And the Cesar Goes To...

Paris, France can boast many titles-- city of light, centre of culture, home of great wine, cheese, museums, artists, some musicians.

Here's a new one: the highest concentration of unhappy people, possibly in the world. France has the highest rate of anti-depressant consumption in all of Europe and most of the French population lives in Paris.

It doesn't seem to be helping.

As Tolstoy once said (ha, try to work that into everyday conversation!), all happy families are boring. Unhappy ones are interesting, since there are so many ways to be unhappy. I don't agree that being depressed makes you especially deep or complex, let alone intriguing. It seems like it mainly just makes you rude in the metro.

The End of the Affair

A disillusioned ex-pat friend of mine told me that she sees Paris as a beautiful glamourous ice princess like Catherine Deneuve or Carole Lombard with a blond chignon, big dark sunglasses, expensive jewelery, a trenchcoat and heels, who you're initially fascinated and seduced by and then when you get to know her, you realise there's nothing inside.

A little extreme, maybe. I'm sometimes (ok, often) disappointed in my Paris experience, too, but I also think that there are some very positive points about Paris-- the shallow ice queen probably still goes to amazing museum exhibits and the comedie francaise, takes classes at the louvre and has become more or less bilingual-- even if just seems to serve to show her how she will never feel truly at home in French culture because it's too different from the Anglophone world, this is still an important realisation.

Living in 2 languages-- or more like one and a half, since I spend most of my time teaching English and much less time socialising in French, we all end up collecting lots of little vocab/cultural differences. For example, when my expat friend mentioned that Paris seduced her, it makes me think that in French, you can use the verb seduire in a very casual way to mean something you like or something that impresses you. Like an effective tv commercial can seduce you. Or a cute baby can seduce everyone (I know, it sounds weird and incestuous). Or a student can seduce the jury. One of my students once told me this in English and I told him, no if you say you have to seduce the jury, it sounds like you will compliment the jury, bring them flowers, invite them to dinner and then take them back to your place. We generally are less figurative about seduction in English.

Paris still impresses, I guess in that sense I'm seduced, but not completely convinced or conquored, as they say in French. I don't always like her, but I'm not at the point where I'm about to move away. However, at the same time, there are probably other cities that would suit me better.

Living abroad makes an ordinarily introspective person about 10 times more so. To some extent this is probably good for you. Taken to an extreme, it's probably a waste of energy. I'm still trying to find a balance.

I imagine a more down to earth and friendlier city like Montreal would wear a ratty old ski jacket because what's important is that it keeps her warm not how she looks in it and she'd laugh loudly and smile a lot and maybe have messy hair instead of a perfect platinum knot a la Catherine Deneuve. But then again, I also don't really know what seduire means in Canadian French. Life might not necessarily be easier to negotiate there.

"La prochaine fois, je prendrai le bus."-- Grand Corps Malade

Like everyone who lives here, I sometimes find this city spectacular and I sometimes find it unlivable (sp? I only created that word after saying "invivable" in French...) Lately, I've been oscillating between the 2 extremes, as usual, but ultimately this week, I ended up leaning more towards the unlivable side of the spectrum. I still have a hard time dealing with how inconsiderate most people are in public. There's an agressivity that you see here-- especially in the metro during rush hour-- that I sometimes find truly upsetting.

A recent torturous metro commute:

A man pushed his way onto the crowded metro during rush hour, we're talking human bulldozer. After he shoved me, I said, 'I'm sorry, monsieur, there isn't any room, please don't push us.' He replied, 'yes, there is room. If I push, it's so I can stand at the back of the car to leave room for other people. You should think of other people, madame, you're not the only one on the metro.'

Incredible, eh? I'm selfish because he pushed me. Perhaps he expects the nobel peace prize for pushing people on the metro for the greater good of humanity, for the hypothetical comfort of future passengers, a small sacrifice for the selfishly non-pushy passengers actually on the train.

Honestly, only in a Parisian's twisted and self-absorbed world view would this make *me* the rude one.

Semantics

I realised today that I'd completely misunderstood the lyrics to this one song I like (an electronica bossa nova rap called Dans La Merco Benz by Bemjamin Biolay). Instead of professing his love, the singer actually says he doesn't feel it anymore.

"Mon amour est lasse," not "mon amoureuse."

Funny how these can sound similar.