Ding Dong!

11th grade English was memorable for many reasons, not the least of which was our excentric English teacher, Mr. Keane. The books we read, such as Animal Farm by Orwell (or was that 10th grade?), Moby Dick by Melville, The Great Gatsby (still one of my favorites) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, among many others were pretty fantastic and though some of them were quite simple (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway), they were almost all mind blowingly good. I think it was Mr. Keane’s English class at Harford High School that really started to make me think more deeply about literature in some sort of meaningful, more-important-than-getting-an-A sort of way.

Whether it was his vocal gender-bending as the sexy woman in red in Death of a Salesman or his heart-stopping outbursts during particularly important passages whose meaning seemed to elude us, Mr. Keane had a way of really making you stop and think about what you were reading and examine it in microscopic detail. One of the most important moments in any book, he taught us, is the mention of the title in the work, which is clearly true, but to make sure we never missed it, he would always shout, “DING DONG!” whenever one was mentioned. While watching a video snippet of Moby Dick, as the whale breaches, Captain Ahab’s ranting would be drowned out by Mr Keane’s deafening exclamation, “DING DONG!” And so it went throughout the rest of my junior year and through AP English the next year.

Mr. Keane’s technique was so effective and so memorable, in fact, that it has become some sort of autonomic response during my further studies in literature. Reading Notre-Dame de Paris in my apartment in France, Victor Hugo’s rendition of Quasimodo’s handiwork wasn’t the only chorus of bells I heard: “A whole chapter named ‘Notre-Dame de Paris?!’ DING DONG! DING DONG!” Reading Upton Sinclair’s (isn’t that a great name?) The Jungle in a double-wide in Hutto, Texas (piqued your curiosity, have I?), the hammers smashing in the cow’s heads before turning them into sawdust filled steaks wasn’t the only clattering I heard. In short, like it or not, Mr. Keane is always with me when I’m reading.

So today while reading Great Expectations by Dickens, imagine the cacophony in my head when I got to the chapter when the lawyer comes and tells Pip about his new enriched life as a gentleman at the expense of a mysterious benefactor (you’re not fooling anyone Dickens, we all know Miss Havisham is behind it); the silly solicitor must have said “great expectations” ten times in two pages! All the ding dongs risked giving me a headache, but not before working precisely as designed and making me realize how fundamentally important the passage was to the book. Pip not only has tangible “great expectations” coming to him in the form of a substantial fortune, he has them of his new life as a gentleman including the possible wooing of Estella. Joe, Biddy, and to a much lesser extent, Pip’s now feeble sister have “great expectations” of what Pip will accomplish and how far he’ll go in life. His mysterious benefactor certainly has “great expectations” of what he’ll do as a gentleman, and probably expects him to do some pretty “great” favors in return. The weight of what’s happening is palpable and nearly crushing, like the first day at a college that is costing a fortune or the first day on the job that you got based on a stellar recommendation from your previous employer. There are moments in life when you have a lot to live up to or when fate has to be exceptionally kind to fulfill a vision you’ve dreamt up for your life, and from this theme has Dickens so deftly chosen the title of his work. Ding dong! He’s a genius.

This chapter also got me thinking about the Miss Havishams in life. How many wealthy benefactors are out there making dreams come true while remaining in the shadows like this aged despondent bride? The federal government and scholarship foundations are allowing underprivileged youth to get a higher education every day and yet these unseen and generous entities go largely unthanked and unknown. It’s very encouraging to think that people with real amounts of money (far exceeding the meager $25/month I send to my little Andrés in Mexico) get something more than a tax deduction out of giving a chance to the less fortunate. Enriching the general populous is a truly altruistic gesture, and both restores my faith in humanity and helps strip away the villainous and miserly reputation the empoverished have of the more affluent. Money might not be able to buy happiness directly, but giving it away can. I’ll find out if Miss Havisham’s gift allows any happiness to creep into her dank shadow-filled existence in a few hundred pages, but in the meantime, I’ll just relish in the happiness the imaginary sounding of a bell can inspire.

Tags: Andrés, Dickens, English, France, Great Expectations, Hartford High School, Literature, Mr. Keane

Unproductive Bliss

OK, so it’s Wednesday night and thus far, all I’ve really managed to do this vacation is to read a play. That’s not so great because I’m pretty sure there’s no way to get around handing in the paper due for Revolution on Monday. Nope, definitely not. Need to get my ass in gear here people. Yep. Getting right on that. Any second now.

Despite that lack of progress on the academic side of things, I did have an excellent day. It started off with me meeting Jessica at her place (well, after passing it and her luckily being outside to flag me down) for a quick coffee and croissant before heading to the movies. Her dogs Whinney and Graham, if you haven’t met them, are adorable. Whinney is a perfect lady, very demure and genteel (which I feel should be spelled “gentille” now that I’m in France, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish) and I imagine would talk very much like Scarlett O’Hara if she could speak. Graham on the other hand, is younger and more animated, but equally cute. Anyway, after admiring the beautiful apartment they are renting from a Cambodian hotel manager, we went to see Fame (don’t judge us, sometimes you need something light to cleanse your mental palette) at UGC Orient-Express (in Les Halles like UGC Ciné Cité, but at the other end). As you may have guessed, the number of people seeing a matinée of a less than critically acclaimed movie on a Wednesday was Jessica and me + 3, or not many. The plot of the movie was basically an excuse to string along a series of lip-synched over acted music videos, but we knew that going in, so it wasn’t that bad. I was a little shocked when the movie showed very little homosexuality at an acting school (they had one guy they sort of hinted at being gay, but all the dance movies have the one token gay guy like the horror flicks have the token black guy) but loads of underage drinking. That didn’t really jive with the politically correct, all-inclusive Disney vibe I was expecting, but it was nice to have something offset the rather plastic acting. It was a cookie cutter feel-good movie, but it worked as such. It was a real pleasure to spend some time with Jessica, and I hope we can do it again soon! She’s one of the few people I know here who like the cinema as much as I do!

Whitney and I had decided last night to get together to study (why do I always think that such schemes might actually work), so around 2PM I was off to Malakoff to meet her. The train ride isn’t that much longer than the one from Neuilly, but I felt like I ended up in Provence or something when I got off the train. Goodbye skyscapers, hello quaint little stone houses with gates and gardens. We met at this cute little café with a sign very reminiscent of “eat at Joe’s” in all its neon animated glory. The man at the counter was pleasant, and after leisurely getting us our sandwiches (and I mean LEISURELY) and attempting his two words of English on us (I’m getting sick of pretending to be impressed by this trick), we enjoyed a quick lunch with the café to ourselves. After paninis, pastries, and palaver, we were off to Whitney’s, which was ANOTHER beautiful apartment where we got absolutely nothing done except chatting for hours. I’m going to fail out of school if I don’t find some motivation to slog through this school work soon, but at least the days leading up to that point will be fun if they are anything like today!

Tags: apartment, cafés, cinema, dogs, English, Fame, France, Grad School, Graham, Jessica, Malakoff, paninis, Revolution, UGC, Whinney, Whitney

26.2 Miles in Someone Else’s Shoes

It’s just another rainy autumn day in Neuilly-sur-Seine where the smoke pouring out of the stacks atop the Hôtel Concorde Lafayette reminds me of Vermont in winter with its many chimneys. I’m sitting in my apartment thinking about doing work both academic and domestic and the world in general. Actually, it has been a sort of thought provoking week so far even though I haven’t had to really do anything. Watching graphic movies, seeing real people put into body bags on the street (Avenue de la Grande Armée to be precise), and making new acquaintances will do that to you.

By Sunday I was feeling better from whatever malady was trying to infect me after Hell Week and had caught up on my sleep, so Whitney and I went out to this small restaurant in Le Marais. It wasn’t half bad for the price but with the plasma TV showing the French equivalent of Nascar and the music blasting at my side, I got this weird sports bar vibe which Whitney quickly pointed out was probably inaccurate as I was the last person she could imagine actually being in a sports bar. OK, maybe just an American chain restaurant pretending to be a sports bar? In any case, it was a weird atmosphere that is fairly common in America and that I hope doesn’t catch on over here. Seriously people, TV’s are not there so you can ignore the people you are dining with; you can wait until after dinner to see who won the match.

After a disappointing house salad and an excellent slice of quiche Lorraine (slap that much cholesterol and fat in a flaky crust anytime and you’ve got me), we were off to see Sin nombre, a movie about a girl trying to escape from a very poor region of Honduras and to make her way to the US (eventually to New Jersey though she has no idea how far that is from Texas). On the way she meets up with a boy who is a member of a gang and who saves her from being raped by killing one of the gang lieutenants. Anyway, to make a long story short, it’s a good movie with a large panorama of strip malls and Wal-mart parking lots at the end. To anyone else in the theater, that might have just been a scene like any other, a logical end to the movie, but to Whitney and I, the two Americans there, it really resonated. America is the land of strip malls and vast parking lots spanning from big box stores to the horizon. That one scene visually encompassed our homeland, and inspired the tiniest pang of homesickness (seriously, a Wal-mart parking lot?). Afterward, we stopped at Ben & Jerry’s and grabbed a tiny bowl of ice cream and between that and us speaking English (Heaven forbid) in the Forum des Halles which looks essentially like a large mall, for a few brief moments, I felt like I was in America again.

Putting aside all that is wrong with seeing my country as parking lots and hulking steel buildings designed to make you part with as much money as possible, it made me think about the cultural baggage we all carry along. To the French people in that theater, that last scene was probably as foreign to them as the scenes of the gang den in Honduras were. If the roles were reversed and we were watching a movie of people fleeing from Algeria to come to France, what would have been their Wal-Mart parking lot scene I wonder? I mean, aside from the obvious monuments, what personifies France as perfectly as colossal multi-national box store chains do the US?

Yesterday, after standing her up very much unintentionally Saturday, I met Ingrid who will be my speaking partner for the year. She’s really nice, but absolutely full of surprises. First off, she is French and grew up in Paris mostly, but she is also half Spanish and speaks Castellano and Catelan perfectly. Actually, it’s kind of strange how her aspect changes when she switches languages, especially since she essentially speaks three natively. When we switched to English, her accent was very clearly British and although she couldn’t pass for native as her English is a wee bit rusty, when she gets back into the swing of it, you’ll very much have the impression you were speaking to a Londoner when she says something short and uncomplicated. She offered to help me in French, which she said she didn’t think I needed that much help with (evidently she doesn’t set the bar that high for proficiency), or Spanish, and I’ll probably take her up on both. As she pointed out, practicing French is great, but one should really practice their weakest language as often as possible, not their second strongest. Also, she thought because I had good manners on the phone and was very regimented with my schedule that I was Asian. Do I come across that way? It’s not the first time someone expected me to be Chinese when meeting them and I’m not really sure how to take that.

Assuming all well-mannered busy people are Asian aside, can you imagine Ingrid’s cultural background? She grew up in Paris, spent summers and vacations in Spain, and popped off to England every now and again to live with a family for fun and to improve her English as a child. How different our backgrounds are and yet we get on quite well. If trying to understand how someone’s background is running a full marathon, not just a mile, in their shoes, I’d better buy some new athletic gear because I’m doing a lot of it lately. What makes people tick, how the sum of their experiences define them and give them a unique view of the world fascinates me to no end. That’s probably why I like meeting new people and don’t much care how long they talk about their life history. It’s also probably why I thought I’d be a great psychiatrist, and if hadn’t been for my moral opposition to the way drugs are prescribed and my stronger moral opposition to organic chemistry, it probably would have inspired me to pursue that career instead of this one.

After a nice chat at a café, Ingrid showed me the street she lives on and all the neat little restaurants there including the world famous Au pied du cochon which looks like it is directly out of the movie Delicatessen and therefore inspires revulsion more than hunger. She also introduced me to her fiancé David, a Portuguese pharmacist which sent the little gears in my head whirring even more. What different backgrounds these two have and yet they are so clearly madly in love. We all truly are individuals, but that’s not, contrary to American dogma, what makes us special as it’s sort of an inevitability. What makes life special is somehow finding other individuals with a compatible world view, or at least ones you can tolerate talking to. When I someday find the time to write a novel, you’ll know which themes to expect, I imagine.

OK, back to reading Michel Tremblay with the flimsy excuse that he’s the subject of my dissertation. After I finish Hotel Bristol, New York, N.Y. I’ll get back to Notre-Dame de Paris and revolutionary history, I swear!

The Fountain of St. Michel or the Gateway to My Own Personal Heaven

Tags: America, Au pied de cochon, café, Catelan, cinema, Delicatessen, English, France, French, Honduras, Hotel Bristol, Ingrid, Les halles, Michel Tremblay, New Jersey, Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris, Revolution, Sin nombre, Spain, Spanish, Texas, Wal-mart, Whitney

Vaut-il la peine?

Don’t tell anyone, but I SO should not be posting right now. I worked all afternoon on my damned paper for my Le retour du tragique class (well, until I decided to take a quick break three hours ago), and now I’m out of academic horsepower for the night. Besides this paper, I have a presentation on Les bonnes by Jean Genet in the same class due on the same paper (we didn’t know when the paper was due when I picked my exposé, I assure you), and a 2 page in Composition avancée and 6-10 page paper due in Le Prince the following day. In short, I’m in pretty deep in scholarly quicksand and sinking fast. What’s worse is that the panicky motivation, that little kick of turbo, that used to kick in during my undergrad career as deadlines drew near seems to be used up. In short, even this close to the due date, I’m seriously having a hard time giving a shit.

I’m thinking it might have to do with the fact that my life isn’t solely about school anymore. Hayden and I went to Epitech and met with Melanie yesterday to find out what teaching there would entail, and I’m actually much more excited about that than I am about my classes. That, and after I found out that Hayden and I feel pretty much like our M.A. in French is going to be little more than a $50,000 wall decoration, the importance of my classes seems to be taking a distant second to things I can add to my résumé. Seriously, with my friends in the US with a higher education (including law degrees) struggling after months to find ANY job that will take them, I’m thinking going home and declaring “well, I can speak French fairly well” as my most marketable skill isn’t going to be quite as impressive as I’d hoped. But, with everybody and their brother wanting to learn English here, getting connections in English language instruction will be good, right? Anybody want to go out and get me roaring drunk when that illusion is crushed? I came to Paris thinking it would be worth the hefty price tag just to live in Paris for a year, but I’m seriously beginning to get worried that is REALLY all it’s going to be worth. Shit. I mean damn. No, I mean shit.

Tags: Composition avancée, English, Epitech, France, French, Genet, Grad School, Hayden, Le Prince, Les bonnes, M.A. papers, Melanie, money, motivation, résumé, retour du tragique

Integration

Moving to a foreign country is always a little tricky. Even though I’ve studied the French language and French culture since 8th grade, there’s still no way to be completely prepared when you move abroad. As much of a pain as it was first getting setup here, I do feel as though Paris really suits me. Granted, it would suit me better if I had a larger income than a grad student (more on that later), but I think I’m making real strides in integrating into the local fabric (you didn’t think the title of this post referred to calculus, did you?).

First and foremost, I finally met Guillaume in person Thursday night. He and I have been penpals for years and years, but we’d never actually met face to face before this week. I’m really glad we did, because he’s even more interesting and dynamic in real life (i.e. he’s a real person, who knew?). We met at the café at 80 boulevard Hausseman (which is cute, but expensive) after he finished work at i-TELE (a TV station where he works as an anchor’s assistant) in one of those moments where you look at someone, you look again, and then say, “Guillaume?” It was odd because he looks pretty much exactly like pictures I’ve seen, but it still took a second to recognize him. Anyway, we got a table, he ordered a Perrier (though in some sort of special way which meant I had absolutely no idea what was going on) and I went with my standard café au lait which I absolutely love (more so when I’m not wearing it). I was self-concious of my French at first because, let’s face it, being French his was great, and being one of my friends, he knows his grammar inside and out, so I knew he wouldn’t miss any mistakes. Of course, after the first few awkward minutes, I realized that I really did know him well, even though we’d never met before, and the conversation became more natural. He’s a smart kid with a good head on his shoulders, though he’s in the same place I was at 22: he’s trying to figure out how he can make the life he has now into the one he aspires to have. Good luck, Guillaume, that’s a tricky one.

After an hour or so of French, we started talking about English, a topic which fascinates him (he’s sort of me on the other side of the mirror). He had always told me he spoke English with an American accent, but I had my doubts. I mean, I REALLY did. Not that I didn’t believe that he tried to speak English with an American accent, but in China, people that said they spoke with one accent or another invariably spoke with just a Chinese accent. The end. There’s no way you could construe their English as being from one region or another of the anglophone world. But, to my great surprise, I was totally wrong about Guillaume. After showing him what people sounded like in the South and the Midwest (he was curious, and I like doing accents, so it worked out well, though I must admit, it’s a little uncomfortable talking like a cowboy in English in a Parisian café), we actually started speaking English. And wow. Just, wow. His accent isn’t flawless and he sometimes Frenchifies his grammar, but when he said “daughter” with the correct emphasis, the correct vowel sounds, and the rhotic ‘r’ in it’s full glory, I was astounded. Good Lord, he DID speak with an accent that was clearly American! Evidently, they teach a sort of neutral version of English here (what on Earth would that sound like?), but he learned how to pronounce things from watching American television and listening to American music. Evidently, despite the disdain that the French supposedly feel for America, some of them really like they way we work. Actually, if you look at all the anglicismes here, all the culture, all the brands of clothing and the marketing techniques which basically say “wear these jeans to be as cool as Americans,” we can’t be all bad in the US. Most French people aren’t anymore prejudiced than we are toward them on the other side of the pond, and like we hold their culture and products (e.g. wine, chocolate, cheese, etc.) in a certain esteem, the feeling is evidently more mutual than I realized.

Anyway, it was a real pleasure meeting Guillaume, and after hours of chatting, we decided we should meet up again really soon. Walking home from our rendez-vous I realized that I actually really like the French because they are way nicer than people ever give them credit for. Maybe it’s because I’m from New England where people can be downright cold and mean (well, at least it can seem that way), but so far I’ve only met decent people here. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, who knows?

One that is clear is that real integration is possible. People on the street evidently think I’m French because I get stopped all the time by people looking for directions. “This line stops at the Bastille, right?” “Do you know where avenue Charles de Gaulle is?” “Can I take the RER to Orly from here?” If these people were tourists, that would make sense, but in every case, they’ve been French! How odd. While I’m not so deluded (which I used to spell “diluted” because I always thought it meant watering down your own bullshit until it was clear enough that you could almost believe the lie you were trying to tell yourself) as to believe that I’ve somehow magically mastered the mysteries of France in three weeks, after my interview yesterday, I at least know it’s possible.

You see, I met a woman named Melanie yesterday who runs the English department at a polytechnic school here in Paris. As it turns out, she’s also from Vermont (Newport) too and is very likeable. Actually, it’s a really good thing I took Eddie to Québec just before coming here, because I had refamiliarized myself with the geography of that part of the state on the way back, so we had loads to talk about. The interviews were normally about 20 minutes, but mine went on for almost an hour. Even if I don’t get the job, I had a good chat with her and it proves that some people really do live the dream. She got a Master’s in French from Middlebury too, and went from a conversation tutor to the head of an English department that she created, and has been living here in Paris for the past ten years running it. How cool is that? She wanted to come to France and stay, and she made it happen not just be finding a job, but by creating her own. That takes some drive, and I hope, should I still be in love with Paris at the end of the year and decide that Europe is the place for me, that I will be equally motivated.

I got up late today so I missed the trip to Versailles, but honestly, I didn’t really feel like going anyway. To be honest, the great monuments of Europe are very interesting, but it’s the little things off the beaten path, the things that not every tourist on the planet has seen, that interest me more. So, my mission today is both academic and fun in that I have to go scrounge through bookstores until I can find what I need for my classes. That might be a pain in the ass if I didn’t like shopping for books so much. After that, I need to get my ass in gear and turn my reading up a notch to make sure I’m caught up in all my classes. I guess, even though my day won’t be filled with golden archways, velvet draperies, and musical dancing water shows, I’ll at least get some learning done and feel a little of what it’s like to be a French student in the process.Tant mieux really, tant mieux.

Place Vendome in the VIIIe

Tags: accents, books, bookshops, cafés, culture, English, France, friends, Guillaume, Paris, school, television, Versailles