Thursday, 25 September 2008
I feel I should begin by describing how I have arrived here this evening. This description will not flatter me, but somehow recording it seems vital to beginning whatever it is I am to say, explore, or discover this evening while addressing a somewhat formless and indefinite audience (Oh Internets, will we ever truly come to know and understand each other?). I woke moments ago after drifting off for what may have been half an hour. I had a tissue stuffed into one nostril, my face propped up with one hand, and a thick drool of sickness rolling halfway down my forearm. In my lap, my computer; I'd made it halfway through an interview with David Foster Wallace, which I say not as commentary on the quality of his writing, but to reveal something about which and what kind of sentences may have helped usher me here.
All of Paris seems to have caught cold. Everyone is sniffling and coughing. Unfortunately I am no exception. My head feels swollen with snot, I can't stop sneezing, and I feel miserable enough to wish I could stay in bed, but not miserable enough to feel justified in doing so. I took notes on Southworth and Hawes in art history this morning, met some girls in my program for lunch, then attended grammar at the Sorbonne, where things began to fall apart. Madame Berthier spied me looking pathetic halfway through her lecture on les adjectifs, and declared, Vous êtes vraiment malade, ma chérie, and advised me to arm myself with more than a bag of honey-flavored cough drops. After grammar I descended the twelve flights of stairs to phonetics to explain, Excusez-moi, je suis très malade--trop malade pour parler le joli français.
I write this not for pity, but for context.
Earlier this week I went to speak with my program director in her office. Primarily, I went to collect paperwork for my trip to the prefecture tomorrow, but I stayed longer to chat. She asked whether my room mate and I got on, if I was enjoying life in Paris. I told her a little about the people I've met, my plans for travel, how every day living here is like a gift. She confessed that even after thirty years of life in Paris, when she wakes up in a bad mood, a trip to the park or a stroll around the neighborhood can quickly lift her spirits. I'm inclined to agree with her.
Certainly there are experiences I grumble about--this cold, for one, or the long line I must wait in at the prefecture tomorrow. I share my hardships with other students, who suffer many of the same experiences. Over lunch, two California girls and I made light of forking over what seems an exhorbant amount of money for shampoo, which comes in tiny bottles. We anticipate our next trip to Sam's Club with both excitement and dread. I know that when I return, everything in America will seem ridiculously large--the cars, the roads, the buildings, the people. The fact that you can stock an American bathroom with gallons of shampoo and a year's supply of toilet paper with a single trip to one location baffles and excites me. The idea of not returning to Monoprix each week for a tiny 5€ bottle of shampoo appeals to me. Simultaneously, there is something to be said for living life one liter of milk at a time.
When I studied creative writing in high school and lived from workshop to workshop, critique to critique, we spent a lot of time thinking about our lives as creative writing students. The more we progressed with our expression, the more it seemed we wrote about the same thing over and over. I often felt like a broken record, and often said so. Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite poems that I wrote (was it sophomore year?), "On Finding the General Vicinity":And I wonder when we will resign ourselves
Though it hasn't quite happened yet, I'm beginning to feel the same way when I write here. If I come to write something personal rather than informative, it is always about the way Parisian life doesn't seem real. Even small things seem the stuff of dreams--the afternoon light, the collective murmur of softly-spoken French in a crowded park, the cobblestone pedestrian streets lined with specialty shops that sell globes, tea pots, or some other equally marvelous and unusual thing. If there is one thing I feel is difficult to capture, it is the sense of well-being and excitement in everyday life, since nearly nothing seems mundane in this city. I hope you will forgive me as I try again and again, with increasing sentimentality, to wrap my brain around the fact that I live here.
to the fact that we write the same poem
our whole lives,
that our existence is a poem
that merely revises itself;
no matter how much we change
we have only twenty-six letters
and a teaspoon of punctuation.
We are our own memories
rearranged.
The feeling only grows, since daily life is growing larger than Paris. I have booked a trip to Prague the weekend of my birthday, and this weekend I will purchase tickets for a visit to Istanbul mid-November. I've asked my parents to consider allowing me to stop in Reykjavik on my way back to the States next year. My program director encouraged me to see Croatia, to visit north Africa--Morocco, Egypt. There are still dozens of places in France that I've yet to see. I have never been to Spain. Though I've been to Austria, I have never seen Vienna. Even with a small budget the possibilities seem limitless. The world seems closer and more accessible than ever, and there's hardly a place I don't want to visit. Ayelen and I are counting the weekends we have left together, syncing our calendars, and creating lists of places near and far that we can squeeze into one weekend and a meager budget. The Canadian man who owns the Abbey Bookshop, an English-language bookstore with a sizeable travel section, is beginning to recognize me. I am leafing through guidebooks and reading literature to accompany the cities I plan to visit. I started The Unbearable Lightness of Being this morning, and have some books by Orhan Pamuk, who writes extensively about life in Istanbul.
It's becoming apparent how quickly I should find employment that requires me to travel. Life as a flight attendant sounds miserable. Do travel guide companies hire undergraduate interns with mediocre writing skills and minor ability to operate a camera?
