. Relatively young dogs learn new tricks all the time. ALL the time. And once you accept this challenge the frightening yet empowering truth comes out, which is that your life is not a circumstance of the universe or voo doo or your neighbors who have really loud sex while you're trying to sleep. It's just you. So make the most of it.

Netflix in moderation. Responsibility in gross. It's called growing up.

Save Room for Apple Pie

So...how's it been? I know, I know, I just kind of disappeared there. But I've got excuses and then some. Like my phone got stolen from a poorly made hostel bed while I ducked into the bathroom. Rude. And I usually write weekly at my Shut Up and Write gatherings, but I was busy and away and then busy writing about being away...so here we are.

A month and OH SO MUCH has happened. For serious, I finished my trop intensive beginner french class and consequently jumped to intermediate, which has indeed felt like I skipped elementary, which is what I did. I guess part of that is the adjustment to the new professor, and part of that is the level, and part of that is my classmates who like to shout out answers because apparently they want to prove to us struggling plebs that they know more than us? We get it buddy. You're not coming off as intelligent now, just as an ass-hole. Is that hyphenated? Oh English grammar, where have you gone...

I can feel my brain making room for the genders of nouns and irregular verb endings and cultural laws and the olfactory identification of cheese. But what am I forgetting? What is being repressed or pushed irretrievably into the oblivion? It's easy to know some of the things that I'm losing: names of elementary school classmates, celebrity factoids, triscuit flavors. But I sense there is a larger body of information that I'm losing unknowingly, perhaps frames of reference that have just completely shifted. How bizarre are traffic signs going to look if/when I return stateside? Will I still be able to operate a coffee maker 87% asleep? How much do a half dozen eggs cost in U.S. Dollars? I have no idea...

So, you see cher reader, it's kind of bizarre. I have a passion for Manhattan, but now I'm infinitely more familiar with the streets and metros of Paris. And I've always loved bread, but damn, I fear the day that I won't be able to choose from 3 equally but distinctly fantastic baguettes. And though I'm convinced that eclairs are the DL nectar of the gods, my Parisian sensibilities curb my appetite to a maximum of one a week.

This is all a colorful and very food centric way of saying that I've changed, and after 4 short months it feels like Paris is a part of me that I won't ever be able to get rid of. And I guess I'm just not exactly sure how that happens. How do novelties turn in to routines? How do things you've done a bajillion times still feel fresh? Not just pleasant, but genuinely thrilling?

I...don't really know. I guess just chock it up to the magic of Paris. Because the most surprising thing that has somehow been pushed aside by an encyclopedic categorization of Parisian pastries and the mostly illogical streets of the Latin quartier is a longing for the good 'ol US of A. I'm not saying that I could stay here forever, but I am saying that if the people (whom I miss dearly) came to visit me, I don't know that I'd have a compelling reason to go back...which is kind of scary and liberating and...i don't know, I guess exciting.

Here's to one way tickets and clear head space.
(and to the very unclear head space of one way tickets)

Les Étrangers

The week of September 7 to 13 is one that renews annually my fascination with the stories of immigration, identity construction, and American multiculturalism. Not exactly "how to pack for your weekend in Milan in 7 easy steps!" Or "but really, can I wear shorts in Paris?" but nonetheless a series of questions that define and encourage my passion for exploring the corners near and far of this planet we call home.

This past Friday I had to go to OFII, the French immigration office, for a long awaited appointment to say "hey France, I'm here!" And for them to say "yea, yea, we know, but first you have to have a medical exam." Most of my anxiety for the exchange was based on my series of horrible experiences at the French embassy in NY where I mostly felt like I was in a YouTube web series that was steryotyping the French or realizing a series of nightmares. Let's just say it wasn't exactly pleasant. But despite its windowless waiting rooms and topless x-rays and impatient employees, the whole OFII process was surprisingly efficient and organized. That may be because everyone was waiting, stewing in their own anxiety about when the frenchness of it all would come to bite them in the ass. But it could also be because we were just a group of étrangers who wanted to take care of this formality and continue living in France.

I couldn't help but think of Ellis Island. Huge halls bursting with immigrants. After my eye exam I probably would have received my pink chalk x on my coat and been sent back to die alone in Poland. But that wasn't the only difference. Because when I think of Ellis Island I think of my great grandparents, not because they necessarily came through Ellis island, but because they immigrated to the U.S. and had my grandparents, who worked hard and lived well, and they had my parents, who were the first in their families to graduate from 4 year college, who have also worked hard so that I can get somewhere they haven't been. And I chose back to Europe, where they have literally been, but I think figuratively you see what I'm getting at. And I am the first to admit that this linear American dream excludes millions of Americans, for millions of well researched and documented reasons ranging from housing laws to hiring practices to lending policies, but to me it feels like a very real and personal part of my history. Which was particularly strange as I sat in this waiting room that made me think I might be in a holding port on an alien planet 1000 years in the future, that kindly took on the remaining humans after we had used up all of our resources and our hosts were now evaluating the refugees for the extent of their radiation poisoning.

Despite its innacuracy, the divide for me has been past v. future, racist v. multicultural, my parents' world v. my world, suspicion v. understanding. And I think this is probably an appropriately idealistic division of realms for a 23 year old living in Paris off of 4 years in California off of a childhood in a liberal household in NJ. I want to believe that the worst is over and the best is yet to come, for me but also for the world.

I had my book club this past Monday, and in a stroke of fateful coincidence we had read "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," which naturally gave way to a discussion of 9/11 and the detail that I was the only person present who had been in the U.S. at the time. I grew up in New Jersey, a neighbor of New York but I never would or could claim to be a New Yorker. But my mom was working at South Street Seaport September 11, 2001. She took the PATH to the trade center from Jersey city every morning and took it home every night. I was in fifth grade at the time and was deemed too young (as was my entire school) to be told what had happened by someone who wasn't my guardian. So I have three very distinct memories of that day:
1. My teacher being pulled out mid morning and coming back in pretty upset due to unknown causes which later became very clear
2. Running into my house after school and finding both of my parents home, but more specifically my Mom. This was bizarre. I can count the number of times my mom was home when I got home from school on a seal's fingers. Something was clearly wrong.
3. And amid the endless news coverage, replaying the same videos and pictures and clips I remember seeing a line of nurses and physicians waiting at ER entrances for victims who would never come.

These are unoriginal, but specific enough to satisfy me. What I found far more interesting were the perspectives of the other 20 people in my book group who hadn't been there, who had watched from afar. And what was remarkable to me (as I think I may overcorrect the issue of American arrogance to a fault) is that they cared. They told me that the world had perceived America as being untouchable. That it was horrible. And in my response to the book's connection between Dresden, Hiroshima, and Manhattan (my concern being that perhaps this was the author's way of saying you can only kill so many civilians before it gets back to you) a particularly insightful reader and woman responded "no." "No, that's not right. They were all just civilians. And that's never right. That's never deserved. That's never 'what's coming to you.'" Which, in the divide between past and future, I hope we can hold more steadfastly to going forward. But, in not sure that we did. Immediately following 9/11 there was so much hatred, fueled by xenophobia and aimless fear, towards Arab Americans. It didn't really matter what their religion was or where their family came from or how many generations of their families had been natural born citizens of the United States of America, only that they were different and dangerous. It was the most thorough racism that I think I'll ever see. And take note that in my immediate response, my clearest memories, and I suspect this is true of many many people, it was the shock of the event, trauma on a human level, that grabbed us. It was only injected with venomous politics in the after math.

And now, in some basic, minimal way, the tables have turned. I am the stranger in a strange land, one without any history of hospitality towards outsiders, or even towards insiders. I am in the place of my great grandparents, but with an escape hatch. I am in the place of so many citizens after 9/11, confined to a box because of my loaded nationality, with the obvious improvement of aggression towards me being slighted and more subtle. And yet, I don't find myself craving home.

Last Sunday I went to see Le Magicien d'OZ at a revival movie theatre and was surprised by the message that eluded me as a child. Before heading home to wake up from her fever dream Dorothy proves to Glinda she has learned her lesson by saying, "Well, I - I think that it - it wasn't enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?" And with a release date of August 25, 1939 I suppose this opinion make sense. What could be better than the good 'ol US of A? Why would anyone want to leave? But to stretch this deeply isolationist dictum 75 years into the future would be a great disservice, to the individual and to the world. First of all, Dorothy never would have learned her meaningful lesson and just generally gotten her shit together sitting on the couch in Kansas. And second of all, by heading to OZ with her earthly knowledge bordering on magical, she is able to rid them of their public enemy #1. So I can't help but be pleased with my choice to head to the emerald city in search of a way home, not as much to return, because my friends at United could help with that, but to understand it better. And I'm keeping an eye out for buckets of water.

Back to my Roots

This week has brought a heap of reminders of why I started this blog. It is called Quarter for your Thoughts, because I like English language idioms and word play and my senior year of college I signed up for a creativity workshop and found myself craving an outlet for all my fear and anxiety. All of a sudden I was graduating and I didn't know what to do and I really wanted to believe it was going to be ok, but as my peers know and my elders remember it isn't so easy when you're seemingly surrounded by success ad infinitum. People with dream jobs and dream apartments and even dream weddings abound.

And then it got harder. Because the plan that I did have failed, and then not only was my day to day life unpleasant but I had nothing to look forward to. It felt like I had missed the last train and I was stuck in the unfriendly land of underachievement and underemployment. And it was from this sense of rock bottom that I rallied and harnessed my inner Dana and made Paris happen.

But this all a preface to saying that I feel I've been doing a disservice to my 3 readers. Perhaps you read this as an escape, but I can't in good conscience continue without a word of caution. In the world of Facebook, Twitter, and instagram I fill in gaps of communication with friends with their social media social lives, which consistently look incredible. My friends are moving in to cities and getting real jobs and drinking bottomless mimosas at brunch. They're living the American dream set forth by Rachel Green and Lena Dunham, and when emails and postcards and Facebook messages go unanswered I assume it's because they're too busy tweeting clever things as they people watch while getting a drink before an outdoor concert. Because that's what their lives look like through the  filter of the internet.

But then I do hear back from them. And when there's #nofilter I realize that they aren't doing that well. And while they're smiling for the camera there is plenty going wrong that they haven't told me. Jobs are bad, roommates are terrible, relationships are on the rocks: and yet omelettes appear on instagram every Sunday and profile pics are updated to reflect the most recent cultural outing or booze fest or relationship, even if they weren't that great.

And it upsets me, but if I'm being honest I've been doing the same thing. I learned early on in my Athens blog that if you really write the full range of emotion you
1) lose all sense of privacy;
2) make people think you're manic, if not suicidal;
3) abandon creative license over your own story.
People remember not as you do, but as they remember your blog. And the benefit of human memory is that it allows us to remember and edit our past in a way that makes sense for our present. But putting that in someone else's hands is dangerous. So this blog is much more skewed towards the positive. Or at least the sane. It's also worth mentioning that being 3 years older, I'm just generally a slightly more stable person.

Which is all great for me, but I don't want the people out there who are using this as source material (whether to understand how I am or to compare to their own experience) to think that I have it all figured out or that this is all easy and relaxing and simple and pleasant. I'm alone in a city where I just barely speak the language, which is thrilling for all the same reasons that it's terrifying. And while the experience is intense, in a good way, that also means that everything else is happening at an intensified rate: people are leaving, people are arriving, my brain is kicking out old stuff to make room for French, and to be alone in a city so enveloped in its own identity of romance and intimacy is exhausting.

And on top of all of that, I still have no idea what I'm doing next. Which is to say that I'm more or less where I was 18 months ago, but with a better view. And no, I'm not really in the same spot. But my experience isn't that helpful and I'm still struggling with essentially the same questions.
So, I am happier then I can remember being in years. I feel more centered and more calm and more ready to make those life choices, but I'm not there yet, so just for the record, don't compare. Take it for what it is: a highlights reel, a series of pleasant musings, me figuring shit out on an ongoing basis. I hope y'all can say the same.

The Idea of Paris

Paris is a city that universally excites. I don't mean that everyone loves it (all you have to do is stop a Parisian in the street to know this isn't true) but it evokes all kinds of associations and implications from history and literature and contemporary culture. It is a charged city. And while to a large extent these ideas are individual, a projection of what matters to us personally, there seem to be some generally accepted Parisian truths. There's the romance of the architecture and the airiness of the atmosphere and the swaying branches that line boulevards where women in turtlenecks and men in boat necks sip cafe with poodles in their laps. So...not so far from the truth. But definitely not a snapshot.

For me, it's hard to think about the American love affair with Paris without Hemingway. His portraits are what drew me to the city of lights, his blurred and intense version of reality. It was like an oversaturated watercolor sinking slowly beneath the surface of the Seinne. And to be honest, when I first came here in 2011, I don't know whether I enjoyed the present Paris as much as that version: which one was I actually seeing when I chatted both the book stall vendors or regarded water lillies or saw women in perfectly tailored trousers walking their dogs with baguettes under arm. Was I seeing Paris, or was I reading a real time Hemingway synopsis? Who cares?!? Said 2011 Dana.
The land of starving artists and perfect café...it's like the west village on crack, what's not love?

The answer to that question is both simple and complicated. The simple response is that it's not real, that I'm in love with a hologram. The more complicated response follows from there: Paris is a real 21st century city with absurd rents and a growing homeless population and a self imposed need to freeze a moment 150 years old and peddle it as authentic and current. It's an illusion that is safeguarded by laws and popularity: Mr. and Mrs. Johnson from Nebraska didnt come to Paris to see skyscrapers or even art deco, they came to see Paris, the constantly changing city that refuses to change. I'm definitely biased against the Parisian brand of preservation. For any number of modern reasons (efficiency, heating, lighting, safety) and because my reference point for urban life has always been and will always be NY, the world capital of upheaval and renewal, something feels insincere about the Parisian snowglobe.

But, I can't help but love it too. So many people that I know say they feel inspired by Paris. They paint every day even though they've never picked up a brush before; it's never been so easy to write, it comes out of them with a will of its own; by my own observation people even speak more poetically; and if the tourists' cameras mean anything then on any given day there are 3000 budding Ansel Addams in the street. And I feel it too. You feel the effects of the preservation and the aesthetic preoccupation with almost no awareness of what it took to create this magnificent ship in a bottle. How funny that something which is dead, or cryogenicly frozen, can make artists feel so alive.

Maybe that's the secret: frozen but not dead. Paris functions as a blank canvas, a very well crafted, high quality, aesthetically pleasing, perfectly proportioned blank canvas that maybe young post grads don't really deserve, but a blank canvas none the less. And the fun or the magic is that we each bring our own ideas. And by never changing, Paris offerts us opportunities for new cities each time we return. Eaxh time we leave our apartments, as a matter of fact. And it's not just us laypersons that have this experience. Give Monet a brush or hemmingway a pen or Jackie a fitting and, voila, we're in love, not just with the city and our ideas, but with the idea of someone else, the sense that the magic we feel is both personal and universal.

Female in France

As the ground around my Paris roots hardens there are beaucoup interrelated topics I'd like to work through, dissect, understand. Most of them are in the nebulous of identity, like what is it like to be a French woman? Why am I a target for French men? Why is it easier to be yourself with other foreigners whom you objectively have less in common with than the French? In short, the mysteries of a temporary life abroad...

Let me start with the most unpleasant aspect of Paris for me. It has slowed down, but too often for my liking, men stop me or approach me and ask me something or say something in French, to which I respond "je ne comprends pas..." To which they respond with apparent delight : Oh! What do you speak, English? Where are you from?!? Let me clarify that this is, by Parisian standards, incredibly strange. The man that passed me by the Sorbonne caught my suspicion when he smiled at me, which now seems as strange as bowing to a stranger on the street, doing a rain dance around them, and then running off singing Tina Turner. It's strange. He confirmed my suspicion by then turning around, following me, and catching up with me to...I honestly don't even know where he can see this going. But he's gunning for it. Then there are the men who invent places to ask me directions to. Then there are the men that seem harmless, but seem to revel in the opportunity to teach me French or yell at me for not knowing it. And then just to keep things exciting, there are the homeless men who demand kisses when I deny them quarters.

And I don't want you to misunderstand this as harmless flirting, because on the rare occassions that I've allowed conversatIon to progress it inevitably ends with being asked if they can touch my hair... or if I'm interested in going back to their apartment. The universe does not just throw good men at you, that's not really the way it works.

And if it weren't for my natural response to this, it wouldn't really be a problem. There's no threat of physical attack and these strange encounters usually occur during daylight hours. But they're uncomfortable and unpleasant and sometimes upsetting and I have, without even noticing it at first, switched into aversion mode. I don't make eye contact with anyone on the street. I don't look up at posters or billboards for more than a few seconds. I don't crane my neck. I don't smile. I essentially pretend that I'm deaf: I reject all aural data. And while I don't think that this behavior has significantly lessened my fascination with the Alien planet that is Paris, it's not a particularly pleasant or open way to go through life.

My point isn't really oh, I shouldn't have to change my behavior patriarchy feminism sex objects blah blah blah. That's just not particularly useful. It's nice to think about the kind of world we could live in, but it's not the world that we actually live in, so those suppositions and hypotheticals aren't particularly helpful in coping with my reality. There are certain realities that we have to adjust to, and refusing to change our behavior is perhaps the least useful way to combat it. I'm not suggesting that pretending unwanted male attention is normal or giving in is the way to go, but only that progress is achieved in the way respond. Pretending that we don't have to respond is an easy way to change nothing. This is all a very theoretical way of saying that I'm looking for a way to shut it down without shutting myself off, and that that solution, when I find it, will be a big thing.

I had the great pleasure of hitting a wine bar with some of my classmates after school on Friday, and I enjoyed hours of conversation on any number of things, but as may be expected in a quartet of expats a lot of our discussions ran through and returned to identity: gender equality in Australia, Hong Kong v. Mainland China, Taiwanese interest in ABCs, the four types of Americans (for the record, it's apparently Americans, Jewish Americans, African americans, and...I can't remember the fourth category). But I guess that it takes a particular type of person to leave their life for half a year and move to Paris so despite the seemingly infinite list of cultural differences, big and small, there is an essential similarity in world view. Namely, that there's something of value and interest in every culture, but more specifically in every person. And, most importantly, that the two aren't interchangeable: generalizations aren't steadfast and while it's useful to make rules, we must admit to breaking them by virtue of our circumstance. Obviously I'm not your average American. If I were, I'd be in Paris, TX, not Paris, FR. But in that round table we each became an authority on and a stand in for our respective national cultures.

So maybe there's something there: managing awareness of the individual and the whole, while somehow being aware of how you come across...the great expat balancing act. And I guess there's something to be said for staying curious, asking the questions, trying to understand what upsets you as opposed to writing it off. Wish me luck.

Well, obviously, she's American...

In my French class on Thursday we were reading one of Festival's (my French book) lovely dialogues, this one revolving around two roommates who went to lunch together, which gave way to a long debate: who pays? Yukiko and Chris were enjoying a lovely lunch for two and when it came time Chris was assigned the task of asking for the bill.

"But of course!" Exclaimed my classmates from Hong Kong and India. He is the man, he will pay. My professor, partly because she was ready for her vacation and not anxious to teach us more grammar and partly because she was curious, started an international debate, which was really just me verses the rest of my class. It ended with a Portuguese man in his late 40s saying that he believed in equality, which to him meant Chris paying, then
Yukiko paying, and then Yukiko preparing all subsequent meals at home. The immediate response of my professor was to turn to me "and Donna, what do you think of that?" I think he's a fucking moron, that's what I think of that. Of course I only know about two of those words, so I said something else, but that's what my tone said. This went on for no less than half an hour.

Then the next day, the Colombian girl who had been absent was confused by references to our discussion. She was upset by the mere supposition that the girl would pay. Aghast. Madame Gsell explained that in many places it was standard for the man to pay, but that Donna had not agreed. To which she responded "But of course! She's American!"

As if this explained everything. As if all my peculiarities and preferences were explained by one adjective. Maybe not so much explained as excused by. I could be forgiven my stupidity, for what else was I supposed to think growing up in that hotbed of needless liberalism? I responded with a laugh, as that's what the rest of the class did, and proudly proclaimed "Oui, Oui! Je suis américaine. Je suis féministe. Je suis libéral." My bubbling fury and confusion got the better of my articles.

It was such a strange moment, but not at all uncommon. Catching up with a friend a few weeks ago he commented on an earlier post about the professional/private distinction in the French personality saying that he found it to be true in the U.S. as well. He found my observations reductive. I was stereotyping. And I was. He was 100% right. Because when you're exposed to so much new at once, your response is to divide and condense it in to more easily digestable packets. It's exhausting to sincerely consider each individual and each action as a unique entity. Imagine trying to explain all of the behaviors of just one person for a day. An hour. Why was the cashier nice to her and mean to me? Because she spoke French? Because I look like a mean Nanny he had when he was little? Because in between ringing us up he remembered that he forgot to feed his goldfish this morning and his mind went elsewhere? It's impossible to say. And exhausting to try. Which doesn't mean that we shouldn't, it just means that it might be unreasonable to do it 24/7.

I'm not a scientist, but from personal experience I think that it's the way of the human brain to observe, find patterns, make rules, and behave accordingly. It definitely works in our favor when we're doing things like learning object permanance of learning to walk. But, when we're learning about the big things, the things that put the mechanics to use, like new cultures for example, maybe it does more harm than good. Because it's nice that my classmate could find such an airtight explanation for my opinion, but really, what did she get from it? Besides proof for a generalization that wasn't really true?

So is that what I've been doing? Reducing the French to their simplest terms? Their most convenient definitions? Ignoring the details for the illusion of understanding? Well...yes. Obviously. I'm human. What do you want from me? BUT, maybe it's an important first step. How could an alien new to our planet understand what a lion is without understanding what animals are? Well the lion could attack him, that would help him out. But then he's only getting one aspect, and I think that's what experiencing France is like as a foreigner in Paris. I'm being attacked by a lion. I don't understand the language that well. I look different. I smile. So I only get one side of the lion. I don't see the lions hunting or playing or sleeping, only attacking me. But maybe as I change, as I learn French and adjust and become less strange, I will have the benefit of seeing their other habits.

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.