Giving notice

Lately, I can’t shake the feeling that the universe is nudging me to give back somehow. Everywhere I turn I find more encouragement and inspiration to do good. I feel like I am being enlisted by the universe to figure out how I can do something big. Maybe even huge. Just me and the world, conspiring to figure out what the former can do for the latter. As my coffee cools, my inner kindling crackles merrily.

Ode to My Buns

Gluteus Maximus: one per cheek.

They power me about

They shuttle me to and fro

They see a hill, steep or stout,

Then ENGAGE and up we go.

Churning up hills

Dominating bicycle pedals

Stable cushion to sit anywhere -

Floor, chair, railing. N’importe où.

Sometimes, while walking, I…race innocent passersby

And I always win.

My stride is short, and my feet are small

But my glutes SURPASS THEM ALL!

Je peux parler, écouter, écrire, et lire.

I can now add this blurb to my list of identities:

DELF (Diplôme d’Études en Langue Française) B2
A B2 user has a degree of independence that allows her to construct arguments to defend her opinion, explain her viewpoint and negotiate. At this level, the candidate has a degree of fluency and spontaneity in regular interactions and is capable of correcting her own mistakes.

In order to earn this, I fought this battle today:

Type of tests: B2	Duration	Mark out of
Listening Comprehension questionnaires dealing with three recordings: - interview, news bulletin etc (played once) - presentation, lecture, speech, documentary, radio or television programme (played twice). Maximum duration of recordings: 8 mins	Approximately 30 minutes	/ 25
Reading Comprehension questionnaires dealing with two written documents: - text of an informational nature regarding France or the French-speaking world - text of an argumentative nature	1 h	/ 25
Writing Taking a personal stand (contributing to a debate, formal letter, review of a film/book)	1 h	/ 25
Speaking Stating and defending an opinion based on a short document designed to elicit a reaction.	Approximately 20 minutes preparation: 0 h 30	/ 25

Total duration of all tests: 2 h 30
* Total mark out of 100.
* Overall pass mark: 50/100
* Pass mark per test: 5/25

J’ai réussi. I passed. I got an 80/100. My lowest sore was 18.5/25. I am all that is woman.

This exam was supposed to be well beyond my level, and I am notorious for being a bad test taker. But oh, HAI! Look! Ecce! LOOK AT WHAT I DID! I took this exam and NAILED it to the wall like it was some innocent piece of felt waiting for me, owner of nail gun, to secure it to un mur. So I am happy to replace this with the identities of “bad test taker” and “non-risk taker” and “monolingual.”

I feel amazing. I am so proud of myself. This is a real TANGIBLE accomplishment. It always feels good to take a risk, work hard for something, and succeed. We need reminders that this formula works. Donc alors voilà – IT WORKED.

This risk-taking, test-taking magician BILINGUIST has a big month ahead of her. Stay tuned. It’s off to a formidable start.

Use your words

I went for a walk today and practiced my French alphabet. Aloud. So I looked like one of those crazy people we’ve all seen walking alone and talking to themselves. It felt just wonderful enough to make me seriously consider the possibility I am schizophrenic.

I am finding that getting my thoughts literally out of my head and into my mouth (or my fingers as the case may be) works wonders for perspective. You know how it always seems so much easier to solve everyone else’s problems than our own? Maybe that’s not an illusion. What if there is a mechanism that makes problems encountered externally (like when someone tells you something, or when you read something) easier to process and solve than those internally guarded? It would explain why hearing my own problems voiced (even by my own voice) makes them suddenly less daunting, familiar, manageable.

Yesterday’s walk featured a podcast where a woman told a story about her mother’s voice. On her deathbed, the mother told her daughter where her journals were hidden, and to find them but please not until after her passing. This woman, eager to learn more about her very private mom, obeyed this final wish and found the journals exactly as described, a whole shelf of them, each wrapped in different cloth. They were all empty.

It made me think about voice, and how we use (or don’t use) our own. How maybe we don’t always appreciate what luxuries a voice affords us. We have this tool to speak (or write, or however express) our thoughts and how often do we use it to do justice to such power?

Me (for the zillionth time): What do I want to do with my life?

Me: That is the million dollar question.

Me: Je n’ai aucune idée.

Me: I could teach…I could write…ugh, but what? I can’t write.

Me: I can’t not write.

 

Sometimes those little voices expose a flash of wisdom that cannot be uncovered until it is exposed to air. So be nice to the next lonely person you see talking to themselves.

Hark, the herald angels sing! And so do I!

Now Thanksgiving is behind us (and it was exquisite and special this year) and Noël is officially ONE MONTH AWAY, I can AT LAST listen to Christmas carols openly.

Thanksgiving in France, merci merci!

If you are celebrating Thanksgiving in the United States this year, be thankful for being able to easily find these items for your feast:

• A whole turkey: There are at least seven million poulets entières for every French citizen, and a variety of whole rabbits (fur on or off, your choice!) for sale like hamburger, but one is lucky to find a measly turkey cutlet.
• Canned pumpkin
• Chicken broth (low sodium)
• Prepared pie crusts, already in their baking tin
• A basic meat thermometer (in the 4 department stores I tried, there were at least 9 different types of “decorative” hanging thermometers in the kitchen section. Only one had a meat thermometer, and it was one of those surgical looking things that cost 20 euros. I’m not saying they want me to suffer from food poisoning, but I’m not saying they don’t, either.)
• Ovens with fahrenheit and measuring spoons and cups not in metric.

So. After you’re tucked into your table but before you’ve dug into your dinde, take a moment to be grateful for these items, for they make your feast simpler than you may realize.

I have countless much to be thankful for this year, and getting to spend a Thanksgiving in France is pretty high up on the list, cooking inconveniences included. I am delighted to be cooking for 6, 4 of whom have never given thanks the American way before. Should be exciting with a side of delicious.

Happy Thanksgiving! Bonne…Mercidonnant! (?!?! Just go with it.) Bon courage et bon chance! And of course, bon appétit!

Unfurled wings

I wanted to title this something along the lines of, “I got my wings back!” but that seemed more Clarence where I was looking for “free as a bird” as a cogent follow-up to yesterday’s post, so…I took the opportunity to use the delicious word “unfurled.” Go ahead, say it. Feel it unfurl from your tongue, which unfurls from your mouth. Just luscious.

Well anyway I know my pattern well and the past 48 hours have illustrated it to a tee. The cycle goes something like this:

A question needs to be answered or a problem needs to be solved. On its own, c’est pas grave, but it’s usually the end of a thread that pulls to many more, larger unanswered questions that really I ought to address before even attempting to look at the problem at hand andthen BOOM I am suffocated under an avalanche of combinations of variables and permutations of options. Paralyzed beyond the dry sobs that tend to convulse the rib cage and turn the whole body into a question mark.

Yes, it is totally self-destructive to render myself incapacitated just at the time I am called to make what is (at least on the surface) a simple decision.

Mais, donc alors voilà! We do not choose our neuroses! And so I must work within (actually more like outside of) the parameters of my own.

So yesterday I felt overwhelmed and blue about the month of December, and then about 2012, then about the rest of my life, then about all things great and small. Life is hard, I’m drowning in waves of emotions, I cannot bear the weight of my pitiful existence, etc. These are the times I lean on writing the most, and I lean hard. I hope my life is never judged by the content of my journals because they would paint a pretty miserable picture; after all, when I am happy and life is easy, I do not spend page after page dithering, whining, or ruminating.  My journals comprise angst-ridden pages overflowing with melodrama, judgments and reactions completely out of proportion to my life as seen through an objective lens. I realize this, and so I spill the junk into private pages rather than ears. Yesterday’s brief post was an indulgence of my angst, and those words were few compared to what I wrote with a pen.

Anyway, le sommeil (and some exercise) donne le bon conseil and this morning the storm had passed, the fog had lifted. Isolating problems and putting out the biggest fires first was suddenly manageable, and difficult tasks were methodically executed. This happy burst of productivity predictably led to feelings of Competence, Capability and Confidence. And so more problems were solved. Once again I saw that nothing is impossible.

Doubt begets fear begets misery begets crying into my journal. The doors turn inward.

Action begets action begets progress begets growth. The doors open outward.

I have illustrated to myself (for the nth time) that I am the biggest obstacle I face. But what to do next time? Is it possible to bootstrap myself out of the mope when I am in it? How can my prefrontal cortex untangle itself without its consent? One strategy to acknowledge and respect the low and ride it out, knowing I will pull it together soon. But that seems like a real luxury, because life doesn’t always wait for the weepies to finish having their way with one.

Lucky for me, it appears this time it did, and I hope I have wrested the right lesson. If not, guess I’ll just listen to this bad boy on repeat and wait for the message to sink in.

Avian biped

I feel like an ostrich of emotions today.

Head in sand.

World, please just pass on by, fluff my tailfeathers hello as you go.

Just cannot face the decisions demanding my attention. They are hard. They are the kind without a good outcome, only compromise. I turn away from one only to be confronted with another. And again, and again. And so I’ve decided to just stick my head in the sand. I don’t see the problems and so I can, for a little while at least, pretend they’ve disappeared…

International reading

I love that the “French” word for makeover is relooking.

I recently finished my first book in French, and I feel quite proud of myself. It really was a “book in French” rather than a “French book” though, as it was a translation from an English author’s original work, trouvable in the “Young Adults” section at any bookstore. But still! 482 pages all in French, partially fantasy and alternate universes and I read and UNDERSTOOD it, all en français!

Like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s I mean Philosopher’s Stone, this book was retitled The Golden Compass from the original The Northern Lights for the American market. Why? Both books are the first in their series, so getting their marketing appeal correct hopefully cascaded readers into the next releases. Snowballs and critical mass, don’t you know.

Who decides that Young American Adults will reject a novel – nay, an entire series based on the word “philosopher’s”? Or will embrace one because it has the word “golden” in it? And why does “compass,” what with its propensity for negative connotations from geometry class and camp orienteering, outdo “northern lights”? I think they should have retitled it with the French word for compass, which according to my translation is aléthiomètre, which sounds exotic.

I wonder what that publisher-author conversation sounds like. “Ms. Rowling, we have a mandate to reassert English intellectual superiority and convince Americans that they prefer magic to reasoned discourse. Plus, they like it better if they don’t think something is good for them. Pretending your little book here isn’t based on legend seems like a great start, you know, makes it a little more fun and palatable for them, like putting frosting on bran.”

After the success of the first book (and we only know about the success stories), the author has enough clout to silence such silly suggestions for future titles. I imagine both publisher and author point to the success of the first book as proof the retitling strategy is effective or unnecessary. Who can really say?

The real impact of this decision is felt when people cross-pollinate and discover maybe they both love Philip Pullman and the hood is lifted from their eyes and their whole universe is shaken when the possibility that the Aurora Borealis was actually a more central theme than the golden compass. What was originally common ground becomes yet new trenches of difference.

All this to say I think my next French book will be by a French author, originally written in French. So I can get my prose straight from the source. No title relooking, thank you very much.

My process for writing a first draft

Hunt, absorb, reflect, overflow, reflect, outline, organize, consolidate, eliminate, reflect, refine.

Different French dreams

About 6 weeks ago I was plagued with French dreams. I could hardly sleep there was such a cacophony. In these dreams, I sometimes I spoke French but mostly there were French people speaking to me and I couldn’t understand them. This is completely normal and unnoteworthy, except it was all occurring in my very own head, leading one to wonder how I could possibly produce incomprehensible dialogue by myself.  Oh, the mysteries of the brain! Apparently this is a normal phase in language learning, and despite the terrible sleep I was getting I was pretty proud of my tête. Workin’ overtime!

Since then I’ve had fairly peaceful sleep, which corresponds with a flatline in my French language progress. This too is allegedly normal, due to the “stair step” method by which on apprend une langue: Plateau while accumulating information and integrating it and stall and stall and then…ZOOM! Up to a new level all of the sudden. And so on. (She hopes.)

Last night my French dreams revisited me, but with a different flavor…one with a distinct psychoanalytic twist. This time instead of listening to French I was trying to speak it. I was trying to talk to an old man and answer his questions. He was delighted that I’d been to Prague before, and all I could say was “Deux fois.” That’s “two times” and it ain’t much as far as conversation goes. To be fair, this is about all I’m capable of doing in reality, but it sucks to be mediocre even in your dreams. In my dream, I tried to follow up this weak response by making the heritage connection, saying about the Czechs, “Ils sont mon peuple” Or something to that effect. But the guy couldn’t understand me when I pronounced “peuple.” I repeated. Blank stare. I thought I was pronouncing it okay, but reached for a synonym anyway, “Gens?” Absolutely nothing. At this point, I became so discouraged that I simply walked away in defeat from our exchange to go cry in frustration, leaving the old man alone.

I hope there is a linguistic purpose to this dream that trumps the sense of incompetence I woke up with this morning.

Asking me for directions? That’s rich.

Without a point of comparison I cannot make the following statement with complete confidence, but: I believe I am stopped and asked for help more often than other people. In my old 20-minute walk to and fro the post office, I was typically stopped by at least one person (one day by 3 separate people) for some reason or another. I don’t understand it. I don’t have a particularly open or warm regard, especially not when I am commuting somewhere by foot. My hardened, city straight face is well-practiced and designed to shut out absolutely everything and everyone, except for perhaps the occasional attractive fellow. I still don’t know what it is about me that says “Approach me, I am both willing and able to help you!” but I wish I could turn it off and on myself.

I am continually amazed by how often I am stopped and asked directions here, by real French people. On the one hand, my ego is fluffed because evidently I have the look of someone who knows what’s what and where’s where here in Tours. No clunky American sneakers or fanny-pack giving me away, no sir. On the other hand, when I inevitably have to respond that alas, “je suis desolée mais je ne sais pas,” they immediately nod knowingly and look away for help elsewhere, reading my accent as a dead giveaway of my ignorance. They’re generally right of course, but their judgment still stings.

One time, a man walking the opposite direction of me asked me where something was, en français. I didn’t understand what he was looking for, let alone where it was, but that didn’t stop me from confidently pointing the direction I had just come from and saying “C’est là bas.” He offered me a grateful and undeserved “merci,” as I turned and continued on my way with a new incentive to walk speedily. Sure, I felt terrible for potentially having led him astray (hey, it’s possible what he was looking for really was in the direction I pointed him), but I was also exhilarated by having totally faked out a French person.

If this is a battle to belong in France, surely at least one half is looking the part? As for the second, until I really have my bearings, I can always make something up and then run away…

Dwarf-Mutant Beech Trees

From The Lonely Planet – France:

“No one knows why the forests near the village of Verzy are home to 800-odd bizarrely malformed beech trees, but their presence has been documented since at least the 6th century. Scientists have determined that the phenomenon is genetic, but  hardly explains why so many of these so-called faux are to be found in the same small area (similar mutants sometimes grow elsewhere in ones and twos) – or why the vertically challenged beeches have as neighbours two dwarf-mutant oaks. One thing is certain though: the faux, whose gnarled and contorted branches droop towards the ground to form an umbrella-shaped dome, suffer in the competition for light with their nonmutant companions and need to be protected.”

Guess where I’m staying when I visit the Champagne region next month?

Before you feel too bad for these Darwinian-challenged arbres,

“Some of the mutant trees, which grow slowly and live a very long time, are fertile and can reproduce sexually, but to help nature along and ensure the survival of these botanical curiosities, experts from the University of Reims carry out in-vitro fertilisation of the trees. City-dwelling faux, transplanted from Verzy, can often be seen around France in public parks.”

Brisk

The cold is bright but the sky is not. In the east the sun is beginning its ascent into the sky. There aren’t many people up yet, but for those of us who are in the street there is a subtle sense of kinship, proven by/manifested in the way we acknowledge each other’s presence much more warmly than during the stone-faced, sidewalk-clogged commute in the evenings. Our smiles and “bonjour”s provide an extra layer of warmth against the predawn chill. It is Saturday after all, and most people are seizing the opportunity to sleep in. But not us. We love this time of day. It’s still just a blank page, and we are the ones who have woken up to consider how to fill it in.

This morning I woke up around 7:30. My headache reminded me how much wine I drank last night; oops. I could see the sky through my window, fading into dawn. I love this time of day, before everyone else is up I feel like I’m stealing time. Yesterday in class we read about one man’s “bon plaisir,” which was hunting down warm croissants early in the morning. This seemed like a fine way to spend my early morning, so I threw on some layers and headed out, ever so quietly.

Saturday morning greets me with a nip to my nostril and a bracing breeze to my face. It feels wonderful. As my legs start to move my head clears and all my senses are open for business. Wood smoke, fresh bread, dead leaves. White moon contrasted against pink sky, late-night stragglers, farmers setting up their markets. Birds chirping, cars on the auto-route getting an early start to somewhere. This is a much more effective stimulant than coffee.

This morning it was the night we jumped in the car to drive home for Christmas. The icy bite and quick transition from asleep to awake mentally resuscitated the cold and unwelcoming car that we climbed into. Thanks to heat, already prepared coffee and Christmas carols the car quickly evolved into a little oasis of life amid the black, frozen drudgery of I-95 North. The stars had that extra edge of brightness that clear coldness lends them.

Why was this morning colored the same as that cold morning? I think excitement. One doesn’t generally want to be in the middle of a cold, dark morning. But the feeling of excitement of heading home for Christmas was singular and perfect. It does not translate into quotidian matters. That I felt it today on the cusp of Saturday as I followed my nose to the freshest croissant is the real treat.

And at noon I was in Phoenix for Thanksgiving. The weak sun warming my skin but too superficial to make you entirely forget it’s November.

An excess of face time

I spend plenty of time on my computer, even though I am here in glorious France. It’s just a fact of modern life, and there it is. I have streamlined the whole process though, removing myself from myriad pointless e-mail lists and being quite selective with my regular websites to check. I’m not so extreme as to not check my e-mail, but I don’t want to spend any more time on it than strictly necessary.

Same with facebook.

<Here is where I restrain myself from delivering a diatribe about the hateful layout of that website (made exponentially worse by my low-grade netbook).>

Suffice it to say that checking facebook is a pretty painful process, and having the homepage clogged up with irrelevance slows me down. So! I am just this very moment about to embark on a facebook friend cull (FFC). I recently crested the 400 mark – maybe that is some sort of threshold? – because all of the sudden I am really seeing how much of the updates I am forced to at least glance at are not just uninteresting but things I actively do not want to read. And then I realize that those posts often come from people I would not be comfortable greeting if I were to see them in person.

Culling possessions is an important exercise to do when traveling. And now we can add a new age twist to that same wisdom.