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Me
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| Dear Life: |
[May. 8th, 2008|02:36 am] |
Can May please last a little longer than 31 days? The self that has, against initial impressions, learned to love the France, could use a bit more time on this end of the year; these months, after all that fucking counting, prove not to be enough. |
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| From the Pretentious Annals of my Subconscious |
[Apr. 24th, 2008|12:20 am] |
Last night, I dreamt that I was searching fervently for copies of Nabokov books. I queued for hours at the front of what looked like a record shop until I got to ask the clerk, in French, not if he knew where I could find any Nabokov, but if he knew where I could find a copy of the Neutral Milk Hotel's first album (perhaps because it looked like a record store?). Somehow, he knew what I was really after anyway, and he sent me on a covert mission to the secret basement of the shop where there was a whole dusty English book warehouse. The books were arranged alphabetically by colour; don't ask what this means; I don't know. I had to evade capture on my way there, through a dusty labyrinth of stairs and dead-end doorways marked by emergency exit signs. I got there, and it looked like a fallout shelter-cum-mouldy library: the leftover set from a 1950s cold war movie. But, I was much distressed because when I found the 'N' section of this secret book fair, there wasn't any Nabokov at all. There was a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the 'N' section, but it was by marked as having been written by someone called Carter, which I found even more distressing than the lack of Nabokov. I mean, where I am in life if I can't even identify which titles were or were not actually written by Nietzsche? Obviously, I had to Wikipedia it upon waking to placate myself.
Analysis, in short: I really need to get out more.
Extended Analysis (including actual things that happen outside the realm of my dreams): to follow. |
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| Alternaverse |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|08:23 pm] |
What is there to say when it's sunny every day? When I spend Tuesday afternoons in parks drinking cider, nights drinking magnums of cheap rosé in outdoor cafés, and Wednesdays eating ice creams and having walks along windy beaches? When stealing chairs and dancing in fountains constitute normal Monday nights? When I have few classes, and no pressure to attend most of those on any kind of regular basis? When those classes that I do attend are taught by twitching ladies who speak neither English nor French, but only a strange, shaky mélange of languages in which sentences begin, but trail off into oblivion before they ever manage to find an end? When my only responsibilities are so located so far in the future that I don't even have to feel guilty about spending entire days window shopping and coffee drinking and chattering? When I've been watching so much Sex and the City that pick-up lines in supermarkets seem like acceptable ways to meet men?
The other day, as the result of some silly discussion or other, one of the actual residents of the flat in which most of my friends here live - the flat where I spend all my time - made a sign to put on their door; it reads (in Franglais, of course) "Bienvenue au ALTERNATE UNIVERSE", and it speaks the truth. On the other side of that door, and in places all around this city, there exists a languorous space, different to those which I am used to inhabiting; normal rules and expectations are not applicable. And even though the things that happen in this space may sound strange when pronounced aloud, they feel routine. Days here produce impressions rather than stories, and as such, I can't capture them with my usual narratives. Maybe, in theory, that means that I should develop a new way in which to express them, but in actuality I'm not sure that I can be bothered. For now, all I can say is that I'm so glad I had to come here; I'm so glad I "suffered" through the fall, and meandered ambivalently through the winter; now that Spring has arrived, I'm convinced; I no longer have to tell myself to embrace it - I can even find pleasure in the bad bits. |
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| The English Question |
[Mar. 8th, 2008|06:53 pm] |
Several hours ago, I went outside to buy books and phone credit. I get only several steps away from my door when a older French lady stops me to question me about my attire, and whether or not I'd been frostbitten yet; this happens, perhaps, more frequently than it should.
La Dame: You haven't cold in your neck?
Me: Oui, but...
La Dame: Oh, are you anglaise?
Am I that obvious?
Me: eh...oui.
This is obviously a lie, but it's easier than explaining.
Me: It's less cold here than at home anyway...
This is not exactly a lie, but it's also not the reason I've come out without a scarf or higher-cut neckline; that had more to do with the fact that I continue to trust my weather widget when it is consummately wrong about the state of the weather, but what kind of stranger wants to hear about widgets? And how would one say widget in French anyway?
La Dame: Oh, Amerique? Where do you come from?
Me: Well...I live in Scotland, but I'm of American origin.
More lies. I may spend a lot of time wishing I lived in Scotland anyway...
La Dame: Me, I spent some time in America. I lived at Princeton
Me:Really, that's all close to me. I lived in Philadelphie.
This is an under-exaggeration, at best.
I don't even know what the honest answer is when strangers ask me if Vous êtes anglaise? I mean, I know that I'm NOT English, but do randoms on the street really want to hear my whole life story? Maybe a non, mais je suis fausse anglaise would come closest to the truth... |
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| Things I Love/Hate About Montpellier, Volume I |
[Mar. 2nd, 2008|04:26 pm] |
One of the things I dislike most about living in Montpellier has nothing to do with the city or country itself: it's the fact that I live alone, or more accurately, the fact that I live with someone I never care to see or speak to. There are a few advantages, but mainly a long list of disadvantages to this arrangement. When I was in Edinburgh last week, I was reminded of another drawback of which I had hitherto seldom thought.
I am not a morning person, and I hate waking up. Often, getting out of bed is one of the more torturous things I have to experience on a daily basis. Thus, I often take days off as opportunities to sleep well into the afternoon. Even when the sun or my body clock wake me and I feel fully rested, I'll often elect to stay in bed and carry on sleeping until 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon just because I know I have nothing to do. But while I was in Edinburgh, I experienced a phenomenon about which I had all but forgotten: the desire to get up. When you're living with people whom you know and like, and when those people aren't morning zombies like you are, oftentimes, you'll hear them up and about before you'd ever considering dragging yourself out of bed, and having awoken to the sounds of gentle bustling, you might even be curious enough about the activities to want to get out of bed yourself. The smell of cooking breakfast, the muffled sounds of Jeremy Kyle playing in the living room, your curiosity about what happened last night and why your left ankle hurts when you bend it... all of these are things which, at one time or another, have trumped that strong inclination I have to while away the day in bed. And none of these are things which I will ever experience in France. On the other hand, however, there is an advantage to this: drifting between sleeping and waking for hours on end does produce vivid memories of dreams, which I always find entertaining. So, if this Sunday afternoon you're feeling bored enough to brave though accounts of someone else's dreams, ( here they are: ) |
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| The Long-Haul |
[Feb. 27th, 2008|03:49 pm] |
I'm going back to France tomorrow. Once in a while, I slip and say that I'm going 'home' which implies good things I guess, but immediately, it always sounds wrong to me. My mushy little single bed (into which I stopped sinking only after I unpacked and shoved my too-big suitcases underneath, creating accidental support in my search for storage space) in my lonely little tower room will never quite be any genuine kind of 'home' to me. I'll be glad once I'm there (I can't really justify hiding out here for any longer), but the prospect of nearly ten more hours of travel time does not excite me, especially since I always find leaving Edinburgh impossibly hard. Is it even physically possible for a week to pass this quickly? Didn't I just arrive last night?
Tonight should be good (pub quiz in the gay bar!), and I shall fill in the events of the week (not that there were many events to speak of) once I recover from the combined effects of early morning travel and whatever state I drink myself into ce soir. (Oh, hungover plane journeys, will I never learn from you?) I think that beginning tomorrow, I shall be in France for the long haul. Since I arrived in September, I have never spent an entire calendar month there, but unforeseeable events aside, I don't think I'll have much cause to leave France in the next three. I'm ready for that though; these next three months will be the crisis point - a kind of do or die style approach to my French education - in regard to my French language skills; most of what I don't learn in the coming months, I probably never will. I no longer expect to attain absolute fluency, but I'm ready to immerse myself both literally and figuratively in the Franceness, and do the best I can; there will be no more coming up to breathe; next time I taste Anglo air, I will no longer be an ERASMUS. That's a bit of a daunting prospect, so I'm glad that I was allowed the indulgence of this week. |
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| Undone |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|10:47 am] |
I'm back in Ed now, and even though things are a bit weird, it's excellent in most imaginable ways. I made a return to Faith last night. They had a "popcorn party", which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds; a guy stood on the club's balcony with a great big tube of a cannon and shot "£600 worth of popcorn" onto the dance floor. Then, everyone was drunk (us on £10 champagne and £1 sambuca, first year style) and dancing with popcorn in their hair and under their shoes and in their bras.
I'm still not sure what I'm doing here, but fuck I don't want to be anywhere else. I'm afraid that this return will damage me, that it will undo all of the positive France love I've been able to muster recently. I always knew I loved Edinburgh a great deal, but I think I had almost forgotten quite how much I love it until I got back here last night. It's so windy the shutters rattle, and so freezing my be-flip-flopped feet turn red, but I kind of can't stop smiling, and I wonder how, when I have to leave in six days, I'm going to be able to think of anything else. |
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| February of Fun France "Facts": Fin |
[Feb. 19th, 2008|09:39 pm] |
So, I've obviously fizzled on the "facts" of February front...but just because I've had little to say doesn't mean things haven't been good. These past few weeks, France has been better than it's ever been, and I'm enjoying being here immensely, every day. That said, I'm going...back to Ed for a week because...I don't really know why...but I'm excited about it nonetheless. Importantly, however, while I may be excited to go to Edinburgh, for perhaps the first time ever, I am not desperate to go. So, I'm travelling to Edinburgh on Thursday (via Nimes and Nottingham and it is going to take FOREVER because I choose to live in only the most inconveniently located European cities), and I'm going to shiver for a week, and then I'm going to come back to Montpellier (via London and Marseille which will also take approximately forever) the next Thursday at which point I hope it's very sunny and warm here. And it will all be excellent. And I will write about it, really. I enjoyed the "facts" of February while they lasted, and the France does not stop here; it is, however, going on hiatus for the rest of Feb. |
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| February of Fun France "Facts" Day 12: Reminiscences Part II |
[Feb. 12th, 2008|07:58 pm] |
This is the first day I was ever in France:
It was also the first good day I had in a European country. I also couldn't remember how to say "sorry", "excuse me", or "these are too small" in French. All of these things make me feel ineffably better about now. |
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| February of Fun France "Facts" Day 11: Losing Steam* |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|11:59 am] |
Posting every day is difficile even if I have got nearly five months of backlog to draw on. I'm afraid my "facts" are growing increasingly dull. Though, this may even qualify as an actual fact, which maybe compensates for something?
Fact: French trains are every kind of awesome. I have always had an affinity for train journeys, from the time when I was 14 and I used to have to beg my mom for the freedom to take the train into center city or New York, to the present. And in France, the trains are always an exciting surprise. Super fast (TGV), double decker, compartmentalized... the engineers of French trains must certainly have a lot of fun. In late October/early November, I went on a brief train expedition though Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Lyon, and Grenoble, and it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say I was never on the same type of train twice.
( Obligatory photographic evidence. )
*I wrote this title before I had decided this entry would be about trains, so it's only a pun by accident. Does that mean it's allowed? Because puns are allowed in titles anyway? Probably not. I apologize. |
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| February of Fun France "Facts" day 10 |
[Feb. 10th, 2008|10:27 pm] |
This is in the square at the end of my street in September when the Rugby World Cup was being held in France, occasionally in Montpellier. They were having what I imagine was a "Styles of the World" fashion show, because I heard them bandying about the word "Ecosse" several times while I was at the cashpoint. A sucker for anything that goes down a runway, I investigated, arriving just in time for the pièce de résistance: this fabergé egg of a convertible "wedding dress". Who says the French are all fashionable and chic?
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| How the French Zoo Was So Dire It Taught Me to Feel Sympathetic Towards Animals I'd Normally Despise |
[Feb. 9th, 2008|11:55 pm] |
As it turns out, the Montpellier Zoo is one of the more depressing places at which one could hope to pass a few hours during an idle afternoon, and today, I had the great pleasure of spending my hangover there. To be fair, I don't recall having been to a zoo in at least a decade (and isn't it scary how I'm starting to reference life events in terms of DECADES? When I started this blog I could scarcely have done that...). So, it's possible that all zoos are rather bleak wastelands which make their patrons face the futility of their collective existence, while making them feel guilty about whatever small part they may play in the perpetuation of this torture, but that I had just forgotten about it. I mean, I guess that there is something fundamentally sinister about lining up to see an animal in a cage... But, actually, no. THIS zoo has to be worse than normal zoos. It was a veritable labyrinth composed of badly sign-posted, rocky, hilly, winding paths, in which the animals are nearly impossible to find. And, if you do happen to find any animals, they are either (1) somehow sickly or deformed, (2) one of a seemingly infinite variety of subtley different, yet entirely uninteresting species of goat, or (3) housed in the most desolate and compact of wire-fenced cages. This bear, for example, was a zoo highlight, and it spent the five minutes I observed it ramming against the fence in an attempt to escape, then eating what we thought was a rock, but which actually turned out to be a mouldy bit of baguette (and only the French would possibly think that feeding a baguette to a bear was a good idea...), and finally, poking dejectedly at the ditch you see in the top left bit of this photo.
( The Excitement of the French Zoo continues! ) |
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| February of Fun France "Facts" Day 8: Voyeurism Volume I |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|07:55 pm] |
In my French apartment, the windows are all, figuratively speaking, open; there are no substantial curtains or blinds. Covering my bedroom windows are only horrible, chintzy, transparent odes to privacy; even my door contains an insert of smoked glass. In the bathroom, there is a window (albeit high up, tiny, and generally obscured by steam) that is perpetually naked. So, in theory, my neighbours could be watching me any time I care to leave my lights on. And if Amelie or Mimi Parent is anything to go by, they're probably sitting outside with binoculars. Strangely, this is appeals to my vanity in such a way that it doesn't bother me nearly as much as it probably should.
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| February of Fun France "Facts" Day 7: Apropos of Yesterday |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|07:18 pm] |
It took a while for Montpellier to grow on me; when I first got here, I wasn't sure that I'd ever mange to understand it, let alone grow to love it. But I think I finally have; there have been inklings of it since November, but now, my love of things French has definitively reasserted itself. And, it has managed to surpass what, even recently, were growing feelings of incomprehension, annoyance, and general loathing for anything even vaguely Francophone. This shift was inevitable, really, as I love shiny things, even more so when their glow is understated. And, while, on cloudy days it seems nigh impossible to see Montpellier's glimmer through the inconvenience of shop hours, futile bureaucracy, leering urban nomad men, and dog shit-encrusted streets, when the sun is out, it is impossible to see anything but how Montpellier shines. And, how can I not love the winding labyrinths of streets lined with boutiques and cafés? Or, the ancient cathedrals, aqueducts, and walls from the moyen age? And the beautiful squares and parks, and (of course!) the 2 euro wine? These things exude shiny wonder, and I cannot help but love them a lot. Montpellier is not as striking, or as readily suited to my tastes as Edinburgh, but I love it all the more for having to have worked for that appreciation. Of course it helps that I now have reliable Internet access, that I know my way around, that I know more than one person... but today, I was walking home from Uni, there were street musicians playing, the sun was strong overhead, and I had to try my very hardest to keep from dancing home. New York used to inspire that kind of joy in me, when I couldn't stop giggling for sheer love of the place; Edinburgh did it all the time with its stunning sunsets and its pointy-roofed buildings. And now, in spite of all my apprehensions, Montpellier has done the same. If I can hate so many things about a place, harbour so many feelings of resentment toward it, and still, at the end of the proverbial day, want to dance home, it must be love...right? Maybe not life-long, so-called "true love," but certainly something at which I can look back with a sly, wistful smile with the knowledge that it taught me so much when it caught me unawares. Here's to semester two... |
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| February of Fun France "Facts" Day 6: Crazy Excellence |
[Feb. 6th, 2008|03:54 pm] |
Is it obvious that I wrote yesterday's Fun France "Fact" as a backdated after-thought when I stumbled in from Mardi Gras celebrations at 2:00 am? Because it should be; there was no way I was going to be in at 11:59 last night because I have an inappropriately strong (and well documented) love of Mardi Gras. It was nothing legendary, but a very nice night with friends and lots of shiny beads and pancakes (crepes and nutella and ice cream, yum!) and wine and beer, and eventually, Sambuca at the Australien. I am always asked to, but never quite know how to explain the American Mardi Gras tradition of beads and tit flashing, never having experienced it first hand. But, that will not stop me being festive and coercing everyone around me into donning too-shiny plastic jewelry with me. Oh, I do love Mardi Gras, even more so now that the Brits are around to insist we eat pancakes while we drink too much, wearing too many beads!
And today was very lovely as well, so sunny that beer and sidewalk cafés seemed the only conceivable options for afternoon activities. At the table behind us, sat the most surreal man. He was drinking Desperados, wearing a kerchief type garment around his neck, as well a other generally rugged and well-worn clothes. And he had a green parrot sitting on his shoulder the whole time, which, every once in a while, sneaked a sip of his tequila beer. We all thought it was quite excellent, because, wouldn't we dress up as pirates and drink Desperados if we happened to own parrots well-trained enough to sit on our shoulders all afternoon? But then, he then turned around and licked the parrot's tail, at which point we figured he was probably more crazy than excellent. |
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