The only things that are certain in life: death, taxes and the line 14.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Questions du jour
Is there life on Mars? Is there life outside of Paris? Are there French cities with a lively cultural scene and friendly residents who don't make a hobby of criticizing, complaining and huffing and puffing in annoyance every 4 seconds and bumping into you in the metro? Does Paris think I'm a martian? Should I phone home or attempt to colonize the world? Are globalization and Americanization the same thing? Aside from dying your hair a different colour, is there any change you can believe in in Paris?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Small Daily Humiliations
Everytime someone asks if I live in Paris and if I have a job here.
That people I don't know well think it's ok to ask me how much money I make, or inform me of everything that they think is wrong with American politics-- after we'd just met. Um, are Parisians just somehow culturally immune to ever thinking that they sound arrogant?
Everytime someone informs me that I have an accent.
Everytime (which is more or less all the time) someone assumes that if you're a foreigner, you're a complete idiot and will believe whatever they tell you. Like that my last apartment rental wasn't illegal, I just couldn't ever put my name on the door or tell anyone I paid rent to live there.
Everytime someone patronisingly repeats the exact phrase I just said. What's up with that? I assume it's a passive aggressive way to correct my pronounciation or do they actually just want to verify that they heard it correctly?
Everytime someone stares the Parisian stare at me on the metro. Men undress you with their beady little eyes, while women mentally calculate the total value of your wardrobe and haircut. This is why I now find it normal to wear makeup to the gym.
At Planning Familial today when upon asking my age, they asked me if I weren't considering stopping the Pill to get pregnant.
When I asked the doctor there to recommend a lab (because it's not like you can get blood drawn by the actual doctor who wants you to have it done or like any single medical facility in France actually has all the medical equipment they need) and he replied, you don't know how to use the internet? Um, yes, the French health care system is ludicrously decentralised (I once left a doctor's office with my papsmear in a jar and I had to mail it to a lab myself) but I am not about to google a medical lab to draw my blood-- should I just diagnose myself and write my own prescriptions, too, while I'm researching medical info online? What if French crack dens or other disreputable entities whose livelihood involves needles have their own web sites and pose as legitimate medical labs?
When I requested coppery-red highlights and the hairdresser ignored this and gave me pale white-blond ones instead which obviously look like middleaged woman masking the gray with a side of Cruella DeVille thrown in (in other words, utter crap) and then informed me that she found them "jolies." I mean, after all, that's what counts, isn't it?
Thank you, Parisians, for annoying the hell out of me on a daily basis. I'm sure that to some small extent, I'd miss all your surreal conneries if I ever lived somewhere normal and judging from the Americans I know who no longer live here, apparently, if you ever leave Paris, you seem to become a brainwashed nostalgia zombie, and Paris becomes nothing but the expensive taxpayer-subsidized glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower, and la vie en rose and you even long for the rudeness of French waiters and the arrogance of French hair dressers.
That people I don't know well think it's ok to ask me how much money I make, or inform me of everything that they think is wrong with American politics-- after we'd just met. Um, are Parisians just somehow culturally immune to ever thinking that they sound arrogant?
Everytime someone informs me that I have an accent.
Everytime (which is more or less all the time) someone assumes that if you're a foreigner, you're a complete idiot and will believe whatever they tell you. Like that my last apartment rental wasn't illegal, I just couldn't ever put my name on the door or tell anyone I paid rent to live there.
Everytime someone patronisingly repeats the exact phrase I just said. What's up with that? I assume it's a passive aggressive way to correct my pronounciation or do they actually just want to verify that they heard it correctly?
Everytime someone stares the Parisian stare at me on the metro. Men undress you with their beady little eyes, while women mentally calculate the total value of your wardrobe and haircut. This is why I now find it normal to wear makeup to the gym.
At Planning Familial today when upon asking my age, they asked me if I weren't considering stopping the Pill to get pregnant.
When I asked the doctor there to recommend a lab (because it's not like you can get blood drawn by the actual doctor who wants you to have it done or like any single medical facility in France actually has all the medical equipment they need) and he replied, you don't know how to use the internet? Um, yes, the French health care system is ludicrously decentralised (I once left a doctor's office with my papsmear in a jar and I had to mail it to a lab myself) but I am not about to google a medical lab to draw my blood-- should I just diagnose myself and write my own prescriptions, too, while I'm researching medical info online? What if French crack dens or other disreputable entities whose livelihood involves needles have their own web sites and pose as legitimate medical labs?
When I requested coppery-red highlights and the hairdresser ignored this and gave me pale white-blond ones instead which obviously look like middleaged woman masking the gray with a side of Cruella DeVille thrown in (in other words, utter crap) and then informed me that she found them "jolies." I mean, after all, that's what counts, isn't it?
Thank you, Parisians, for annoying the hell out of me on a daily basis. I'm sure that to some small extent, I'd miss all your surreal conneries if I ever lived somewhere normal and judging from the Americans I know who no longer live here, apparently, if you ever leave Paris, you seem to become a brainwashed nostalgia zombie, and Paris becomes nothing but the expensive taxpayer-subsidized glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower, and la vie en rose and you even long for the rudeness of French waiters and the arrogance of French hair dressers.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
"Welcome...
To the new America," was a quote I read in today's Washington Post online edition from someone who attended the inauguration today and braved the cold to see the new president and snatch a piece of history.
At the beginning of this decade, I lived in Washington, DC and throughout all the international press coverage of "l'investiture d'Obama" that I've followed recently from 3,000 miles and multiple time zones away, I've been thinking: that could have been me in the crowd, during the inauguration today and the U2/ Springsteen concert at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday.
You are the choices you make, and I don't regret no longer living in DC, Oakland or in the US, but, well, optimism, resilience and capacity for social change are all aspects of American culture that I miss immensely.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that creating change you can believe in is not exculsively reserved for your favorite polticians or those still living in America watching Obama in person today, but something you can also accomplish on a small and modest scale in your own life.
At the beginning of this decade, I lived in Washington, DC and throughout all the international press coverage of "l'investiture d'Obama" that I've followed recently from 3,000 miles and multiple time zones away, I've been thinking: that could have been me in the crowd, during the inauguration today and the U2/ Springsteen concert at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday.
You are the choices you make, and I don't regret no longer living in DC, Oakland or in the US, but, well, optimism, resilience and capacity for social change are all aspects of American culture that I miss immensely.
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that creating change you can believe in is not exculsively reserved for your favorite polticians or those still living in America watching Obama in person today, but something you can also accomplish on a small and modest scale in your own life.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Surreal Moments of Late at the Workplace
-When my kids asked me what they had to do to pass their semester.
-You mean what skills and work habits do you need to succeed in my class next semester, I asked.
-No, how do we know if we passed this term? Do we have to pass all our classes each semester to have credit for the year? No one ever told us.
-When one group revealed that they thought that phonetics and multimedia were the same class because they had the same teacher for these 2 (obviously different) courses.
-The umpteenth time that a student came looking for me because they forgot when their exam was (yesterday) and wanted to make it up at a time that was more convenient for them. Here's a good time: the examens de rattrapage in the first 2 weeks of September.
-Each time a student walked into a classroom while I was giving an exam (a little busy there!)because they needed to ask an Urgent Question that they would already have the answer to if they ever attended class, like what will be on the final exam.
-When I discovered that the HR Rep and department head who explained my incomprehensible job contract to me in 2007 were misinformed about minor details like how many hours I actually need to work each year.
-When you realise that the entire administrative organisation (a term I use loosely) of your workplace relies exclusively on the use of post-it notes. In some ways, this is almost reassuring-- at least they try to follow some kind of principle of organisation, but post-its do, unfortunately, fall off.
-When you, as an American teacher, finish reading 35 compositions that argue that higher education should be free and accessible to everyone (ok, fine) and universities shouldn't "discriminate unfairly" by taking only the best students. Wow, no correlation to make at all between being a good student and going to uni, eh?
And sometimes, the kiddies just feel like chatting after class about Irish music or the decline of family values in modern society, or flattering you so that you'll write a recommendation for them (there can't be ANY connection between that and their sudden appreciation of your greats teachings skills, can there?), or sometimes they just impress you with an excellent composition about Egypt and then despite all the ridiculousness you suffer daily, for a brief second before reality sets in again, it's actually not so bad to be a teacher.
-You mean what skills and work habits do you need to succeed in my class next semester, I asked.
-No, how do we know if we passed this term? Do we have to pass all our classes each semester to have credit for the year? No one ever told us.
-When one group revealed that they thought that phonetics and multimedia were the same class because they had the same teacher for these 2 (obviously different) courses.
-The umpteenth time that a student came looking for me because they forgot when their exam was (yesterday) and wanted to make it up at a time that was more convenient for them. Here's a good time: the examens de rattrapage in the first 2 weeks of September.
-Each time a student walked into a classroom while I was giving an exam (a little busy there!)because they needed to ask an Urgent Question that they would already have the answer to if they ever attended class, like what will be on the final exam.
-When I discovered that the HR Rep and department head who explained my incomprehensible job contract to me in 2007 were misinformed about minor details like how many hours I actually need to work each year.
-When you realise that the entire administrative organisation (a term I use loosely) of your workplace relies exclusively on the use of post-it notes. In some ways, this is almost reassuring-- at least they try to follow some kind of principle of organisation, but post-its do, unfortunately, fall off.
-When you, as an American teacher, finish reading 35 compositions that argue that higher education should be free and accessible to everyone (ok, fine) and universities shouldn't "discriminate unfairly" by taking only the best students. Wow, no correlation to make at all between being a good student and going to uni, eh?
And sometimes, the kiddies just feel like chatting after class about Irish music or the decline of family values in modern society, or flattering you so that you'll write a recommendation for them (there can't be ANY connection between that and their sudden appreciation of your greats teachings skills, can there?), or sometimes they just impress you with an excellent composition about Egypt and then despite all the ridiculousness you suffer daily, for a brief second before reality sets in again, it's actually not so bad to be a teacher.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
The Art of Losing
Maybe it's my age, or living far away from my family, but so far 2009 is making me think of all the people who I used to be close to who I now no longer speak to-- either because we fought, broke up or just drifted apart or now find that we live on different continents with a 9-hour time difference and never skype at the same time. If you're anything like me (for your sake, I hope not, though!), ex-best friends from college, people you've dated, former housemates in multiple cities, etc. have been floating through your head yesterday and today.
But before you worry too much about all the people you once knew who you've since lost, keep in mind that you'll (hopefully, most likely) acquire new friends this year and it's an endless cycle, some kind of social flux that we can't really entirely control.
Here's a funny poem that I've always liked to try to help exorcise all these missing, forgotten souls who we've lost over the years. Here is Elisabeth Bishop's attempt to master the art of losing and even if it's actually a fairly tragic poem, it's certainly an example of mastering the art of writing a villanelle, one of the hardest poetic forms out there.
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
But before you worry too much about all the people you once knew who you've since lost, keep in mind that you'll (hopefully, most likely) acquire new friends this year and it's an endless cycle, some kind of social flux that we can't really entirely control.
Here's a funny poem that I've always liked to try to help exorcise all these missing, forgotten souls who we've lost over the years. Here is Elisabeth Bishop's attempt to master the art of losing and even if it's actually a fairly tragic poem, it's certainly an example of mastering the art of writing a villanelle, one of the hardest poetic forms out there.
One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
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