Assistant Stranger
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
crankyinfrance's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Thursday, December 14th, 2006 | | 3:58 am |
a*hem*
(sigh) It's been a long time, eh? My thirtieth birthday is tomorrow (Dec. 14th). Please feel free to commiserate. | | Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 | | 3:55 pm |
Question of the day: Bollywood movies?
I can buy four (4) more Bollywood DVDs before I leave town. Which ones should I buy, and why? (They are on sale at 4 for 10 euros at the Bollywood Shop on rue Gambetta, and the shop seems to have every B'wood movie ever filmed. BTW, they're also purportedly region-free, so if anyone has a request, you could e-mail me.) For the record, some films I have seen and liked include: Kaal Ho Naa Ho Main Hoon Na Fire Some films I have seen and been underwhelmed by include: Devdas Khabie Kushie Khabie Gham Bride and Prejudice One film that freaked me out was: Mother India Two films I had mixed feelings about are: Lagaan Monsoon Wedding A few films I have already bought, and have tucked into my suitcase for future viewing: Koi... Mil Gaya Krrish Mr ya Miss Mohabattein In general, I love the colors and dancing; I like good-natured, more or less intelligent comedy; pacing is important, as is acting quality; and my tolerance for saccharine melodrama is relatively low. (I realize it's hard to avoid, but I need a balance of something else -- humor, action, an interesting genre backdrop -- to balance it out. That's why I enjoyed the first two films mentioned above, whereas "Devdas" and "KKKG" left me feeling vaguely ill, as if I'd consumed too much sugar.) I'm also interested in Bollywood "classics"; in the new school of East-West coproductions; and in Bollywood movies that draw on and/or play with genre formulas other than the standard-issue boy-meets-girl romantic comedy/ family melodrama. Like, I enjoyed the cheesy yet exciting guerilla backdrop of "Main Hoon Na"; the cross-cultural and "metrosexual" games of "Kaal Ho Naa Ho"; and I think I will like the science-fiction and superhero premises of "Koi... Mil Gaya" and "Krrish." Oh, and, also, anything gender-bending or gay. | | Thursday, August 24th, 2006 | | 8:25 pm |
A visit to the farm
Today I visited Martine on her family's farm, half an hour's drive from the Hazebrouck train station in a tiny town called Isbergues (pronounced, funnily enough, "Iceberg"). It was all green and gold under summer clouds. I met a white mare called Luna, a tiny rooster named Mac, three dogs, and seven two-month-old kittens. Martine's mother made us a full French lunch (potage à courgettes, vegetable-roasted salmon with ratatouille, a cheese plate with red wine, a dessert of crème patissière over coffee-soaked biscuits, and then coffee and chocolate; all very informal). Her father talked about Northern patois. Her twenty-one-year-old brother blushed, smiled and stayed silent. Her grandmother came over after lunch with the local newspaper and hung out at the kitchen table drinking coffee. It was pretty great. Martine also asked me to name the kittens. Of course I was delighted to oblige. The nice thing about being in France is that the most stereotypical English names seem fresh and exotic, so now Nutmeg, Topaz, Stormy, Ginger, Vanilla and Snowflake get to pride themselves on their splendid originality. | | Friday, August 11th, 2006 | | 12:02 pm |
(Wednesday, 10 August.) It's been overcast for the past three days. The day before, it was sunny, but then the sun went away. Today, I've been engaging in one of my favorite pastimes: lying down on my big green bed, limbs sprawled entirely, and looking up out of my bedroom window. From this perspective, the slanted windowpane in my little chambre de bonne is entirely filled by the sky. One thing I can love about Lille is that the sky is so often filled with complicated patterns of cloud cover, things you could compare to many kinds of white: water blotches on grey silk, pearls on brocade, somebody's dove-colored fur. Not human skin, because its texture is far different, as different as the space alien's hair from my own. But you can compare it to other things from Earth. Smoke from a factory. Sheep's wool. Snow. Oil paint and watercolor, of course, as Monet or Turner painted the rhythmic French sky or as Pieter Breughel the Elder depicted it four centuries before. But to use that kind of comparison feels like cheating. Today I can see at least five different registers of light at play in my square canvas of a window. A close-atmosphere layer of grey cloud like torn cotton moves past visibly and legibly, toward the upper right. Behind it, snatches of clear blue, with high-piled and frozen white clouds where sunlight plays over their ridges like shadows -- the kind of thing you see from an airplane window. And down in the lower left-hand corner of my canvas, the grey cotton has been torn away and the landscape beyond emerges. Along the top can be seen the light blotchy layers of white cloud, thin and fine as carded wool, with the light reflecting off them from mysterious distances so that they seem to be seen through water, and reach down arms like Jacob's ladders or the hand of Ra toward the far roofs. Beyond lies the cloud landscape, outlined in sun and shadow and as complicated and beautiful as the hillside countries I've seen out the back windows of cars or trains, stretching away into the distance: light and shadow playing on the holes and hillocks, like my first memory of seeing the Berkshires, seeing scudding clouds for the first time casting their heavy and visible shadows onto the green. Out my window it's just the same but in reverse -- that airplane landscape again, white hills stretching back and up forever, shadow and light falling across them to trace their curves, show up their bizarre giganticness. I'm surprised people don't notice this more often, the Berkshires reflected up into the sky -- but always moving, gently as water, and written in grey shades like a silverpoint sketch of the Berkshires, in all those hard-to-name elegant colors: water-silk, rabbit fur, grey. (Was that five? I did say five registers of light, didn't I? Okay, here's the last: down on the horizon, one cloud burns like a golden apple. Beyond it, the white country beyond emerges, dazzling in the reflecting light from the horizon, at seven o'clock the early forecaster of sunset. Right here, it's too bright to look at. And it doesn't remind of anything so much as other sunsets: which, of course, in turn remind you of other unnameable and practically unseeable things -- diamonds, lasers, the sun.) * * * What will I miss when I leave Lille? This game of images and light. My bedroom window, of course, of course, which gives onto the sky. (It's almost enough to make me happy -- sometimes I think I could live without a floor, even, in moments of madness, without a refrigerator -- as long as I have this square of sky to watch: it's my clock, my weather-gauge, and my moving train window out onto a shifting world.) And in the same vein I'll miss my kitchen window, which shows me the cathedral next door. Rooting me down to the earth with its weight, sticking its spire straight up into the sky, the cathedral symbolizes and it is. It is with its red-brick nave, it is with its grey stone spire, it is with its little lancet windows and its pale-edged rose windows, it is with its grey slate roof over the ambulatory. _Ardoise_, grey slate is called around here, and all the roofs of all the little houses I can see from my kitchen window are covered by the same. What is it a symbol of? It's a symbol that I'm here, in the north -- as they told me and as I saw for myself, in the south the buildings are made of pale clay or stone and roofed with red tiles, in the north the buildings are made of brick and roofed in slate. Thus do stone and clay help you find yourself on the compass. It's a symbol because when I think of it with my eyes closed, I sometimes see it against the strong blue sky and in the bright light of summer, but usually not: usually I see it against the pale clouds behind, as pale as the stone used to trim its windows, almost as pale as the walls of houses in the South, with all sorts of ambiguous light moving behind it in the high curtain of the clouds. When I think of it, I think also of the branches of the high tree growing to just below my window, green even in the winter, because one side effect of this climate -- cloudy, mild and wet -- is that plants don't die in the winter. And I think of the cries of the birds that like to sit on my roof: the pigeons that coo in the eves, the magpie that shouts and the crow that cries as they hop over the roof, the blackbird that sits on the neighbor's cable antenna and sings his evening song as the light goes dim. I associate all these things with the cathedral, and I admit that when I think of this, my kitchen-window canvas, with its bright backdrop of overcast sky, I think that I can almost understand what people are attached to cathedrals for. Green branches in winter, a calling dove, finding yourself on the compass: there are things some people hold in their minds in the same place they hold cathedrals, right? I am not prone to dogma or to belief, but, these things considered, I feel I could agree with some believers about the importance of cathedrals, even if for me their main and central meaning is as a stake in the earth, connecting the wet ground and the wet sky, and holding down the view. P.P.S.: Rainbows. Did I mention that rainbows have the habit of arcing down behind the cathedral steeple? Rainbows. Yes. As if it attracted them, the way lightning rods attract, as Roland Barthes inexplicably and beautifully wrote, thunder. | | Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 | | 6:50 pm |
Recent events: A wedding
On Saturday, I went to a French-Algerian wedding. It was very interesting, involved a lot of food and music, and lasted all day. It broke down into three parts: a.) Around noon, the guests had been invited to gather in front of the Mairie, or Town Hall, to witness the "civil wedding." In France, unlike in the United States, religious authorities like priests and rabbis don't have the power to pronounce marriages. Many weddings do have religious components -- it's considered indispensable by practicing Catholics -- but this is not sufficient to marry the couple in the eyes of the State. To do that, the couple has to make an appointment to visit an official office, which can be the Town Hall or can, I think, be a much smaller bureaucratic outpost, if you live in a rural community or something. There they listen to the state-approved dialogue delivered by an official of the State, which covers such material as legal issues of cohabitation, financial and moral responsibilities toward any future children, and love. Then the official asks if each member of the couple consents to be married, and the bride and groom respond "Oui!" Then they exchange rings and sign a document. Then the official congratulates them and shakes their hands warmly, and they're married. This was my first time at a wedding in France (it was precisely the seventh wedding I have ever seen in my life), so I was full of questions for the other guests. Luckily I knew one or two of them, who work at the Agricultural Faculty where I taught English this year, and where I had met the groom, a doctoral student in "champignons." The women were garrulous. They told me that it is "usual" though not "universal" for a wedding to include a religious ceremony. But they added that "not everyone does it that way," and that for "mixed couples," such as the one being married today, it is, if anything, more common to skip the religious ritual completely. By "mixed couple," they meant that the groom was Muslim and the bride came from a French Catholic family. I told them that in the United States, such couples sometimes hold two ceremonies, or sometimes hold a ceremony that includes an official from each religion, or sometimes hold a ceremony in which they make up their own vows. The women looked politely dubious. "A ceremony with _two_ priests?" said one, seeming to choose her words carefully. "I don't think that would work in France." Anyway, at the Town Hall, after waiting outside in the warm fresh weather for a while watching other wedding parties wander out (the Mairie is only open from 9 to 12:30 on Saturdays, and in summers, at least, a wedding ceremony is scheduled every 15 minutes), we were herded inside and upstairs, past offices and conference halls, past modern art and sculptures and glass cases holding town treasures from the past three centuries, and escorted into a large, brightly decorated room with a desk at the front and lots of chairs. We, the guests, sat down in the chairs, and the bride and groom sat down before the desk. The groom was in a grey striped suit and the bride was in a full floaty wedding dress; and over the heads of the other guests I could only see the back of his dark head and the halo of her veil. A party of three officials came in, one a smiling dark-haired woman wearing the official blue-, red- and white-striped sash that designates a Mayor, or, in this case, a Mayoral deputy, along with two back-up officials carrying books. We listened to the official read aloud the list of relevant laws, and the dialogue about love and other things. I found them interesting, especially the parts where she talked about how the vows had changed over the past hundred years, especially in respect of how they treated the status of women, so I strained my ears and tried to pay attention despite the repeated squirming, squawking and, eventually, screaming of the several under-3 relatives present. (As an aside, I have, based on admittedly little experience, but that strong enough, come to the firm conclusion that if an infant insists on yelling and refuses to be quieted after some reasonable interval, like let us say one minute, it is the parent's responsibility to remove the infant from the room where the wedding is in process, irrespective of how elaborately her hair has been curled or how lavishly the parents have laid out for her ivory tulle-and-brocade flower-girl dress, even if it is more ornate than that of the bride.) So I wasn't able to hear most of what the Mayoral Deputy said about either gender equality or love. But I was able to hear when she asked if they agreed to be married to each other, and both the bride and the groom quickly said, "Yes!" And I saw them stand to exchange their rings. And then the Mayoral Deputy, instead of saying "You may kiss the bride," said, "Vous pouvez les applaudir." And so we all clapped, and the bride and groom stood next to each other holding hands looking happy and rather embarrassed, the bride blushing, either out of pleasure or because of her enormous dress and the heat, and someone put the infants down on the floor, where they started toddling around and falling over their flower-girl dresses and at last, at the very last, stopped crying. And then we were all escorted downstairs by a vast man wearing a vast official jacket, and I peeked round doors and columns into large hallways where all sorts of peculiar things were tucked away, including, I was pleased to see, Lydéric and Phinaert, the two giants of Lille. Lydéric was holding his falcon on his wrist and smiling, and I waved at him before I followed the vast man out into the day. b.) Then there was a break. It was one P.M., and after taking a few big group pictures of the wedding party and all the guests assembled on the steps of the Town Hall, the photographer said: "So now the family is going to come to a garden, where we will take pictures. Those of you who want to come along are welcome to, and those of you who don't are invited to meet us at the Salle des Fêtes in the Mairie de Wazemmes in an hour from now for the Vin d'Honneur." (Part b: the Vin d'Honneur, pistachio pastries, baklava, silver balls) (Part c: Coucous, dancing men, henna, eggs) | | 6:49 pm |
| | Friday, July 14th, 2006 | | 9:46 pm |
| | 9:46 pm |
Johnny Hallyday, bowling, and la culture française
I had the radio on this morning as I scrubbed the kitchen -- Mona FM, bien sûr -- and I heard this parody ad for a bowling rink featuring Johnny Hallyday. Now, the things you need to know in order to understand the rest are that: a.) Johnny Hallyday is a monster rock star in France; b.) he's specifically a _rock_ star, in that he associates himself with all things American; c.) bowling, like rock, is considered American (although the French have their own spin on it, as they do with all imports -- although I think it's just possible they're not aware of it). You also need to know that Johnny Hallyday is like 63 years old, has been rocking since 1961, and basically fills the place in French culture that Elvis fills in the U.S., except that, unlike Elvis, Johnny Hallyday is still alive. So anyway, this parody ad. (I think you can learn an infinite amount about culture from parody ads. What do you think?) The ad was in the form of a phone call, which a guy was making from a bowling rink: you know because you can hear shouting and the thunder of pins and balls in the background. The guy clears his throat and says, "Uh, hello, this is Johnny. I'm at l'Arène Dupont Bowling in Lomme." He stops and coughs. The guy is clearly carrying around a potbelly, obviously the kind of sixty-something-year-old who's more at home sitting at a zinc-topped counter and watching football with his pals, or possibly playing pétanque in a public garden, than he is in the world of physical activity. He is possibly adjusting his ill-pressed pants right now, or scratching the hair on his greying belly. "So anyway, you might have heard of this place? It's pretty fun, a new thing but really not bad, and great to play with friends. The whole gang is here, even Serge, and what's more Serge sings karaoke here on Saturday nights, not that I'm saying that's a good thing." The reference is to Serge Gainsbourg, France's most famous sexy seventies singer and a more successful export than Johnny Hallyday, who would probably be doing something more interesting than singing in bowling alleys today if he had not, alas, died of a heart attack, possibly provoked by his lifelong smoking, in 1991. "So it's new, and, yeah, we like it. But anyway, you don't have to take my word for it. You can come and check it out for yourself. And the best part is, admission is only three euros! Three euros... how much is that, again? Let's see..." (Why is "Johnny" confused? Because, being in his sixties, Johnny is here imagined as retaining the habit of translating everything into francs. The Euro changeover is four years behind us now, but most French people above a certain age will probably be doing the mental conversion for the rest of their lives.) "Well, never mind! It doesn't matter. Come on over anyway. I've got to go!" The sound fades out, Johnny hanging up the phone, as he calls in the distance: "Allez-y, Laetitia!!" Laetitia is the name of Johnny Hallyday's fourth and current wife. I have more to say about this, but it'll have to wait for tomorrow. Anyway, it's a good moment for everyone to chime in: Help me out with cultural interpretation! | | Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 | | 9:56 pm |
culture: street scene, Coupe du Monde
It's hilarious here -- I mean the World Cup. France is playing Spain tonight. That means that the Internet café I'm sitting in is nearly deserted. It means that the streets surrounding the Grand'Place, the high streets, were nearly deserted too as Laurent and I walked back from our drinks rendez-vous (he had chocolat chaud, I jus d'orange) at the Vice Versa in Vieux Lille, both of us pushing our bicycles. On a warm evening like this, normally the Rue Neuve and Rue de Béthune would be noir de monde -- black with people. As we passed houses, drunken male voices rang from open windows ("Do you think that was a goal for France?" asked Laurent. "They're singing 'La Marseillaise,'" I said, "it must have been.") All along the Rue de Béthune, where pubs and cafés are open to the street on summer evenings, the match was being broadcast on the restaurant televisions, and every thirty feet the same commentator's voice rang out, like the voice of God. It seemed to come from all directions. It echoed on the eerily empty cobblestones. (The match had not been broadcast at the Vice Versa, but that is explainable by the fact that the Vice Versa is a gay bar.) In front of Le Président café in the Grand'Place, not only were the eyes of all the diners riveted on the screen inside, but a group of passers-by had stopped to watch as well. A waiter was standing there too -- frozen in place, as still as one of those terrible dark-skinned statues that you still see sometimes inside the front doors of rural restaurants -- with his plateau balanced on one hand, elbow propped against his hip, and serviette dangling loosely. He did not move as we approached the group and he did not move as we passed. Not even his eyes moved, not even his face. As we walked away toward the bouche of the Rue de Béthune I turned back and saw him still standing there, and he looked so exactly like a statue that I began to bark with laughter and Laurent turned his wide periwinkle-blue stare on me and started nudging me until I was obliged to explain. | | Friday, May 26th, 2006 | | 5:11 pm |
| | 5:11 pm |
The books of stone
What can I tell you about today? It's been raining in Lille, on and off, all week. We're in the middle of the third long weekend in a month, but everyone seems kind of gloomy, because the weather's not inviting enough to go outside and hang around. (Why three long weekends in one month? Because Monday, May 1st, was the Fête de Travail, the workers' holiday; and Monday the 8th was the Fête de la Victoire (long known as VE Day in the U.S.), anniversary of the end of World War II, when Germany signed its surrender in Berlin. And then this past Thursday the 25th was the Fête de l'Ascension -- a Catholic holiday still observed in this theoretically secular country as, so far as I can tell, a great excuse for a day off. (As you may notice, Thursday is not technically part of a weekend, but the majority of workers like to faire le pont, make the bridge, and take off for the full four days. The result is that most places are technically open, but you'd be foolish to expect to get anything done. I'm really going to miss the French work ethic when I go back to the United States.) Nonetheless, my friends Jacques and Jeff took me on a field trip to Reims yesterday. It was a great day out. The first thing we did when we got there was take an hour-long lunch in a pizzeria, where I watched wine-sniffing rituals being observed -- Reims is the capital of Champagne, and they seem to be very focused on alcohol ceremonies -- and then we walked around and visited two churches, the awesome, beautiful Cathedral of Reims, and the Church of Saint-Rémi, which is an even older edifice, built on a more human scale, and where the successive layers of Romanesque and Gothic architecture are wonderfully clear. Jacques is a conservation librarian by profession, but an erudite and passionate student of French Catholicism by vocation. What that means is that there is no one better to visit cathedrals with. We stood staring up at the giant images, and "il faisait son professeur," which is to say that he went into teaching mode: explaining the symbol structures of the tympana, identifying saints for me, deciphering the stone Bible, and answering all my questions. I had a hundred questions. Jacques was inexhaustible. It was wonderful, and in the meantime Jeff, who has a limited tolerance for semi-academic discussion of Christian symbology, wandered off ahead of us taking pictures. On the way home, we stopped in Laon, a hilltop town know as "the Crowned Mountain," whose many-turreted cathedral is the only sign left of the city's prestige and importance in the long-ago days. It was almost seven when we got there. Against expectation, the cathedral was still open. The townspeople had gone inside for dinner, the rainy streets were deserted. We went inside and stood looking up into the warm stone and shadows. There was hardly anyone else in there. The cathedral is very big. Outside, the bells began to toll seven, in an unhurried way, the sound muffled by the low cover of clouds. I have trouble imagining any place more quiet. The stone used to build churches this region is a sort of warm yellow. The two churches are very, very old -- I am always humbled by feeling my hand pressing on stone that has been standing for 800 years. They also contain some of the most beautiful sculpture in France. On the west portal of the Cathedral of Reims stands l'ange au sourire, or the Smiling Angel, a beautiful creature produced by the Reims workshops in the late thirteenth century. Its smile has been variously interpreted as beatific, defiantly joyful, or subtly malicious. I can't talk about how thirteenth-century Gothic sculpture makes me feel. They have skin made of stone. They're larger than humans. They've been standing exactly where they are for nearly a millennium. They have beards, signs, wings. I can't talk about it. I'm so glad I'm here. | | Saturday, May 20th, 2006 | | 7:29 pm |
| | Friday, April 7th, 2006 | | 5:56 pm |
| | Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 | | 12:06 pm |
New column up. (Giants!)
There's a new column posted at Strange Horizons. If any of you have a chance to read it, I'd love to hear what you think. You should totally go check it out! It's about giants! | | Sunday, March 19th, 2006 | | 9:30 pm |
Daylight, babies, students, communication, immobility, sorrow
In the end, it's details that will matter. Details. * * * The days are getting longer dramatically fast. The skies are clearing, too. We had sunlight yesterday, sunlight the day before, and, although this morning was foggy, by afternoon it was sunny again. On the way back from the Lav-O-Tec, where I spend a ritual two hours every other Sunday, dragging my big blue cloth-covered chariot behind me, I passed the formal garden in the front courtyard of the Faculty of Medicine. It was five o'clock and the sun was still gold, but casting long shadows across the brilliant grass. For the first time this year, I saw summer-colored shadows: a lawn burning with yellow green, and the soft spruce branches pooling darker green underneath. Two young women in lawn chairs were sitting inside, far up the lawn; I could see them through the iron gate. I didn't notice them until one stood up with her chair and moved farther into the sun, turning toward the other and patting the space beside her with an inviting or flirtatious motion, and the other, following the moving light and the gesturing hand, after a moment followed her. * * * The children are all outside. Crossing the rue du Toul, for example, came a family identical to and representative of all the others: mother, father, shortish and upright in their dark blue winter coats, and in the dark blue baby carriage, baby, talking briskly. This particular baby carriage had a space for a second baby behind the first, where, I saw, watching as they passed, a little brother was sleeping in a blue jumper. The little girl in the front seat was old enough to sit up alone, and old enough to have a long head of carrot-red hair, which her parents clearly viewed as no obstacle to dressing her all in pink, dress, stockings and little shoes. As they bumped down over the curb of the rue du Toul the little girl said "But Ma man --" and the mother said "Be more careful! Don't drop things! I can't believe you can't keep track of tes affaires!" and the little brother woke up abruptly in the back seat and gave a short, sharp cry. The father was the only one with nothing to say in all this business; he looked straight ahead, but his face wasn't as pinched as those of some of the fathers I've seen on the sidewalks this winter. He looked as though he were enjoying the sunlight. * * * On Thursday evening I had dinner at the house of Sandrine, whom I see for English conversation lessons every week or so. Since Loïc, her husband, was in Lille instead of Paris for once, and since I had come at 7:30 instead of our usual 8:30 rendezvous time, they invited to me to dinner and we ate with all the family around: we three adults, and Lucie (six, pale-faced, with round blue eyes and brown cropped hair) and Nelly (two and a half, with curls and dimples). We dined on bread, and cheese, ham and sausage (not me, of course), peas and carrots with bits of bacon, braised endives ("very typical of the North") and baked potatoes. I was tired that night, and kept busy trying to follow Lucie's conversation (in French) as she practiced her English words on me and told riddles I didn't catch. Loïc, in a momentary pause in the conversation, explained tome the difference in pronunciation between three words I had been pronouncing all the same: bee," "abbey," and "abbot." "Abeille, abbaye, abbé," I said to myself, and all the way down the winding stairs of their apartment building an hour and a quarter later and down to the Saint-Maur tram station, I repeated, softly, practicing: "Abbé, abbaye, abeille." * * * I had hoped I might be able to take a trip to the South during the April holidays, but it doesn't look as if that will happen. I am trying to rock and gently balance the disappointment, the frustration of feeling immobile, and to remind myself how glad I am to be in France, how good it is to be right here in Lille. I have trouble not feeling sad, though, sad and frustrated. People travel so often here, and when they ask me what I've seen of France, and I tell them I haven't, really, they look surprised and say "But you must!" How does one reply? Saying how happy it would make me to be able to is not the right answer, surely. It makes me all the more sad because people like to travel in France, and most people, especially young people, seem to do it a lot. "Haven’t you been tot he mountains on a ski trip with your university?" people ask. "Why don't you get together with some friends, rent a camper and go to the sea? Traveling that way's not too expensive." I have to explain that I don't know very many people my own age here, I don't have a car, and -- well, I guess, that I don't know of any sufficiently cheap ways to travel. I have dreams about the South. I dream about the skies, the long fields, the poplars. Lavender fields, white walls, grey stone, red brick churches built in the curved Romanesque style. My dreams about the South are very provincial and clichéd, I'm sure, but I can't help yearning to be there. I want to see it, I want to taste it. The sky burns a lurid color in my dreams; I'm sure it's different in real life. I want to hear the voices of people, how they speak there, I would like to taste the acid dust of the roads. When will my wanderlust stop being something that chafes and hurts me? * * * My students are sometimes a joy to me: as my fourth-year engineering students, who have been giving presentations for the last two weeks on "teen films" of their own choosing and displaying a wonderful and heretofore unsuspected depth of interest and analytical ability; the usually silent Mickaël animatedly explaining, for instance, the connections between "Cruel Intentions" and the eighteenth-century novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos, or Sébastien announcing, "I have chosen to analyze 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off,' but as you will see, I will mostly be talking about Ferris’s friend Cameron, because he is the more interesting character." I want to weep with pleasure. They have understood! Or Marjolaine and Céline, students at the agriculture school whom I meet, semi-officially, for lunchtime conversation classes, and who brought in a Robbie Williams song last week and then watched me with furrowed brows for the following forty-five minutes as I tried to explain the connection between Elvis, the Vietnam War, Watergate and the American concept of mass trauma and national loss of innocence. "I guess you don't have that idea in France," I finished weakly. They shook their heads. "I'm sorry," I said, "I'm afraid I've been babbling at you for the last hour." "No," they said, firmly, "this is fascinating. We can continue it next week, right?" Once again, just for a moment, I almost wanted to cry. Connection and communication; well, is there anything better? (No. Not really. Not for me.) | | Monday, March 13th, 2006 | | 3:10 pm |
"Truman Capote"
Yesterday, I went to the U.G.C. with my friends Laurent and Abdel to see "Capote," the film about that great, eccentric American writer and journalist. People here insist on pronounding the name "kah-POHT," which makes sense to a French ear, only it makes me twitch every time I hear it because this is also a French slang word for "condom." "Kah-POHT-ee," I say. "Kah-POHT-eeee. It has three syllables. That's how we pronounce it. I mean, it's how he pronounced it." "Ah bon?" say my friends. "It must be an Italian name, then?" "Yes," I say. "I suppose it was, originally. I don't really know." "But then," said Abdel, "shouldn't it be pronounced 'kah-poht-EY'? That's how the Italians would say it." "Or even the Spanish, I think," added Laurent. "You're right," I say. "Of course. But in America, it's pronounced kah-POHT-ee. That's what we do to ethnic names. It happens a lot. You just have to take my word for it." "If you say so," say Abdel and Laurent doubtfully. I can tell that they are wondering about my authority to assert that this is the 'correct' pronunciation. It does all seem hopelessly bastardized. "Look," I say. "When you say 'kah-POHT,' doesn't that sound funny to you? I mean, knowing the word's other meaning?" Laurent shrugs. "No," he said. "It's not his fault if the guy was named 'Truman Condom.'" Je laisse tomber! J'abandonne! I give up. We've reached the front of the ticket line now, anyway, and we pay for our tickets and head in to see the movie. | | Saturday, March 11th, 2006 | | 11:12 pm |
| | 10:50 pm |
I'm back! ...: Saturday afternoon, mid-March.
1.) The days are getting longer again. It's amazing, how quickly this happens. I mean, a month ago it was serious darkness, but now, now it's luminous. Still light at six, almost so at seven, and before you know it it'll be eight and nine and then it'll be June and when it's June o'clock the sky doesn't even think about pulling out the stars until nearly midnight... 2.) And yet it was snowing today, in flocons, which is what snowflakes are called in France, only snow in Lille nearly always has this weird texture because it melts and refreezes on the way down. Today they weren't little pellets, but were translucent and ghostly, like scraps of cellophane. I was on rue Gambetta, bending over to fix my bike lock to a pole, and then there was pale drifting stuff on the black sleeve of my winter coat and I looked up to find the smoker -- because, really, honestly, I thought it was ash; we get so much more drifting ash in Lille than drifting snow. But there was no smoker. It was snow. 3.) I met a work colleague today around five-thirty, after I'd finished running my errands on rue Gambetta, and we went for a coffee at the Quick on rue de Béthune. (Quick is a fast-food restaurant. I was almost tempted to order the Kids' Meal, so that I would have a one-in-three chance of receiving a free ceramic mug promoting the new animated film, "Astérix Versus The Vikings." Instead, I just got a "cappuccino," which was absolutely fascinating in that 1.) it was the best Starbucks-style complicated coffee I've had in Lille, and b.) it was actually a mocha.) Ali had already been drinking coffee for half an hour there with two friends, Fouzia and Abdes. They were both thrilled to have an American there and eager to exercise their English; we conversed in a mix of English and French, while Ali sat back a little and looked tired, because he's been working on his experimental results all weekend, and also because his English isn't very good. All three are Algerians, from the same region of the country. They're all pursuing advanced scientific degrees here in Lille. They all speak English as a fourth or fifth language (after Kabili, their mother tongue; Arabic; and French. The uncertainty depends on whether you define Algerian street Arabic and formal Koranic Arabic as two different languages to be learned and perfected.) They're all very nice people, even astonishingly nice people, intelligent and vocal (sharp-tongued in the case of Fouzia, more mellow in the case of Abdes), in the way of perceptive people who are used to being in a minority and treated strangely, put a little to the side, mis à l'écarte, by the majority culture. "Kabili is a minority language," said Fouzia, "a Berber language. For a long time the government tried to destroy it, even though we, the Berber people, were in North Africa first!" She made a very French "Pfft" noise, and a moue. "Anyway, we never used to study Kabili at school, but then they went on strike, for a whole year -- I was young then; we missed a whole year of school! That's a lot -- and now you can learn it, though only in the northern Kabili region of Algeria. Only one hour a week, though. Courses are all in Arabic, and then you have two hours of French, and starting when you're maybe fourteen or fifteen, an hour of English, and then an hour of Kabili. Math, science, everything like that is in Arabic. I think that there should be more teaching in French, because it's impossible to make progress in Arabic -- English is the language of the world, and if not then French will still get you a hell of a lot farther than Arabic will. All the intellectuals and researchers in Algeria, and in Morocco and Tunisia and Lebanon, speak French; most of them did their schooling in French, even from primary level. All the best books are in English or in French. But things are in Arabic now because, you know, the government wants the country to de-colonize itself." "People want to reach out to the rest of the world," said Abdes. "But the thing is, you know, people -- and one assumes this must be more or less true everywhere -- people have one set of ideas, a set of feelings, and the government has ideas and feelings which are not the same, but they make the official policy. After the Seven Days' War... do you know this war? Between Egypt, and Israel, the Jewish state..." He looked at me, guessing, I think, that I was probably Jewish myself, politely not asking, and implying with his acknowledgement that it didn't matter. "The president of Egypt at the time wanted to create a Muslim nation, a league uniting all the Arabic-speaking countries. Something like the United States, or the European Union. Of course it didn't work. But today, even today, the government is only interested in forming good relations with other Arab countries. People are interested in being global; people would like to be able to travel, to be friendly with other parts of the world, to have good relations with Europe and America, even, also, with the Jews. But the government's idea is that we should only have relations with Muslim countries." "Clearly," I said, picking my way through the French words with care, "clearly, you two don't think that way. After all, you came to France." They shook their heads vigorously. "We don't think that way," said Fouzia. "Of course not. There are more chances here in France! More opportunity." "And it's good to meet other people," said Abdes. "To travel -- " trying it in English, with gestures -- "to travel makes your head grow." "It expands your horizons?" I said. "Enriches your spirit?" Abdes nodded, beaming beatifically. "Absolutely," he said. "Of course." Fouzia rubbed her forefinger against her thumb, and said with a wry and slightly hard smile, "And of course there's no money in Algeria, either." | | Saturday, February 25th, 2006 | | 10:53 pm |
down in the basement; the freudian uncanny
Last night someone had left the light on in this building's basement, which I only noticed because I saw light glowing out of the cracks in the wood of the staircase leading up to the first floor. I went down for a look. When I've been down there before, usually to turn the handle that will cut off my apartment's water supply when I'm going on a long trip, the light has been permanently burnt out so I've used the little penlight in my telephone to show the way. Now someone has fixed the lights and I could see everything. The basement is much bigger than I'd thought, with many sections partitioned off with flimsy wood doors with locks slung around them, and sad doors set into the stone. I felt with a sudden triumph that I understood, for the first time, what actually makes basement to spooky: it's a matter of the uncanny -- uncanny in Freud's sense, in which, for instance, waxworks and puppets are frightening because they look almost exactly like a human but aren't. Basements are uncanny, I think, because they look like a failed, abandoned, uncanny mimesis of the inside of a house. There are rooms and walls and doors and locks, but nothing is kept up, and there's no life, and no people. The only people who could live there would be half-dead people, zombies who didn't care. This makes me feel a deeper understanding of certain horror-movie sets and video-game interiors I have seen. | | Thursday, February 9th, 2006 | | 7:39 pm |
Meme: advice
It's February already, but I still feel as if we're at the beginning of the year, so I'll take the opportunity to invoke a meme that I saw floating by in January. If you had a single piece of advice for me, what would it be? (I mean, more than one piece of advice is OK, too. This is just meant to impose semi-arbitrary constraints to make the task simpler.) I promise not to be offended by any responses I might get, and I assure you that I am genuinely curious to hear anything you have to say. (I can't, of course, promise to follow anything specifically; not before I've read it.) Thanks! I live for this stuff, you know. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
crankyinfrance's journal