What parisians do best: complain about Paris

Being robbed in broad daylight at the ATM near my house has me in hyper critical mode at the moment about the city where I live and how parisians treat each other. I hate how how foreigners, especially single women, are vulnerable here. If I'd had a man with me this am, those 2 guys wouldn't have tried to take my money-- and considering the recent losers I've met, dated (once) and rejected, that pisses me off a lot. Believe me, these recent dates have absolutely NO positive qualities other than that fact that no one tried to rob me while I was in their company. And that wasn't much of a reflection on their personalities, mainly just their general existence.

Fete-ing the Cremaillere

My first of possibly multiple housewarming parties either in the current apartment (actually the way nicer bigger main apartment) or in a future studio was a blast. Maybe I'll warm the house once a month.

We successfully managed to avoid damaging anything in the landlord's apartment and the friends were all lovely, as was the cat and the weather and the wine and the snacks.

Later, Suckers

The last exam that I'll ever write for a certain university near Disney Land was just finished and emailed to the other TD professor for his comments (this being the French university system, I doubt he'll have any) and to be submitted Monday.

How I dreamed of being finished with that place all last year. How strangely indifferent I feel now that I am.

Email quote of the day

My mother on animal welfare, gender roles and French history, trying to encourage me to light a candle for Joan of Arc at Notre Dame as a feminist gesture and symbol of hope for the future:

"A culture that puts female cats on birth control really needs St. Joan of Arc as counterbalance!"

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes

I've recently been feeling lacking in many different ways-- disappointment that my 2 years teaching at Marne weren't more satisfying and that I couldn't make it a more positive experience, frustration in not feeling like I ever meet anyone or that the planet's male species ever even notices that I'm alive. I've been comparing myself a lot to other people I know in Paris, who are all, of course, doing way better than I am, with better love lives and professional lives, but they're not me and ultimately, despite some current frustrations, there's still a lot even just when I walk down the street that makes me happy in Paris.

Here is the same idea, just in a more articulate, literary and rhyming form.

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

What Just Happened?

Will this never end? The eternal professional question in France after a job interview: what just happened? Do they want to offer me a job? Did they, in fact, just offer me one?

I had an interview today at a private university where I really wanted to teach and it sounded very non-commital. I answered questions, they asked what my interests were and what I'd like to teach. Interviewer and I seemed to bond about studying at Cambridge, etc. I told them 3 classes or so from their program that I was interested in and suggested a hollywood cinema class about the films of Stephen Speilberg and the reply was that "well, we already have a lot of cinema classes." Not much enthusiasm, eh? They also said that "it's all a bit of a chinese puzzle at the moment, we're still organizing the program" and the interview ended on the note "we'll let you know about openings," final handshake, goodbye. Definitely not a job offer, in my book. But then, I saw an email from the interviewer urging other people and me to sign up for training in September to use the new language lab at that school.

Does that mean I was I hired?

If so, I wonder what I'll teach and when.

Doctor's Note

I had to get a doctor's note today saying that there was nothing wrong with me that would prevent me from participating in a short charity race. My 400 year old doctor kindly agreed to see me today (since I need her authorization for the race tomorrow) and greeted me by shrieking about how she just shampooed the carpet and could I wipe me feet really well? Because she sees her patients in her house, as do most French doctors.

In France to be declared not even necessarily healthy, but without any "counter indications" that would prevent you from running a 1.5 mile loop, you have to have your heart listened to, and blood pressure taken. And then you have to do 30 squats and doctor repeats steps one and 2. I'm generally used to things I find slightly startling and ridiculous being the norm in France-- I have been here a while, after all, but when my doctor told me to start squatting, I thought she was kidding.

Since she was curious, I explained that to do a race in the US, the participant signs a liablilty form saying that they're aware that they could possibly injure themselves on the course, but that it's just up to the runner if they think they're in good enough shape to do the race and we don't need a doctor's note (or certificat medical-- so much more formal-- in French) to give us permission. She looked horrified, "but the participants could lie," she pointed out, "what if they're not healthy?"

My squat evaulation cost me 22 euros for which the French government will eventually reimburse me.

Run, Forest, Run

So, rather than cheering Forest Gump on, I'll be running around an actual forest on Sunday. It's to raise money for cancer research. Someone I was once very close to died of this illness and this event is more than partially responsible for my decision to follow a dream to Paris. Life is too short not to do these things, despite enormous student loan debt. That was 3 years ago, and I'm still in Paris, trying not to forget to seize the jour. This seems like a good reminder.

Cervical cancer (cancer du col de l'uterus) seems to have an enormous public awareness campaign in France at the moment and I'm always pleased to see any kind of focus whatsoever on women's health. (Even if some of it is clearly pharmaceutical marketing for the vaccination against this type of cancer, which is also enjoying a lot of publicity lately...)

The idea of this charity run is that there will be a short 1.5 mile course in the bois de vincennes (where I've never been but where I commute through) and you go around as many times as you can in 2 hours. For each loop, corporate sponsors make a donation to the charity 1,000 femmes, 1,000 vies which raises money for cervical cancer research/prevention/awareness.

At the university where I teach with an ongoing strike, one of the protests is called the "rond des obstines" where professors spend the weekends walking around in a circle to demonstrate how they're getting nowhere with the French government regarding the proposed education reforms. I feel like looping around the woods for my charity race is perhaps a better use of going round in circles.

Recent Work Emails (or MEN and Primordial Meetings)

Some recent highlights from my inbox:

-A 7-page venomous email about Valerie Pecresse (ministre de l'ensignement superieur) visiting UC Berkeley in what is probably a nefarious plan either to dominate the world or to destroy the French University (perhaps both simultaneously) from a French professor who teaches there and somehow has my email address.

-A similarly venomous email about some aspect of the strike or proposed education reforms (all my work related email these days is petitions and 7-page tretises about how the Public French University is Dead) titled "take a look at the website MEN." This was NOT anything related to porn or dating (then I probably would have looked at it). MEN apparently stands for Ministre de l'Education where something scandalous to my colleagues was posted about the role of an enseignant-chercheur as now imagined by the French Government.

-An email about a Big Important Faculty Meeting where we were supposed to decide whether or not to cancel the current (although nearly finished) semester saying that attendance was "primordial." I guess this is more intense than souhaité or obligatoire?

-An email flurry about what time the Primordial Meeting starts-- noon or 12:30? We perhaps had to verify with the mastadons and other primordial invités.

-An email from the director of the language department of our university apologizing for not attending last week's Primordial Meeting, and thus preventing any decision-making whatsoever from occuring (not that any often actually takes place in French meetings, though). She would like us to attend another meeting primordially next Thursday at either noon or 12:30.

Royaume Uni du Canal St. Martin

I now live in a strange enchanted castle-- not in Disneyland/ Marne-La-Vallee on the RER A (thank God), but in the 10th. Consider this: our house is a hidden canal-front fortress with a giant double deadbolt door and then, once you step into our narnia, there are no more locks. We are free to come and go into the Big House when The Owner is away and the first day I dared cross the threshold, there was a box of pastries waiting for us. This was effective positive reinforcement without the Pavlovian bell-- go into house, get treats. Now I always check the kitchen for stray religieuses.

The premises include: 2 studios, a small courtyard covered in an otherworldly jungle of houseplants, a rooftop garden above my apartment, and then the Big Apartment that belongs to The Owner. The Owner is a retired academic and being a retired academic is pretty much my dream and the closest thing I have to a life ambition... The Big House has about 47 strangely shaped octagonal rooms all with at least 3 doors, making each one exageratedly accessible and they're all lined floor to ceiling with books. The house also features an excessive number of well-trodden wooden staircases. It's kind of a French version of Vermont log cabin architecture combined with the Winchester Mystery House-- not that I ever went there because I wasn't a bay area tourist and couldn't be bothered to go to San Jose EVER, not even to see the famous haunted house with staircases to nowhere built by the guilt-ridden heiress to the Winchester gun fortune. Not that the Canalfront Empire feels tainted by spectral guilt. If anything, it is a small slice of Eden in this uncertain and indifferent world.

The Owner travels a lot-- being retired, this is his main occupation which he deserves after years of suffering the French public educational system (after 2 years and the current interminable strike, I'm also ready to retire), and when the cat's away, the mice will play. We, the tenants, of course, have no actual mice in our enchanted castle but take care of the actual cat and play with her. She is very sweet and chubby. In the Big House, we not only have access to our feline friend, but also those elusive luxuries like a washer/dryer, an oven, and a landline that only Real People have in their enchanted kingdoms in France.

I'm not the only tenant. There is a whole universe of inhabitants. There is, of course, the cat, my flatmate (who is, luckily, a friend and coworker), and a non English-speaking friend of The Owner's son who lives rent-free in the basement in exchange for remodeling the son's apartment. I joked to the flatmate that we're like individual nation states who all form the United Kingdom of 39 Canal-Front Lane. We decided I would be England, she could be Scotland, the Owner would be Northern Ireland, because he was frequently travelling off the main island and the basement carpenter could be Wales, since like Welsh street signs, we don't always understand him.

Geography is on my mind lately, since you have to reorient yourself completely when you change quartiers here. Each neighborhood, of course, has its own character. Everyone has their own image of Paris-- my Paris is different from even that of my best friend, and this Paris pretty much becomes the immediate 4-block radius around your house and your daily commute.

So far, here are my 4 blocks: there's the enchanted castle, the enchanted although sometimes pungent canal, and some lovely bars and restaurants, my current favorite of which is called the Goldfish. I've taken to running along the canal to la vilette in one direction and Oberkampf in the other, which is a great route.

For practical concerns, I also have the required constellation map of different grocery stores with varying prices and quality and some cheap takeout Indian restaurants identified. And a little shop where you can buy 3 euro belts.

On the gritty realist side, there's also the very unenchanted post office homeless tent city, but this is a reality in any big city-- not everyone can afford housing here. The flatmate and I are lucky to have the enchanted castle deal that we have.

The neighborhood reminds me a little of very different geography: the Mission in SF in a way, just with fewer Spanish speakers. We have different political demonstrations everyday at Place de la Republique, which is very San Francisco, and a young, artsy, and creative crowd. Hipsters and homeless people, however, live along the same street, which is also sadly very reminiscent of San Francisco. There's a cafe down the street that seems lifted straight off Valencia Street from San Francisco and plunked down in front of the Canal St. Martin which we now call the California Cafe. I sometimes feel like all my favorite places in Paris are ones that remind me of SF, but the French-speaking European version 2.0. You probably always superimpose your past cities on your current ones to some extent-- like when I moved from DC to SF there were lots of neighborhood equivlents to work out, like Dupont Circle was the DC equivalent of the Castro in SF, for example. Our French canal-front castle is maybe my version of 28 Barbury Lane, the equally eccentric and enchanted apartment building from cult San Francisco book Tales of the City.

Holidays and modern art collages

If Madonna were French, she wouldn't have had to spend the 1980s longing for a holiday and singing about it. Nearly every Friday in May is a national holiday. Today is Labour Day (fete du travail) in France and it is celebrated by a day of vacation and a big parade/protest (?) by various labour unions declaring their commitment to workers' rights. People also sell snow drops, those little white flowers, and sometimes lilacs and there are somehow symbols of May 1st. If someone gives you snowdrops on this day, it means you'll have good luck and loads of people carry around their little white flowers. I was no exception-- I was kindly presented with a small bouquet this afternoon which are now on the table in front of me, no doubt changing my luck as I write.

My snowdrops, a friend and I all went to the Marche d'art contemporain at Bastille. This is a bi-annual art fair with hundreds of different stands, each belonging to a different contemporary French artist hoping to gain publicity and sell some work. For us, the public, we get to see a ton of great art and talk to the artists who are all there hosting small aperatif parties and ready to answer our questions in the hopes of selling us an 800 euro canvas. The friend of mine who came with my snowdrops and me knew a scultptor exhibiting there, so we chatted with him for awhile about the event and his work (animal sculptures in bronze)-- and thanked him profusely for our invitations to the event which saved us each 8 euros. The marche d'art was actually a lot like the Salon du Vin that I attended last year, just with paintings, sculptures and artists' statements at each booth, instead of wine and marketing materials about the superior grapes from that particular region of France.

There were artists' booths both inside and outside, on either side of the Seine and one of the bridges reserved as the path to more art that day. The weather was beautiful and the artists outside were all having picnics next to their booths. While we looked at art along the river, we could hear shouting and chanting from the workers' rights rally outside at Place de la Bastille and an accordian softly played La Vie en Rose from the other side of the river.

I thought to myself that the protest, the art and the accordian, all combined at that very moment, defined to an extent my image of Paris, its creativity, political engagement against a conservative future and nostalgia for the romanticism of the past all rolled into one on a particularly lazy holiday afternoon. A lot of the modern art on display showed Paris cityscapes-- it seemed like everyone was shaping their image of this city, through art or political protest, all at the same time. I tried to fix it in my mind like some kind of modern art collage, like some I'd seen that day, with snapshots of artists, musicians and protestors, newspaper clippings about all the many recent workers' strikes and protests, springtime sunshine, snowdrops to bring good luck and some fragments of sheet music to La vie en Rose.