Frenzy

I leave three weeks from today.

Ever since returning from Amsterdam, I haven’t been able to turn off the internal countdown in my head. It’s dizzying and unstoppable and unbelievable that I’m leaving so soon. Three weeks, I am trying to make myself understand, is a long time. A three week trip somewhere is a really, really long trip. Three weeks off from school is a very considerable vacation. But three weeks left here—in Paris, at 22 rue Leon Frot, with Nathanel’s maniacal laughter emanating from his room, and with Theo slouching through the apartment in a hole-covered t-shirt with a hand-rolled cigarette peeking out of his mouth, and with Yolaine singing opera in the kitchen while she makes a three-cheese tart that will undoubtedly be delicious and that she will undoubtedly apologize for, and with Sacre Coeur lit up like a toy in the night sky, visible from my balcony, and with the old, low, gray buildings spreading out before my window looking like a scene from a Dickens’ novel, and with the boulangerie next door and Café Titon down the street and the Turkish man at the sandwich shop and the old men at that tiny bar who always stand at the counter playing cards with the bartender, and with all of the places that I walk by and want to go to and haven’t been to yet, and all the places that I haven’t walked by and haven’t been to yet—three weeks of that, is nothing.

But I’m going to try to refocus. To pretend like it’s my first three weeks again, and do everything and see everything and pack my days from sunrise to sunset—which won’t be very hard, since the sun sets by 5:30 these days. I’m going to start going to bars alone again and meeting strangers to help me practice my French. I’m going to go to every arrondissement I haven’t really explored yet (the 16^th? the 17^th? almost everything above 12 is a mystery to me). I’m also going to go to the refrigerator and get the can of beer that I just bought (90 centimes for 55 cl of Kronenburg—niiiiice!), and try to calm down.

Okay. Back.

I haven’t written a real entry in a while. Trying to recount the past two weeks would be too daunting a task, so I’ll resort to my favorite device, the list. Maybe my sporadic blogging stems from the fact that if I write infrequently, I get to do rapid lists, using lots of commas and semicolons, whereas if I wrote more frequently I would probably have to write a complete sentence now and then. Something to ponder.

Anyway, let’s try to do 11 days in one paragraph: strikes continued, lots of walking, lots of annoyed Parisians, lots of manifestations and marches; visited the Louvre three times, since it’s a nice indoor activity and Paris is getting cold and I need to get cracking if I’m going to see the whole museum before I leave; met a man named Ludovig (?) at Café Titon and somehow it came up that I liked books, which turned into an hour-long conversation of him giving me not only literary recommendations, but movies, music, philosophy, restaurants, and bakeries, all scrawled on scraps of paper and napkins and thrust at me haphazardly—I have them in a drawer and I intend on taking each and every suggestion; Thanksgiving at IES, which was ok, nothing like homemade Thanksgiving, but I got to sit at Bertrand’s table, and I know I haven’t mentioned Bertrand at all yet, but know that sitting with Bertrand is a coveted thing; out to bars with Theo and IES friends; discussions about life late at night with Theo, him telling me that he has a good intuition and that he knows that I will write wonderful novels in the future, and that he wants me to send him a copy of my first book; unsuccessful Christmas shopping; successful Christmas shopping; chocolate bliss—Dave you’re the only one who knows what I’m talking about; going to a bar in St. Michel where a) the waitress tried to steal a full pack of cigarettes from our table b) the bartender yelled at us for petting the enormous dog that was literally sitting in the booth with us c) said dog mounted my friend Caitlin and proceeded to attempt to copulate with her, while no bartenders intervened; walking by the Christmas displays aux grands magasins, where every building is lit up entirely, and the window displays are works of art that move, and crowds gather to watch, standing in their thick coats and puffing hot breath into the air and holding up their little kids so they can see the dancing penguins, and vendors stand off to the side selling roasted chestnuts; the Musee du Vin (wine museum), where you get a complimentary glass of wine with your tour, unless you’re me and then you get TWO free glasses haHAAA!; hip-hop class; going to a bar with Olivier where the beer was 2 euro a pint and there were board games on all the shelves, and he taught me a crazy French card game that made no sense but apparently I won, and then we played French scrabble and it was impossible and the only word I could come up with on my own was “tu”; seeing the Arenes de Lutece, an old Roman amphitheater near the Latin Quarter that is apparently the oldest monument in Paris.

Okay. Nolwenn just told me that it’s time for dinner. À table!