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!

A day in the life, continued (I can only upload 5 pictures per entry...LAME)

The Sunday morning bread-rush at a boulangerie down the street from me, and the goods themselves:

Rue de Charonne. Great fucking street.

The Bastille. The Genius of Liberty glints in the sunlight on top. Yay freedom! And guillotines!

Me and Joel at Cafe Titon. I was standing on a bucket.

More later. Goodnight.

A day in the life

Due to several requests, as well as my own desire not to write anything real tonight, this entry will be devoted primarily to pictures. These images, more or less, constitute a normal day for me.

First, I wake up in this bed:

Those are scarves and an umbrella hanging from the wall. That is Clownie lying lifelessly on my pillows.

Then, twisting the long, creaky metal pole, I roll up my blinds--wonderful, heavy, wooden blinds that keep me in pitch blackness as late as i want--and sunlight comes flooding in (unless it's gray and rainy. which is fairly frequently). This is what I see:

Yes, that is a French-language version of Cosmo in the right corner. And yes, I make sure that my sunglasses stay in a straight line at all times.

When I leave the building, I go through this gate:

No matter where I am going, I am usually late, and I spring out of the metro station, breathless, ripping my scarf from my neck and unbuttoning my coat as I run, working myself into a heated frenzy even against the biting chill. A rough approximation of said event:

These, Cory, are my feet on Parisian pavement:

They are, I believe, pretty different from my American feet.

Home again

I walked four trillion miles today.

The title of my last blog entry is not, in fact, true. La grève est très grave. And it continues. Getting home from Charles de Gaulle last night was a disaster, and included such amusing activities as elbowing through angry crowds of tired travelers, waiting in the cold for prolonged periods of time, and walking a half mile in the pouring rain without an umbrella. And today, trying to get to and from class entailed literally hurling my body into a packed metro car, hoping that I landed on somebody soft—because the trains only came about once every 40 minutes and everyone and their mom wanted to get on—only to bounce violently back and leave the metro station resignedly to traverse the city by foot.

And tomorrow the grève continues, so I am setting my alarm for an ungodly hour and preparing my body armor for another foray into the Parisian public transportation system. I will get where I want to go, and ain’t no granny in a beret going to get in my way.

So. Amsterdam.

Two things: 1) it was great. 2) it made me realize that I don’t want to go on anymore trips. A bit of elaboration on each point:

1) Amsterdam is beautiful. Narrow houses with back-breaking staircases and old hardwood frames line the canals, which meander in and out of one another in an incomprehensible, infinite network of waterways and bridges off of which the blinding sunlight glints. Houseboats and flowerbeds and smiling bikers and tiny shops are everywhere. Big wheels of cheese and a never-ending outdoor tulip markets and wooden clogs and Christmas decorations. I kept on repeating one of two phrases, either “I feel like I’m in a storybook!” or “I feel like I’m in Disney World!”

We did all the things that we wanted to do—went to the Van Gogh Museum, the Sex Museum, the Anne Frank House, ate good falafel, went to “coffee shops,” visited the Red Light District (twice, at my request—I could write pages about that…it was incredibly difficult to make myself understand that it was real), wandered the canals, went to bars. It was cold, but frequent doses of hot, spiced wine and a few sprints through Dam Square helped to fend off frostbite.

Incidentally, I got to Amsterdam four hours before the other girls, so I roamed the city alone for a while, during which time I stumbled into the smallest pub in Amsterdam and ended up doing the twist on top of the bar with Alastair, a middle-aged Australian man who, I later learned, is an Olympic medalist for sailing.

Also, I got into a yelling fight with a cab driver, met a man named Moose, and impressed a Scottish marine with my drinking skills.

2) I came up with an analogy (my life, incidentally, seems to be a constant search for ways to describe my life in analogies) to describe how I feel about Amsterdam/trips in general: the difference between traveling all over Europe on the weekends and staying in Paris is like the difference between skimming the headlines of a newspaper and sitting down in a comfy chair with a big mug of coffee to read the whole thing, cover to cover. I do not mean to say that I didn’t have fun in Amsterdam, but I couldn’t help but feeling like my entire experience was superficial. I don’t understand anything about the city’s culture, I don’t speak the language, I have only a cursory knowledge of the history, I don’t know what bars or cafes or clubs or shops are good, I don’t know how to get from point A to point B. Sure, I did the things you’re supposed to do in Amsterdam; I took pictures; I had a good time. But I was an outsider. I was, in all senses of the word, a tourist. I felt lost and helpless and stupid—I spent way too much money because I didn’t understand the GODDAMN TRAM SYSTEM and I approached people on the street and awkwardly asked, “Do you speak English?” and, just, touristtouristtourist.

I know I’m not a Parisian. I know that. But here I feel like I belong, or at least like I can pretend that I belong. I have a routine, I have places that I know and people who know me, I speak the language, I don’t get lost, I pass places where I have made memories, I know what signs say, I know what monuments mean, I feel like I have a place. In the back of my mind, I had been planning one more trip—Belgium or Spain—but I know now that I won’t go. I missed Paris this weekend. Four months is a short time, barely enough to build friendships with the people around me and to establish an existence here, and, especially as the end the semester begins to approach (TOMORROW is the one-month-left mark…jesuschristfuackfshs;kldja), I feel that I cannot cherish my time in this city too much.

Yolaine left today for Syria, and she’ll be gone for 15 days. That sucks, a lot. I’m trying not to think about it.

I would like to add that, during the course of writing this blog, I was interrupted four trillion times (four trillion is the number of the day), by telephone calls and skype invitations and dinner and cigarette breaks with Theo (cigarettes for him, nothing but smiles and innocence for me), and, during this time, I have also consumed a respectable glass of Jack Daniels, so, due to both factors—distraction and alcohol—I exempt myself from harsh critiques of my linguistic capabilities.

Ce n'est pas grave, la greve

Un autre greve.

I'm fighting back a deep desire to write in French right now. I will resist.

Un autre greve=another strike. I didn't write much about the last strike, but know that about 3 weeks ago, the French transportation workers decided to strike, for reasons that I won't go into, and the city shut down and everyone had to walk everywhere and classes were canceled and there were big demonstrations near where I live (a very liberal area, ever since that whole French revolution thing, with the raising of the Bastille and the declaration of the rights of man and all that other crap). Demonstrations, by the way, turn out to be a lot of middle-aged people strolling down the street in an endless stream, drinking tall cans of beer, happy to have an excuse to take a day off from work, amidst a minority of more enthusiastic demonstrators who set off smoke flares and hand out fliers to passers-by and shout incomprehensible things from mega-phones. Also, "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes is always playing.

Anyway. Aujourd'hui, il y avait un autre greve. All of my classes at IES were cancelled, and apparently angry students were/are blocking the entrances to the Sorbonne and 5 other Paris universities--their strike is unrelated, something to do with some new policy about the autonomy of universities, but they have joined forces with the transportation workers, in a general show of solidarity for the right to organize a goddamn strike! What I've learned, through these greves: 1) French people like to strike 2) Most people who aren't striking hate all the strikers 3) French people hate any sort of change (dont' we all?) 4) Strikes actually mean something here. Stefan, one of my homies from Cafe Titon, told me that he finds American strikes really funny--everyone walking in a circle, holding signs. I believe he used the word "cute" to describe them. There's a lot of truth in that statement. When you see a strike in the states, you drive by, maybe honk if you agree or flick them off you don't, and go about your daily life. Nobody pays the strikers much mind. But here, a strike shuts down the city. A strike changes the way you structure your day, a strike ruins your plans.

For instance, today I was going to go to class and then head to the Louvre (today was going to be Napoleon's quarters), and then go to conversation hour and then out to a bar or something. Instead, à cause du grève, I slept until noon, then spent the afternoon walking around the sunny, cold city, exploring the Jewish quarter of the Marais with some IES friends (there is a bakery called Finklestein's in Paris, by the way), then bought absurdly large bottles of beer and drank them in Place des Vosges until a short, angry, red-faced guard kicked us out because it was closing time, and we relocated to the Seine.

I am going to Amsterdam tomorrow, assuming the greve doesn't thwart those plans, too. The airlines aren't affected by all of this, but getting to the airport is another issue. There is some chaos with the other girls who were supposed to come, because they had train tickets and all the train lines are striking, so I may be spending some time alone in Amsterdam. I'm not worried. Il faut etre courageuse.

Family is great. Yolaine is leaving for a two-week trip to Syria on Monday, so I hope I get to see her on Sunday night when I get home. I'll try to put up some more pictures soon--it's hard to remember to take pictures. When you see the same beautiful things every day, you don't feel a lot of urgency to take pictures--oh, that will all be there tomorrow. But time is fucking fleeting. I'll try. Or I'll at least try to procure some of my friends' pictures.

Wish me luck for Amsterdam.

Thinking of titles is the worst part of having a blog

It is Friday evening. I had a long day—up too early after going to bed too late and drinking too many pints the night before (too many pints=two pints, FYI), then class at the Sorbonne, my three hour Friday class that I’ve missed exactly 50% of the time, then a long walk home, tracing a diagonal line across the city, from the northwest corner to the southeast. When I left class, the sky was a brilliant blue, and the sun had just reached that late-afternoon angle position that creates dramatic, blinding, isolated spots of light. I reached my apartment beneath an almost indigo sky, with a hint of moon but no stars. I don’t know if I’ve seen any stars in Paris, now that I think of it.

Two remarks concerning class today: 1) during the lecture, the enormous, hour-long class held in “le grand amphitheatre,” I witnessed what I believe to be the French concept of class participation. The professor asked, “do you understand?” and no one responded, because there were a hundred billion people in the room and who wants to be the loser who says, “I sure do understand! Thanks a mill, prof!” so then he said, “I didn’t hear an answer…” so then a few people mumbled and incomprehensible noise which he interpreted to be a yes, and he said, “Bon! Un petit peu d’interactivite entre nous!” 2) In the three-hour “small” class (=30-ish students), I got back an essay and I got a good grade. My professor said it was better than most French students’ papers. This is gratuitous self-promotion right now, but I have no one here who cares/wants to hear that type of thing, so I’m putting it in my blog in the hopes of getting a pat on the back or something. Please excuse my constant need for validation.

Tomorrow I am going on an IES excursion to Provins (I, incidentally, pronounce Provins horribly, and it sounds like I’m saying Provence, so I’ve had several very confusing conversations about my weekend plans). We are meeting at 8:15. That means I will be up very early. Because of my deep-seated, perhaps foundationless, disdain for all things IES—and, more generally, all things involving large groups of Americans with digital cameras and guidebooks—I am not too excited for the excursion. But I skipped the other one I was supposed to go on—I guess I skip things a lot—so I feel obligated. But I’ll keep an open mind. I forget exactly what Provins is, but I think it involves going underground at some point, which is cool, and there is a free lunch somewhere in there, which is also cool.

Today I was thinking about how much I like Paris, and the thought occurred to me that maybe I just like places. If I spend enough time in a place, and really think about it as a concept, how it differs from other places, what its people are like, what its culture and history says about it, what kind of lifestyle it promotes, I tend to grow to really love it. This summer, when I was spending a lot of time in Boston for my internship and doctor’s appointments and visiting friends, I started to feel very attached to the city itself. I sat by the banks of the Charles and spilled out three or four pages of florid praise for Boston. During brief trips to both New Orleans and New York this summer, I felt the beginnings of similar attachments stirring inside me. Is it possible that just the idea of place appeals to me? The more I think about it, the truer it sounds. I think I like places more than people, to be honest. No offense.

But maybe not. Maybe I really just love Paris. It is important to keep in mind that everything on this blog could be complete bullshit, since most of what I write are thoughts that come to me while I’m on the metro, between playing rounds of snake on my cell phone and trying to figure out if I’m wearing the same boots as the old lady next to me.

One more thought: When I walk out to the main street in front of my apartment, Boulevard Voltaire, I usually turn left. Left is where things are. If you go right, I recently discovered, there are about 15 blocks which are, I swear to God, all identical. They are all clothing stores aimed at 20-something women, all owned by Asians, all bearing the words, “Pret-À-Porter” (“Pret-À-Porter,” literally translated, means “ready to wear” [isn’t all clothing sold in stores “ready to wear?” have I been missing some crucial post-buying pre-wearing step for all these years? (by the way, thanks for the math bracket suggestion, Maya, but if you take a closer look at previous blog entries, you will see that I was already privy to that tidbit [I am aware the I used the word “tidbit” in my last entry, and since it is quite a distinctive word, I fear that readers might scoff at the repetition, but I just really like the word “tidbit”])]).

Okay.

Dinner then sleep.

Let’s hope Provins rocks.

Au revoir, mama

My mom is gone.

In a sense. She left my apartment about twenty minutes ago and is now three or four blocks down the street, in her hotel room, in a modern, creak-free queen-sized bed, maybe writing in her journal, maybe reading a book, getting ready for her flight tomorrow morning.

Once you decide a trip is over, a trip is over. She might as well be back in Boston already.

It is time to be independent again. After two weeks of visitors and gratuitous neglect of my blog, I am once again alone--just me, Paris, and mes penees. How poetic.

We had a good week, my mom and me. We saw a ballet at the Opera Garnier and ate fabulous meals and walked around the city in the sunshine and walked around the city in the gray-time and walked around the city in the mist, and made plans and canceled plans and changed plans and walked and drank and ate and walked and talked and saw and drew and walked and drank and walked.

Tonight we went out to a little Bretonne restaurant down the street from me, a hole in the wall that I pass almost every day when I walk to Bastille. We drank hard cider--my mom almost ordered this special expensive kind that was about halfway between hard cider and soft cider, but I put my foot down--only the real shit for me--and ate Brittany-style crepes. I feel soft and fuzzy from my hard cider. The cider sort of tasted like mold--but I only mean that if mold can have a really great, tasty connotation. If not, scratch that observation.

Fabulous week. I'm tired and buzzed. I have a mid-term tomorrow, apparently. I learned that little tidbit about three hours ago, and have not altered my plans to accomodate for it at all. Failing doesn't count if you're nine time zones away, right?