It All Begins Again

So this is it: the end of winter vacation. Tomorrow begins the spring (and final) semester of my master’s degree with a bucket of ice cold reality being poured over us in the form of last semester’s grades in the morning. I should have been more academically productive with my time over break, but life got in the way. I’m not sorry, it just means I’ve got more reading to do this semester; c’est la vie. It might have been unproductive, but it certainly was fun! I got to see most of my friends back in the States, visit with my family, spend loads of time with Donna (and her cute friend with the curly hair), finally really talk to and befriend krazy Kate Billingsley, and to actually enjoy Paris for a week without the same feeling of the Sword of Damacles (or Paoli as the case may be) hanging over my head.

I don’t have anything particularly deep to say tonight, so I’ll keep this brief, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do when June rolls around, and I’m sort of at a loss. Do I move to Boston to be near my family and friends on the East Coast? Do I move to NYC and try my hand in the Paris of the West now that I’ve become accustomed to life in the big city and want to keep it going? Do I move to California in preparation for a Ph.D. program at Berkeley? Maybe I just move back to Burlington where you can rent a fantastic apartment at unreasonably low prices. Or should I go really crazy and move to Puerto Rico so I can work on my Spanish in an organic way?

More importantly than where I move, what will I do when I get there? With the economy on shaky foundations that have been ravaged by financial earthquakes and which could be toppled by future aftershocks, what will I do with my M.A. French? Naturally I could teach at a private school or perhaps as an assistant or adjunct professor, but will that provide sufficient remuneration? No, probably not, but it’s still an option. Does anybody have any suggestions as to go about finding a good school to teach at? If I skip the teaching, do I go back to hospital administration which pays well and which I know fairly well, but which gives tedium new and more Hellish meaning? These decisions are not easy, my friends, and applying for jobs is not precisely what I wanted to do while working on my thesis. Le ugh.

Maybe I should just stay here in Paris. Sure it’s expensive and far away from home, but it’s still pretty great! Naw. After all my friends head back to the US or to whatever new and exotic place they might be going, Paris might be a pretty boring place. Besides, I miss my friends back home and as most of them are young professionals in their 20′s just starting out, they probably won’t be taking too many European vacations to come visit me. Add to that aging grandparents and it seems like living in North America might be a better option. That is, of course, assuming a high paying job doesn’t fall in my lap. If that happens, all bets are off and Paris could easily become chez moi.

Life would be boring if it were straightforward, right?

Oh! Before I forget, I wanted to mention Le lustre noir (The Black Chandelier) which is a lesser known club that Donna and I got to visit over the weekend in the Third. It’s kind of a neat little place that had German punk pop blaring when we got there, and whose eclectic East meets West decor, Woody Allen movies playing from plasma TV’s, and good selection of wine and pizza make it a must see for a low-key evening on the town with friends. I hear they even serve spaghetti dinners with sauce and garlic bread faits maison (homemade sauce) on Saturdays. It’s worth checking out if you can get past the doorman!

Tags: Boston, Burlinton, California, Europe, French, future, jobs, le lustre noir, masters, North America, NYC, Paris, Puerto Rico, school, US, work

Paris: A City Inaccessible

Equal access in the US is not only an ideal, but is in fact often the law. Most establishments must be handicap accessible to remain in business and you won’t find any governmental buildings without wheelchair ramps and elevators. In America, we go out of our way to ensure that anyone, no matter their physical ability, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity (some of these only being protected in certain states), can go and work anywhere. Well, we try to make it look that way at least.

France doesn’t really go to the same trouble, though I think it may be more of an Old World problem than a particularly French thing. After all, are you really going to rip up all the cobblestone to make it easier for wheelchairs to get around? Are you going to eviscerate the ancient buildings just to add ramps, stair climbers, and elevators in a city made mostly of stone. No, probably not unless it is mandated by law. “Differently-abled” would probably be a fairly laughable term for the French if we translated such PC mumbo-jumbo for them. As I’ve mentioned before, they believe in giving it to you straight, even if it might hurt your feelings. It doesn’t seem to be part of the culture to pass every utterance through an “other’s shoes” filter before speaking. It makes them far less fake, if not more abrasive at times.

Beyond being more challenging for the physically handicapped, it is clear that Paris is inaccessible in other ways. No matter your physical ability, it is clearly your wallet that really determines where you can go here. We graduate students, some of us still weening ourselves from our parents’ financial teat, find it difficult to hack life here in Paris, but let’s put that in perspective. We are having a hard time because it is difficult to sustain a lifestyle to which we had grown accustomed in the US, a lifestyle where we could shop for whatever food we wanted, go to Starbucks whenever we wanted, and generally spend money fairly freely at our whim. Here, we may be forced to reign in our Starbucks runs to a few a week, go out to eat less often and minimize our shopping at boutiques or designer stores, but we’re not exactly on the street, are we? We don’t really realize it’s there sometimes, but many of us are insulated in a comfortable financial cocoon that doubles as a safety net. In case of emergency, break glass and call parents.

But what about the less fortunate? What about those who not only lack golden American roots, but who, because of the clothes they wear, their inability to speak French without an accent, and their obvious “otherness” are doomed to always be on the outside of Ralph Lauren looking in? I complain because I can’t afford to “enjoy” Paris, but, at the same time, I’m writing this entry listening to my iPod, drinking a grande white mocha at Starbucks, with a ticket to “La Bohème” at Opéra Bastille in my bag. Before the opera, I’ll have gone to a wine-tasting class, visited the French senate, and attended a series of conferences given by the leaders in a veritable smorgasbord of disciplines in the social sciences. In short, I have nothing to complain about.

It’s easy to forget how lucky I am here surrounded by the beautiful, rich, and powerful, but on days like today when I open my eyes and actually see the dirty armless beggars on the street, the mothers huddled in a doorway cradling their babies trying to stay warm in the frigid autumn air, I realize just how lucky I am and how lucky they aren’t. Like when I lived in China, I realize that I have never known poverty, and unless I really screw up this fairly charmed life I lead, it’s statistically unlikely that I ever will. I’m not talking about “rats, I can’t really afford to go out until I get paid” poor; I’m talking about making decisions between buying a loaf of bread and a bar of soap. I’m talking about actually starving, not just going without my favorite foods for a little while. By an accident of birth, I was born into a white, anglo-saxon, protestant, middle class family in the richest country in the world and that has made all the difference. That happy accident meant many doors were automatically open to me. By chance, I speak the dialect of power of one of the most sought after languages and that, combined with my education and cultural background, means I can find work fairly easily at home and abroad. I didn’t earn any of this, it was just all there. And, in American terms, I’m certainly not anywhere near the top of the social ladder with the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, but compared to the rest of the world, I might as well be.

What separates me from those beggars on the street or those women in the boutiques with the awful pastel blue smocks, the symbolic yokes they wear while they scrub around blood diamond studded watches they could never afford? What if I had been born in Rwanda to an average family there, growing up speaking Kurundi instead of English? What if my parents hadn’t been able to pay for elementary school to say nothing of a world-class collegiate education that has taught me both languages and a formalized method of thinking steeped in the accumulated knowledge of civilization? How different would Paris feel then?

Here in Paris, just as in the US, the family in which you are born somewhat determines your destiny (though some people, some of my friends included, are clearly exceptions to the rule). Unlike in Vermont, if you happen to be one of the less unfortunate, your fate is rubbed in your face everywhere you go here in Paris. When I pass someone listening to my iPod Touch, sipping a venti soy chai, and wearing my nice warm wool coat and they are sitting on the street starving, it must feel like they are being physically attacked. If they feel that want about a grad student living on a tight budget, how must they feel after the women behind me wearing Gucci and Jimmy Choo passes by to get in her Bentley (combo-punch, technical knockout)? When you can’t afford milk, how unattainable must that lifestyle feel? Like a wheelchair-bound person looking up at the endless stairs in the metro trying to get to the street, the mendiants (beggars) in Paris must truly feel such a life completely out of reach.

Tags: America, beggars, China, France, Gucci, inaccesibility, Jimmy Choo, Kurundi, La Bohème, Opéra Bastille, Paris, privilege, Rwanda, Starbucks, US, WASP, wealth