David Duchovny in that CA show has serious problems - even in French

Many things. Mostly, my new roommates have been good and I have been watching french tv and passing the Edith Piaf statue, rugged and un paris-like, that sits in the modest square in my house in the 20th, a more working-class neighborhood that noone seems to like except for me. She holds her hands up to the sky, and every few days or so, some parisian puts something in them: a bouquet of old flowers, a parking metal sign, a child's glove. I truly, truly love it, and when I walk home I imagine her holding me up to the grey and raining sky, and I feel as though this lack-of-livelihood malaise will pass.

Unplugging it

My mother recently sent me this article. This is true, I think. I will add some of my own trickery/being-tricked-by after the passage:

"You’ve got to go there with the intention of learning life lessons. If you go there with your dukes up hoping to win the argument, all you’ll gain is their scorn, and you’ll return to the states uninspired and unchanged. Do not imagine that you know more than Paris. Paris has been put on this earth to teach us all a little humility. You bow to it; you don’t even presume to salute it. Who are you to speak as an equal to Paris? Paris is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the yesterday and tomorrow of beauty and refinement. In Paris you learn to toss your salad seventeen times, and to peel an orange with a knife in a curvy column of rind that’s several feet long if you take the time and care. A French mother doesn’t watch her daughter grow up wishing for her to be the captain of the girls’ soccer team. A French mother schools her daughter in the delicacies of boy-girl/man-woman politics. Above all, grace. Above all, elegance. Above all, knowledge. A French mother teaches her daughter how to be her own person within a relationship (how to hold her own), how to expect and how to cause beauty." - from "It's Worth the Trouble" by Barbara Waterston

Wow, that article pointed to some really true things. I have been doing what she says, I have been humbled again and again in Paris like it is a difficult country line dance, but you have already found yourself out on the dance floor and you have to at least try. Most recently, Chris and I went out to a café for him to read his theorists and for me to work on my translation, on a laptop computer. I plugged in my computer and after 20 minutes the owner came over and gave me a talking to about using their outlet for electricity. She was steaming and sassy. I knew just what to do. Instead of shrink inside and feel humiliated, I pouted my lips, raised my eyebrows, shrugged and said, "I'll unplug it then," in the same way that you would say, "You go make the sandwich." No skin off of my back. I left with my computer out of battery but my pride intact. I too can play their little game.

I give you a euro, you give me...

another garage sale in Paris. Zack is gone. I bundle up and head out in the rain this Saturday morning. A man out of the back of his packed car has things arranged in a heap on the table (yes, an arranged heap) and I paid him one euro for a pack of 80s looking male nudie cards (an early christmas gift for someone) that have been scribbled on in French girly handwriting. During this exchange he notices my Obama button, and says in French, "that Obama...great guy, we sure do need change over there, but I think his discourse comes off a bit stern." I nod and I put the cards in my bag. He continues while his wife listens in: "he promises so much, and he could turn right around after all that talk once he gets elected like our president did." He squints at me, in his garage sale clothes with his garage sale wife and garage sale table, and I nod wishing half of Americans had that much insight on the candidates as this French guy did. And then I saw a terrier in an orange polyester jumpsuit, both a shirt and pants element, get away from its owner among all the garage sale tables. He trotted along, right through a man's dvds he had laid out on a mat. "Ho! Hoh!" dvd man yells to dog on the loose man. Dog on the loose man grumbles after polyester jumpsuit dog on the loose, who seems happy to be at a garage sale.

Start Spreading the News :

Zack! Have a great trip -- Bring your scuba gear, cheri amour, you never know!

As I was waiting in Toulon to take my train, I sat in a cafe for close to 3 hours killing time. I kept sneaking up to the bathroom to steal toilet paper for tissues. The third time I finished upstairs, the cafe was pretty empty, and the guys working there in white suits and ties were singing loud French songs. I walked down the stairs and heard they had started a new one: "Starrr spreddeh zeh nooooose... I leeeeeaviiiing tudday....." Oh! My soul jumped in its skin and I don't know what came over me. I was at the top of the stairs, and by the time I got to the middle of the beautifully banistered staircase, I broke into song, my arms wide out: "I want to BEEEE a PARRRRT of it! NEW YORK, NEW YORRRRRRRRRRK!" The men behind the counter polishing glasses were dumbfounded, smiling. Bravo, they clapped, a lovely voice. I am sure they were equally impressed with my perfect Midwestern American diction.

My Last Night

I spent most of yesterday finger painting with the kids. Only with brushes. So...regular painting. No one understood my abstract art.

Then we played a French card game about driving or something. I won.

So then, the kids just up and left with their mom and went to Marseille. They have a lot of time off for All Saints week and won't be back before I leave. Very sad. Antonia pulled me aside and handed me all of her marbles. She told me that it would be my responsibility to give one to every WOOFer who leaves the house when she is gone.

Last night we went to the closest town and drank at the pub. For the first time in my life, I was able to drink all of the beer in a single bar. The four of us drank maybe four beers each and the place ran out! Ridic. So then a car pulls around the corner and it's Felipe (wearing a green trench coat and smoking his pipe, he looked like some latino detective on, like, CSI Columbia or something) with Jean-Mathieu and two new WOOFers, Cyrus and Rebecca. I got up to greet them, but Cyrus ran across the road and began violently throwing up from car sickness. See Julie, if you stayed you would have found a kindered spirit.

Today I took Cyrus and Rebecca for a tour of Lutina. We checked out the pigs and the drying house and saw a crew of guys sorting their chestnuts through a machine. They brought in 2400 kilograms of chestnuts today. When I told one of the guys that we were American, he asked me (please pardon my likely incorrect spelling) est cé Obama vè gagne? Will Obama win? I said absolutely he will, and the man cheered for Obama as we walked away.

This may be my last post from Corsica. I could use a thousand clichès to sum up my time here. I could talk about the 'breath-taking' 'rolling hills' and the overwhelming mountain and ocean views that render one 'speechless.' These things exist and are likely how these types of clichès get started, but the real beauty of this place is in the simplest things: afternoon clouds rolling into the valley and the ensuing fog, the taste of fresh figs and roasted chestnuts and the stillness--the space that finds its way into the gaps between your thoughts, should you choose to let it in. An interruption of incessant mental clatter. In a word: peace.

Until I return: bonna serra, Corsica.

I was seriously worried, you guys.

Well, dear readers, I have another Of-Corsica moment for you. I was sleeping on the ferry to Toulon at four in the morning on a long couch in the lounge when the loud turning of the motor slowed, stopped. Are we here already? Mmm, ten hours on a boat sure went by quickly--gasp. It was still dark outside, no lights on shore in sight. We were in the middle of the sea. The lights in the lounge dimmed and the boat (again, another giant cruise ship) rocked. Violently. The curtains swayed as the waves outside, untethered by the motor pushing the boat, crashed one side of the Titantic, then the other. I felt nauseous and said a Hail Mary. Seriously, people. I was 89% ready to call Zack and tell him to call the proverbial embassy to make the funeral arrangments.

Savin' a Little Lovin' for Tomorrow

Zack and I ended up in Bastia, a port town, spending the night with a Corsican administrator, named Michele, whose apaprtment is neslted near the ruins of a catheral-turned-apaprtment building. Laundry on lines was strung everywhere and pipes ran together on the outside of the buildings of exposed brick and old stone. We rushed the next morning to my boat, which was cancelled (surprising? not quite), and spent the day wandering. We stood on the main round-about by the sea as traffic passed us in all directions. After a particular period of egregious romantic affection, an old man, slow and knowing, canes himself past us and says, "On en laisse un peu pour demain alors?!" (You gonna save some of that (meat/lovin') for tomorrow or what?) He walked on, cane tapping, smiling and apparently so pleased with young love.