“I’m Over It”

Now that you’ve picked yourself up off the floor from reeling from the shock of seeing a new blog post, let me apologize for the extended absence. Sure, a week or even two might be tolerable, but months?! That’s sort of pushing it, even for we busy professional types. I’d like to say that I’d been kidnapped by angry Argentinian activists, held in a cave where I was tortured for information, only to have clawed my way out, and through some novel worthy death defying adventure (I know that should be hyphenated, but I’ll explain why you won’t be seeing hyphens in a few paragraphs) to have made my way back to Paris, exhausted but posting to my blog. Hell, I’d even take a story about being hit by a car in the dangerous Parisian crosswalks, only to wake up thinking I was Queen Victoria and teaching all the Frenchies proper English etiquette until my memory came back, but that’s not what happened either. No, the truth is, I’ve just been busy. Outrageously so. Maybe I should see if I can contact those angry Argentinians because, if they’d let me bring my laptop and my reading, that quiet cave in the mountains might be ideal for getting through this mountain of academic drudgery. Between the roughly ten (yes, ten, like 1, 0) novels I need to read (not thin ones, mind you) and analyze, the three exposés I need to prepare (those are French oral presentations with very specific and somewhat ridid structures), the papers, and the thesis project all of which need to be done by mid May (damn this lack of hypen!!), I can basically count on locking myself in my apartment and spending so much time hunched over books in the dark, that I’ll return to the US some sort of photophobic mole person. Fantastic.

Anyway, you’re probably not here to listen to me (or read me) moaning (although, if you’re not, you’d think you would have learned by now…), and if you’re like Allie and “over” my blog, I’m probably not going to get you interested again talking about the two main ingredients of any master’s in literature (reading and writing). Instead, let’s take a whirlwind tour of my life since the end of January, shall we?

One of the main social events that dragged me out of my academic isolation last month was Whitney’s “Sabor Latino” party; a shindig of about twenty or so people that included copious amounts of sangria and a smorgasbord of tapas (little latin finger foods if you’re not familiar) which took place at her place in Malakoff. Can we talk about the kind of party you have to promise to get people to take the train all the way out there? I’m not sure exactly what she told everyone but I think I heard rumors of topless belly dancers riding Indian elephants.

It was a tricky night for her as she had to babysit until an hour and a half before her party, which anyone who has ever hosted a party knows leaves no where near enough prep time beforehand. Being my mother’s son and having helped through more than a few parties of this sort, I thought I’d offer to help out. As luck would have it, Whitney and I ended up on the same train to Malakoff and therefore ended up getting to her place at the same time. Both all too aware of the gravity of the situation, we sprung into action. Knives clacking frantically as garlic met its untimely end, tears streaming as onions were quickly reduced to a pile of translucent caustic bits, we were T minus one hour to the party and we needed patatas bravas made, baguettes sliced, and every other type of hors d’œuvre heated, unplastic wrapped (hopefully not in that order), and placed on a serving platter in less time than some of these things were supposed to take to cook. Clayton and Mario came and the unsuspecting duo was immediately put to work. Basically, after using pretty much every dish in the apartment, fighting Whitney for her iPhone which had suddenly taken on near holy importance as it had become both a recipe book and and a doorbell for her guests, and after stirring with one hand, peeling with another, and asking the microwave for all it could give, we all managed to make the food at the party happen. Kat and others were a big help in the whole endeavor too, but there was such a blur of hands and faces in the kitchen, I can’t remember who did what. It was a good time had by all (at least I hope it was), and I think people will definitely be going to Whitney’s next party, should she decide to have one.

Shortly after Whitney’s party, the 14th of February, the day all single women seem to dread, rolled around. Kate, Donna, and I all got together for a little Valentine’s dinner which included champagne rosé which I found at this neat little place down the street from Jess and Nick’s, a fantastic heart shaped cake filled with chestnut confit (which I assure you is amazing), a side of Terre à Delice salted caramel ice cream (which made me sick, but hurt so good), a nice red wine from Spain, an overflowing plate of fresh strawberries, and a case of these delicious little confections called “Millionaire’s Flapjacks” by Gü (thing “ooey gooey”) which were amazing if not assured to give you Type 2 Diabetes overnight. Anthony ended up stopping by later on, which was nice, and all in all, I think we all had an enjoyable holiday. As a side note, I might be the only one and maybe I’m broken or have a heart of stone, but being single on Valentine’s has never bothered me. I’ll have to explore that more later.

What fantastic day comes just a week after Valentine’s Day? Which day am I petitioning the French and American governments to recognize as the special, day off worthy occassion that it is? Why, it’s Lise’s and my birthday, of course! She and I had planned to do some big combined extravaganza but as we both took so long to plan the thing and it fell on a Tuesday night just before a week of vacation, we ended up having a thoroughly enjoyable smaller group out for dinner and dessert in the 13th. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about the choice of venue when I first showed up, bedraggled after teaching on my feet for 5 hours straight and seeing this little empty restaurant named “Gladine’s” on the corner. It looked pretty, well, délabré (run down) and there was no one inside. Still, I trusted Lise, and hoped for the best. Yahaira showed up shortly after I did and we had a nice chat until Lise, Eric, and Whitney joined us, we did the Paris shuffle to get a table, moved to a bigger table so Kat could join us, and added an oddly folding chair when Jess arrived a bit later. Despite the exterior, it was an excellent choice for a restaurant with extremely generous helpings of Basque cuisine which, after it opened, had lines out the front door and around the corner waiting to be seated. Dinner was nice, and though I wasn’t as adventurous as Eric was ordering tripe, I had a good time.

As the restaurant was pressed for space, we decided to have dessert up the street at Place d’Italie at a small place called O’Jules (presumably named after the French bastard son of an Irishman). We all had ice cream, or in my case, vodka soaked lemon sorbet, coffee, and enjoyed ourselves despite the irritating know it all (really missing those hyphens) waiter that informed Eric that people don’t say “en fait” (actually/in fact) unless they have a speech impediment (totally untrue, EN FAIT) and who was generally rude. It’s amazing how many French servers become assholes when you have the audacity to openly speak English around them.

I also had my first visitors since I got here! My friends Hayden and her boyfriend Nick who I know from my Burlington and UVM days came to visit in February after a month working for an agricultural exchange program in southern France and eating altogether too much poireaux soup and crappy bread, butter, and cheese sandwiches. Nick had never been to Paris before and Hayden had only been long enough to do the touristy whirlwind sightseeing tour. I did my best to show them around while managing to get my work done and allowing them a little time to themselves (it is the city for lovers, after all). I really enjoyed having them here, and not only because they brought me fantastic mint tea from their recent trip to Morocco, but as I saw them getting on the train to Charles de Gaulle (the big Parisian airport) on their way back to Vermont, I was hit by my first major twinge of homesickness. There’s nothing like friends from home that are part of an existence totally seperate from Middlebury to provoke “le mal de pays”. Ah well, such is life.

That pretty much wraps up the exciting goings on in my life. Aside from that and shortcircuiting my keyboard during a rather unfortunate cleaning accident (thus the lack of hyphens and my ‘p’ key also acting as mute) which brings my tally of laptops killed or severely maimed since I started college up to five or six, it’s all reading. Not that I can complain too much; most of my reading is fairly interesting as it’s about prostitutes or other equally exciting populations of the francophone world. Still, this lack of posting is inexcusable, and so I’m going to try to resolve to write at least a paragraph a day. Well, as soon as I replace this damned keyboard because this muting my music every time I type a word with ‘p’ in it is getting all kinds of old. If you don’t hear from me, don’t worry too much; my brain probably just exploded all over the walls of my apartment after it exceeded it’s maximum capacity.

Joy El, can you please work on either a) extending the day to 36 hours so I can get everything done or b) creating a few adult clones of me that have a copy of my brain (I don’t have time to raise and teach them)? I could really use the help and I’m not really sure why you’re dragging your feet. We paid off those ethics people, right?

PS, if you need to send a greeting card, check out Hallmark’s new SmileBox service. It’s kind of cool and (mostly) free!). Take a look below at the card I sent my sister to see what I mean.

Make your own digital greeting

Tags: 13th, Anthony, birthday, Burlington, Clayton, Donna, Epitechp, Eric, Gladine's, Hallmark, Hayden, Jess, Kat, Kate, latino, Lise, Malakoff, Mario, Middlebury, Nick, Paris, parties, research, Sailor, SmileBox, UVM, Valentine's, Vermont, Whitney, Yahaira

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

It’s another Vermont Christmas and I’m reading Dickens. Though I’m reading Great Expectations instead of A Christmas Carol, it actually feels quite appropriate. You see, I see myself a bit of Pip in myself of late. In case you haven’t read the book, Pip is a young common boy in England who finds himself beckoned to play at Miss Havisham’s, the wealthy spinster who lives “up-town” in his town. You see, before playing at Miss Havisham’s, Pip is somewhat blissfully unaware of how “common” he is with his thick-soled shoes and his coarse hands, yet after Estella gets done with him after his first visit, he becomes self-conscious of his station in the society of the small town. After my return from Paris, I have have a similar revelation about my place in the world.

I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled since a tender age and I’ve seen a lot more of the world than many people, from the East Coast of the US to the West, from North to South, through most of the provinces of Canada, a smattering of countries in Europe and yes, even a good deal of China, but coming back from France feels different somehow. Normally, I come back to Vermont and can only think of how picturesque my state is; how returning here is somehow like coming back to a place that exists somewhere between the paintings of Normal Rockwell and the poetry of Robert Frost. But this time it feels different. This time, after spending so much time in a city which feels tailor-made for me, Vermont feels diminished, like the beautiful forests I remembered have been replaced by trees and overgrown underbrush. What was once a cute country general store is now just overpriced. The snow covered roads lacking sidewalks aren’t rustic but impinging my ability to exercise comfortably. In short, Paris has killed off my romantic vision of what was and has shone a garish light on my home state, allowing me to see it through what may be a more objective lens.

In short, I think that I’m not only a city mouse now, but one that is having a hard time readjusting to the country, albeit just for a little break and not a life there. This is pretty natural it seems after reading the Facebook statuses of all the other Parisiens now back in the States for Christmas who are ready to go back to France. For those that love her, Paris beckons us back with her cinemas, pastry shops, and vibrant culture which is equaled in no other place on Earth, at least not one that I’ve ever seen. Maybe what’s making me feel uneasy isn’t so much the countryside of Vermont, but instead the fact that I’ve realized that I can never come back. The Vermont I once knew is an old knit sweater that I’ve outgrown and whose pattern has gone out of fashion, and that’s frightening because it means that I’m homeless, in a larger sense if not literally.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the Green Mountain State dearly, and I might call it home again someday, but until I’ve realized my career ambitions and am really ready to settle down, it’s just no longer for me.

On another note, I’ve picked up a copy of the 2009 addition of America’s Best Essays and I think I’ve finally found a genre that fits my writing style between the essay and the short story. Beyond that, after watching one of Mom’s Christmas presents, Julie & Julia, I think I need to set a deadline for myself to get published because, seriously, if I end up back in a cubicle doing data analysis after my year in Paris, no matter how well paid I am, I will flip my shit. I promise. One of the keys to Julie’s success was surely her deadline as, like me, it seems like she had great ideas but poor follow-through. So, like her, if I’m going to get my words out of cyberspace and in print on crisp glossy pages (or even better on woody matte ones between two cardboard covers), I’m going to need to actually finish something. As I know breaking into the published world isn’t easy and that my studies and work will make it necessary to stop banging out essays and shorts from time to time, I’ll give myself until my 27th birthday (February 23rd, 2011) to get my words in print.

What do you think, blogosphere, can I do it? Is my writing good enough to get published in print somewhere (I’m not talking about the New Yorker for starters, mind you)? If so, help me find an appropriate audience by posting a comment on the following question:

In your opinion, in which publication would Jonathan’s writing fit best?

Tags: A Christmas Carol, Christmas, Dickens, goals, Great Expectations, home, Paris, publishing, Vermont

The Best and the Worst of Paris

Well folks, it’s month three for me here in Paris: I’ve been here for exactly thirteen weeks and it’s starting to feel that way. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it here, but now that my return to the familiar rolling green mountains and crisp winter air of Vermont is less than two weeks away, I’m beginning to feel how France has been wearing on me.

It’s not so much France itself these days, I think that stage was over back in the middle of October after I finally had internet and had finished signing papers and opening accounts here and there. That was a special version of administrative Hell that I’ll be extremely glad to be lucky enough to never repeat. The cultural adjustment was over shortly after that as well as, while the French are different from Americans, we Western cultures aren’t as unique as we’d like to think we are and jumping from one to the other, while trying at times, pales in comparison to adapting to Asia. The French, well at least the ones I know, are generally friendly and with the language barrier all but gone now, I fell fairly bien dans ma peau (at home in my own skin) here in Paris. Even the academic work, however rigorous at times, isn’t all that bad. Sure, I’d rather be out going to movies, cafés, or even the occasional bar than reading about what happened here over five centuries ago, but this is what I signed up for.

So if it’s not culture shock or la vie académique, what’s the problem? It’s the city. Not Paris itself, just being in a metropolis in general. For someone from a small town in Vermont who, despite having traveled to many large cities all over the world has never lived in one, the constant noise, the dirty subway rides, the constant barrage of beggars, the knocking of the slow walking strollers out of the way with well placed jabs of the elbow, the constant smell of exhaust, and the rain, always with the freaking rain, are a bit taxing. If she ever reads this, I can already see the knowing smile on my mother’s face who always says “I wanted to live in a big city when I was your age,” with an implied, “and now I know better.” I’m getting sick of hearing engines instead of birdsong and smelling urine and exhaust instead of moss and pine needles. I’m sick of my cramped tiny apartment and having to walk down the hall, fight with a lock, just to sit on a freezing cold semi-communal toilet (they use wide open windows instead of fans for ventilation in my building). I miss my beautiful apartment with the twenty foot ceilings, the view of the river, the gym, and the pool all of which were minutes away from a quiet walk in the country. Sometimes the feeling is so strong I find myself thinking, “maybe Mom was right; maybe I am supposed to live in the country.”

Ferris Wheel at the Place de la Concorde

But then there are days like Wednesday where I get to ride high above the City of Lights in a Ferris wheel and am overwhelmed by the breathtaking lights of the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Élysées, and the rest of Paris which is alight for winter. Then there are the walks down the great avenues of Paris where Swiss chalets dripping with 220V sparkling icicles offer a smorgasbord of smells and winter cuisine which borders on American fair food (which we all know I am powerless to resist) crossed with Christmas tradition, where Paris casts her spell and for a few precious moments, I am practically enraptured. Well, until some little Lithuanian woman slams into me and almost spills my vin chaud (I think we call this mulled wine) down the front of me.

I think it’s not a question of whether or not I’m made for the city, I think it’s more a question of building up an immunity to any new living situation. Like I’ve had to suffer through and overcome the many viruses which are not as common in New England, I think I need time to adjust to this hectic city lifestyle against which, of course, I have no natural immunity and sometimes feel like I might succumb like the Algonquins to small pox. The culture, diversity, bountiful history, and practically limitless variety of the city mean that il vaut la peine (it’s worth) learning to ignore the noise and to accept the crowded and dirty trips on the metro as part of life, but it takes time. Just as many of the other students had to adapt to the slower paced life in Vermont where things aren’t as available and it probably seems that cows outnumber people (mosquitoes surely do), one can’t adjust immediately to a completely different lifestyle. Oddly enough, just when I think I’m getting the hang of it, something, like getting trapped on the metro in a mob of Italian tourists who swore at me and complained about how rude “the French” were (va fan culo, lady, I’m American), will set me off and a wave of nostalgia for a quite walk in the hundred acre woods will wash over me (no, I’m not Christopher Robin, my family has 100 acres in Vermont filled with maple trees and serene paths through the forest, not to mention a few bears which bare no resemblance to Winnie the Pooh). And no, the Bois de Boulogne isn’t quite the same, but it does help that it’s there.

Ah well, perhaps between les Africains (the specialty hot chocolate which is essentially the candy (and possibly nutritional) equivalent to crack) and the gastronomic tours of the city and two weeks back home, I’ll be ready for the next six months here. Actually, if anything will get me ready, it will be a booster shot in the form of a nasty slushy winter day in Vermont when you can’t go out and do anything. But then there’s always a good book and the fireplace…

Tags: academics, adjustment, America, Angelina's, Ferris Wheel, immunity, Italians, Paris, Vermont, virus, winter