The Great Language Divide

Some cousins from Paris are planning an upcoming trip to NYC.  They called me the other day to ask me for trip advice and answer some questions.  As I continue my French studies, small improvement after small improvement start to feel much bigger when they start popping up more frequently.  I am getting more comfortable and gaining more confidence in my French.

Languages are intimidating things.  For the longest time, I felt as if my mind divided itself in half when I immersed myself in French.  I couldn't easily switch back and forth.  But I've been practicing heavily for 23 years now and it's starting to feel like a Major Life Accomplishment.

I had to give up on a call center travel job after a few months into it because I could not comprehend Québécois with ease.  I strained myself and felt foggy trying to converse...I need to visit Quebec to practice some more.

My French is far from perfect, and I still have troubles expressing familial sentiments as my relatives over there shower me with affections in their oh-so-French ways.  But with each conversation, I learn more and more and more and my mind no longer feels SPLIT/divisé en deux.  I cannot put into words  how great that feels.

I'd love to sign up for that French class again.  But it's just not been in my budget.  Time to dig up my livres en français.  A little Guy de Maupassant never hurt anyone.

hibernating

slow news day. again. tried to sit down to work on Great American Novel and nothing but blah blah blah flowed from within today. bitter cold is back. leftovers for lunch today. coffee in hand. kitty sleeping under bed. hubby working all day, open to close.

could talk about billy corgan, my new customer. or slumping music sales. but blah blah blah.

when it's a slow news day, i whisk myself back to France.

Journal entry from Fall 2005, my last Parisian excursion. new commentary following.

aie aie aie
such a strange time to be here in paris. globalisation slammed right up in your face. fires burning. social unrest. capitalist hierarchies. wealthy nations not comprehending why third-world natives want to grow in lands of opportunity. i guess this is it. the future. no more hope, just a lot of war blowing up all over the planet. this can't be it. this can't be our reality. somewhere there's gotta be a light.

when i get back stateside i think we need to band together and spread some love, kids. where are all the hippies? where's all the action? did we get lazy and just decide to spew our opinions on the internet? there is a big friggin world out there and, babies, i'm right in the middle of it, and i don't really think it's time to laugh and fantasize and play in imagination-land anymore. America is no longer disneyland, Wile E. Coyote has finally caught Roadrunner, and Starbucks has invaded Paris. The world is morphing back to a Pangean state, but it's people are not. I like to laugh and roll around in the balls at Chuck E. Cheese and ride bumper cars at the fair just like everyone else, but it ain't funny anymore...

I've been sitting on the steps of the Parisian opera house each nite before I catch my train back to the fiery suburbs, just watching the world pass before my eyes, and after a million Americans stop by to ask me directions to the Eiffel Tower, I'm tired. Really friggin tired.

By the way, I need a job. Anybody hiring? I'll go anywhere.

---

I found your journal (from Amanda's) and was just catching up on your great adventures! You are having the wonderful time you knew you would and learning more about your soul - that is a good thing! I am sure you will find just the right time to start writing. You can be the female (hah!) David Sedaris of Paris. Maybe you should find him to see if he needs an assistant? That would be a great job for you. Good luck with the adventure and I will keep looking every day for more fun. Take care - Love Teresa

Several years later, and with a new president in tow, I feel rejuvenated. Running off to France for five months is not an option at this time, but participating in Obamarama global overhaul is.

Inspiring.

Discipline.

I have been trying to devote a little time each day to a concrete writing submission project, but I fall down on the job each time. I'm not going to beat myself up over this. I work a ridiculous work schedule, never have two consecutive days off, and if I do have free time I like to spend it with my husband. It would be fantastic to find myself an agent and receive some spectacular publishing house funding to concentrate solely on W-R-I-T-I-N-G, but I am well aware of the reality of 'luck' and find refuge in the mere fun of it all.

As I sift through candid writings from days of yore, old travelogues and travelblogs that were originally written as a correspondence to all the family and friends I've met along the way, I cringe at times when I remember the thoughts I had at the moment of the original writing. Again, I pull from the months in France in 2005. This was written at the moment of the so-called Parisian suburb riots, incidentally only 3 towns away from the one I was in, and at a time when I had absolutely no idea where my life would be taking me even one week from that point.

You re-read your own thoughts and relive those particular experiences and laugh at how silly everything seemed. But you also slowly smile and thank God for allowing you to choose your own adventure....

Monday, November 7th, 2005

1:05 pm - Creators, Creation, Media and Everything Else Out-of-Proportion

It's been a bizarre few days. I just heard from the folks back home and everyone was scared that I would somehow get lost in the Paris riots. I've watched it slowly grow, from the first few burnings being covered on the french news, to the eventual coverage by the BBC satellite tv at my cousin's house, to the concerned American family members and their kooky coverage back home. Kinda ironic how a little news story a week or two ago spread like a wildfire around the globe and is now out of control. I have walked and climbed and scaled these city walls and I haven't even smelled one whiff of fire. You know what? There are a million other things going on in this city too. I went to the Louvre yesterday because it was free and they moved the Mona Lisa to a nicer room and got rid of that scratched acrylic panel and replaced it with a very tall piece of glass. Also, the Information Desk at the Louvre is on strike. Everyone here in France goes on strike! Immigrants flock to this country because the social benefits are incredulous. I watched a tiny little nation's people protest around the Bastille to bring attention to their atrocious government and the loss of their culture. They had music, a bunch of loud percusions and you could hear it almost all the way over to the Seine. Today I was roaming and sat down on a bench near the Arc de Triomphe and some Arab women asked me if I could give them some money. The first one cursed me when i shook my head no. I explained to the second one that I also did not have any income and she blessed me as a sister in her language and the others smiled around me and did a two-second prayer vigil around me or something. They flirted with French security standing nearby and everyone laughed and they went on their way with their daily beggings. Globalism is here. Il faut melanger. C'est la vie. I wandered around the Pompidou Centre and looked at an incredible modern art collection, not organised chronologically or by school, but by socialist themes. The last rooms were war, death, voyeurism and prostitution. I left feeling rather melancholic, as if that's ALL we have to come together and create right now but mass chaos everywhere, but there was one last room right by the Big Bang entrance, which was nearly pitch black, you had to walk around a dark room with strangers and search for the guiding lights, featuring five film installations of particular cosmic happenings in the astral skies above. Five Angels for the Universe. Great, a little optimism never hurt anyone, perhaps misdiagnosed as naivete often, but pray tell, where exactly ARE these five angels and when are people going to start listening to them?

Oct. 22, 2005

Here is another entry from my last big voyage:

Saturday, October 22nd, 2005

8:45 am - I love Paris in the faallllll...

So the gray skies have arrived and il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville. Up until this point, the weather has been gorgeous in upper Normandie...a few showers here and there but still delightful enough to sit at a sidewalk café once the sun yawned and stretched its arms. It's been like a grandes vacances, but on Monday morning my reality shall ebb and flow some more toward my new morning train/bus schedules with all the workers as they rush from the suburbs to that mystical magical place known as Paris. It's been amazing, sharing dinners in different homes in the small villages of France. Some of the elders who have lived harmoniously in the petites villes without ever stepping foot into Paris haven't seen an American since La Libération. I arrived in a house last night for a dinner invitation and I thought if nothing else comes of this trip, last night's conversation made it all worthwhile. When I walked into the home, my head hit the trim of the doorway. I stepped in the kitchen and the refridgerator was chest-high. The stove and sink hit me mid-thigh, and all of the people scattering around to greet me with kisses had to stretch on their tippy toes to reach me. I was a giant. I felt America-sized. I'm not that tall, really, but I had to rub my eyes and make sure I wasn't on candid camera or had fallen down yet another rabbit hole in life. It was fine once we sat down with our apéritifs but it only added to the constant surrealism of the days I spend in France. I swear I could open the screen-less window in my bedroom and a little robin redbreast would perch on my finger and sing just for me. Anyyay, the woman was almost 80 years old, and she sat down next to me and told me she went to school with my grandma. She played with my hair and touched my face all over, dangled my earrings and studied me. I thought for a second: this must be what famous people feel like. It was like she just couldn't believe I was sitting in her living room. She had crocheted a beautiful piece for me almost a decade ago upon my first arrival in France, which sits on my dresser among all my pretty perfume bottles. There had been a divorce since I was last here and the blood lines had seperated and technically, these were no longer members of Ma Famille, but I accepted the invitation anyway because it just seemed like the most diplomatic thing to do. Midway through the meal, it began. Now, these folks, my elders, were either just beginning their adult lives or trying to enjoy their youth under Nazi occupation. It's not something that is spoken of very often, French civilisation was rebuilt and restored to its origins, but the stories start to unfold when my rare appearance presents the opportunity to discuss. So do you know how your grandmother met your grandfather in Petit Couronne? It usually begins as a simple love story but each time it is told there are new developments, a repressed memory resurfaces, or the story changes itself altogether. Yes, my grandfather stormed the shores of Normandy with US Army paratroopers and combatted the land to this little town where my French grandma was living. The town had been ransacked by bombs, there are tales woven of entire families gone the next day, either taken away to concentration camps or their houses bombed. There are tales of questioning on the streets by the Nazis, of escape routes to Vichy, of sheer pandemonium that is very painfully and scarcely unveiled by the elders. But then the Americans arrived into town. They were staying in a grande maison, and the mother of the woman sitting next to me last night at the dinner table used to go down to gather cigarettes from the American soldiers for her son who had been imprisoned. In return, she did all their laundry, including my Grandpa's. That painted a picture for me...this woman next to me in her late teens, hanging American GI uniforms and undies and socks to dry in her childhood home's backyard. The stories are all so rich, scattered and nearly lost, and I couldn't do them any justice right now in these unsung words, but the tears that were shed last night around the table and the statement made me feel hopeful with that one staple of French culture, that they really really appreciate the glory of life, how to live it, their own patriotisme, and that simple yet overlooked expression that the Religion of Love, not WAR, is really the only solution. Nope, I couldn't do the stories any justice, but that I'm really glad I learned French and was able to experience them as closely as possible. Maybe if the whole world all did the same thing, just simply sit down every night for a two hour meal with family and friends and talk and share and laugh and cry, then we wouldn't be so lost in our current motivations. Bon weekend à tous! current mood: wooo baby this café is strong current music: i love paris - screamin jay hawkins version

Former Life in France

My grandmother grew up in Rouen, France. She moved here after the war with my American paratrooper grandfather soldier a year or so after D-Day. I spent some quality time there and did everything touristy I could possibly do in that town. I walked the town left to right, north to south, up and down for days on end and walked around trying to imagine my grandmother's life there as a young teen with Nazi soldiers all around. Then I wandered into this quirky little museum right off of the Place du Vieux Marche and wrote a bit about it here:

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

9:37 am - The Fifth Element of the Universe

So Joan of Arc. Jeanne D'Arc. La Pucelle. The Maid of Orléans. The first female renegade of the land. La terre, si tu veux. This town I've been living in is the site of her torturous death. They've got this fire pit and a cross in a plaza here, marking the precise location of her burning, the dungeon tower where she was held prisoner, a museum, a church built in her name. The fine arts museum features painting after painting of her battles, a high school, a major avenue, even a gift shop in l'éspace du Vieux Marché with Joan of Arc snowglobes. I have my Joan days, where I visit all of the monuments and learn about her life. I sometimes stop and sit to watch what kind of audience she still attracts. I've done the wax figure museum in three languages now. My favorite part is when they demand her to sign her name to the papers upon her trial and she will only sign with a cross. All the men become irate, fearful, impaired in judgment and it's a mere power struggle of the sexes. A story shrouded in mystery and skepticism, it's her conviction of belief in a God that truly made her the French heroine. It pains me that scholars try to defy these convictions, that modern psychology attempts to level out that mysterious unknown with mechanical human labels... I don't quite know what the balance is, maybe it is that of science fiction, only what art may reveal, but I do know that not much has changed since Joan of Arc days. We're still waging war on the consciousness of man. What else is going on in the world these days? Can't they just show us new puppy pictures on the news? The monk doing sand paintings? The kids playing Kick the Can down the street? There's something to be said about our daily creations and what fills our collective mind everyday, and somehow, if we could, just bring it down a notch, another notch, another notch, then things might not be so, hmmmm, intensified. On that note, I'm gonna go pick out a pastry at the boulangerie, sit in front of the Cathedrale, listen to the accordian some more and count the number of girls wearing cowboy boots. I seriously never thought I'd return to France to find fabulously frocked french fashionista cowgirls everywhere.

going backwards a bit

i spent some time in France a few years back. about 5 1/2 months in late 2005. i had been working directly under a really mean lady-owner of a growing artsy company and didn't feel compelled to make a career of it, i was dating someone at the time who was not my cup of tea, and i had a pretty revolting set of experiences in my mid-twenties which prompted a need for a fresh beginning. i was between leases, had saved up a lot of money, paid off many debts and was ready to go.

my relatives overseas have always been extraordinary curators of my worldy whims and entertained the idea of spending more time with them to 'see what i could find.' i worked on some translation bits for my musician cousins' production company in the Alps and worked with 3-year olds on art projects at my cousin's Ecole Maternelle in Haute Normandie. and i wandered.

the next few postings are a resurrection of an old travel blog i had kept while i was overseas. i recently located the blog again and want to preserve it here.

Monday, October 17th, 2005

8:28 am - Il était une fois un ciel menaçant...

So I'm going to give this thing a whirl. Years have gone by in the bottomless pit of the internet (the warped dimension that it is) and little has changed. I'm nearing 30, I still have no solidified career to speak of, I had been diagnosed with multiple psychological disorders from which I opted to run, I took their pills (both the red and the blue), and now I'm house-sitting in Haute-Normandie with three French cats who play jazz music with their catnip toys. Life really isn't so bad, once you get the hang of the neurotic flow of traffic around the Arc de Triomphe and you realize a baguette is not just a baguette, but a staple of an entire culture. It will always be that way, a world of impatient drivers in a hub of chaos, the body of Christ sitting limp in the passenger seat...late for dinner again...so we might as well band together, this world and me, and figure out a way to at least make it F-U-N. Yes, I quit my job in Chicago and ran to my relatives here. I love Chicago, don't get me wrong, but somehow life there was beginning to seem as contrived as the Broadway Musical of the same name. There was a staged act, a prison sentence, puppeteer lawyers and an assortment of glitzy musical acts. Sha-ZAM! Still to this day, when I tell any European which American rampart I hail from, the initial response is And while I once frequented the Green Mill which was once operated by Al Capone, I can assure you that the gangsters have left the building and have been replaced by expensive cover charges, gimmicky tours, Starbucks, Lettuce Entertain You restaurant chains and any other America-sized idea of a good time. That's just it, you know, America is like the next size offering at Starbucks. Tall, Grande, Venti, and America sized. These are your options in America. For my friends outside the USA, at Starbucks coffee restaurant chain we stand in enormous lines and wait to order complicated espresso beverages. Orders go something like this: In France, we find a seat in the café, a waiter comes around, we order un café, it's a small little pinky-sized drink and it takes us two hours and intense worldly conversation with others to consume it. I suppose there is Passion in both cultures... America's bordering on obsessive compulsion, France's dwelling on individualities... but where are all the people in between supposed to go? current mood: contemplative current music: Nosfell's Mindala Jinka