In Defense of "Y'all": A Manifesto for the New South

The above is an article title I'd like to write. What a wonderful idea, to shed some light on the cool things in the South and not just racism, fried food, and bad grammar. Though, as always, my feelings are mixed.

Examples of mixed feelings:

France, i.e. leaving. It's pretty unbelievable that my classes will be over on Monday at 17h00. I still am glad every day that I switched out of my original grammar class with that bitch teacher and have been graciously rewarded with Mme. Liszka, the nicest of all of the CCF French professors. I am happy to be finished with class, happy to go home and be able to make friends speaking English, happy to see my family, my friends, to have 24-hour grocery stores, to take Advanced Poetry, to live at Sunset Drive, go to the south end of Wrightsville Beach in the middle of winter. But at the same time, what the hell happened to my time in France?!?! Yesterday I was whining about orientation week sucking and terrified to buy a baguette for fear of fucking up. Now I am two weeks from Amsterdam and going to Morocco in 9 days. What. The. Shit. I haven't even trudged down the Champs-Elysees yet! In so many ways I am happy to go home, mainly because I miss the love of my life (other than Annie): English.

But in fact, now that I have had many a successful conversation in French (after a few drinks, typically), I am feeling much better about my abilities to adapt to a foreign experience, not knowing the language, any people, any cultural facts or tips. French is really lovely and often, to my excitement, very sexy-sounding to people who don't speak it (most everyone on the planet, despite what the French would have you believe). So it will be good for the novelty of speaking French to people who don't speak it in order to #1 sound sexy & European and #2 understand pretentious French restaurant menus and #3 say whatever I want without anyone knowing what I'm talking about. So that's pretty wonderful. I will not miss the 30923 marriage proposals I have received in France, though sometimes a grocery store employee following you through the Simply Market saying "I love you. Beautiful. Beautiful." can be hilarious if a little creepy. The French take nothing truly seriously except their own culture, and I respect that in a country.

I'll have to tell y'all about Thanksgiving later since my host mother and I are getting ready to go to Normandy for the night and I am not packed at all! A little preview: vegetarian stuffed mushrooms, lots and lots of bourbon & Cointreau, stubborn sweet potatoes (NOT yams), and the most Lady Gaga ever listened to outside of a gay club.

Je vous aime. Bisous!

The the horizon, spreading of headscarves

The title is what happens when you try to translate French into English. Gobbledigook.

Making iTunes mixes of Bon Iver (though the song "Babys" creeps me out for more than the obvious grammatical error), TV on the Radio, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, and Phoenix and working on my final conversation assignment for my last interview tomorrow: choose 4 more poems by Leopold Senghor and analyze. The only hard part is that they're in French and the vagueness of my English translation ensures inaccuracies, though frankly as long as I can talk for about 12 minutes in French about slavery and racism and metaphors (all of these words are basically the same in French as in English, fortunately) and I can sound not completely daft then I will end up doing quite well I believe. Like last time, the first time I ever was told anything other than "wow, your French isn't actually...um...very good." Ah the joys of a shitty study abroad department that lies to you to get your money.

Other than that, things are good. Stayed up late last night writing my last cinema paper on queer French cinema since the 1980s, and while I didn't exactly get to all of the basics in 7 pages, I did do a broad analysis of representations of masculinities and desire in a couple of freaky films that I didn't actually watch, but read many an article about. I watched soccer highlights with my brothers and ate clementines and folded laundry, woke up at 8am to drink coffee and pace, trying to finish my thoughts and to chew on some dry bread for breakfast (yum), walked farther than necessary to the RER because I felt like it and spent two hours after cinema class reading, staring into space and contemplating coming home for a nap.

What I was thinking about:

#1. where the hell to find a job in Chapel Hill. I need it to be at least 20 hrs/week, so if y'all have any tips, I would prefer food service or a grocery store in the produce section. Or catering. Or fuck, freelance I-make-you-dinner-and-clean-your-kitchen-while-editing-essays. I don't care, really.

#2. Fete de la Science on Saturday. Sally and I found bagels and cheddar cheese and got stared at all the way to Porte de la Villette in the 19eme to take advantage of the free admission to the Paris science museum, where we learned about human genes, bananas, cane sugar, drinking beer in a science museum, space, technology sucking, optical illusions, and light games. And fish with voices!

#3. Morocco (2 weeks!), Normandy (this weekend!), and Amsterdam (3 weeks!)

#4. The fact that France cheated against Ireland last week. (Wikipedia will tell you all about it)

#5. The ridiculous amounts of food that I will be cooking once I regain access to my parents' kitchen in Wilmington in a month, and along with that, the fact that today marks the 75% complete mark of my journey. Class ends this Friday, exams are all next week, and the program ends December 7th, when I jet off to Marrakech (the hash capital of the world, according to my host family). Also, the amounts of food that I will be bringing to Wilmington pseudo-potlucks for the likes of Steven McQueen, Hilary, Donta, Kelsey, and Edens. I miss these 910 fools, especially those I saw last up in Boston & Philly in early July and not since.

#6. The fact that while I do not exactly consider myself homesick, my inability to have a personality not based on my blond hair and decidedly 21st century alt style of dress is really starting to get me down. People only express any interest in me because they want to sleep with me and do not hesitate to express these interests. It's just a big city thing, but I have nothing to say except "fuck off I'll kill you," and my inability to do what I do best, i.e. branch out, is really hurting my heart. Though my main bitches keep me in line for sure, along with my dreams in which every person I love in the world appears at least once to give me bisous and

#7. I want to plan my coming back to CH party. NOW. DREW MILLARD, HELP. I also want to throw a costume party to make up for Halloween.

Now I'm thinking about just watching Dexter and hitting the hay, getting up around 9:30 to finish my project for class and making pancakes. Maybe? Tomorrow night I have a date at Michel Bondurand's apartment in Montmartre for dinner with Cinema class. Very exciting.

Working on a poem tentatively titled "To James Ensor, Upon Our Second Meeting."

I leave you with some quotes:

"The thing I like best about French is that the words for 'avocado' and 'lawyer' are the same."

- A. Dietly

"I'm wearing a turtleneck. You can have all my sexy."

- A. Dietly

"Vous connaissez 'capitalisme'? Acheter? Vendre?"

- Mlle. Reverseau

"You've got to reach outside of your carnal envelope to achieve touch with a spiritual dimension."

- M. Bondurand

Bisous!

Photo Booth

Confused, doing French homework and playing with colors on Photo Booth. Whoever came up with this program is a genius.

Autre Pays

"In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?"

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Bad Romance

It's getting along to the point in the program where we start to realize that our final program date is rapidly approaching. The two-week mark of classes has been reached, finals have been brought up in every one of our courses, and final papers, presentations, and verb conjugations are looming. It's a weird feeling because my trip has about 6 weeks left, in which I will travel to another continent and then yet another! And while my excursions peek their little heads over the horizon, there are all of these "lasts" to take care of before anything will come of them. It is, of course, the case that at the very end of our time here we would discover the places where we feel the most at home, or at least welcomed. Other than sangria bar Le Dix, there has not been a spot that I have discovered that made me want to return again and again until this weekend when I, with some help and some wonderful companions, found Oberkampf, home of all of the sought-after dive bars and pseudo-sketchy artist neighborhoods where people have non-career jobs and almost everyone is in an ironic band.

Saturday Abby and I hosted a guest, Abby's much-loved roommate from Elon, Thea, visiting from Brighton (right?). We Louvre'd, got caught in the rain, walked under the Eiffel Tower, got sangria at Le Dix, took the metro to Oberkampf and explored, had Tibetan dinner (a new staple, though I can't help but think that I can cook rice better than that), and explored some more. The best time to discover a new bar isn't necessarily on a Saturday night at 23h30, but you might as well try. We found lots of people that spoke English or, my favorite, Franglais, and more even who complimented my septum ring or asked me for a rolling paper...or three, accompanied by a wink. Got drunk-ish, went home and hung out with Mathieu etc., watched Dexter until 4am, fell asleep until the next afternoon. Got up, made tomato salad, Skyped, watched French films for class, emailed (my boots are on their way!; have a host for Morocco!; hopefully will be able to convince that Comm professor to let me into his poetry performance class!).

Kicked some analytical ass in cinema on Monday (finally!) and did a bit of research for my next paper on queer French film since the 1980s, read 100 pages of "The Sportswriter" while eating clementines and listening to electronic music, did well on some French stuff. Then Abby and I bought wine and cheese and baguette and sat near the Park That Always Smells Like Weed near Notre Dame and ate it. Only got harassed once, this time by a cross-eyed fellow eating pistachios and carrying a box of Heineken. We've decided that next time that someone feels the need to stop us to creep on us, we will act like escaped mental patients until they get creeped out and leave. Works for me. Then met Caroline for a Shakespeare & Co reading, some eyeing of English-speaking boys (though my list of single girlfriends is diminishing rapidly), had some wine and then headed off to Oberkampf for another night of drinking beer and not cooking wine.

Got a pitcher at Pop-In, a cool 2-story boothed music venue (pop and "alternative," whatever that means) and chatted for a while until Caroline's two boy friends came to join us. Generally had a wonderful time, and even found a French girl's makeup purse under the table which we perused curiously.

On the way home on Line 9 (my new favorite late-night transit option) I listened to my iPod (LCD Soundsystem) and then after disembarking at Croix de Chavaux I unexpectedly started to cry, realizing that my profound knowledge of the Paris Metro at this point will be largely useless in a couple of months. I really love it here and while I miss home and my friends, it's been a wonderful several (though far too few) weeks. My god damn family being reason #1 on a long list of reasons Paris is fantastic.

A social norm note: My host father has long since asked me to call him by his first name, and therefore to switch from the "vous" form (the more formal French subject) to the "tu" form (subsequently, less formal). My host mother has not said this to me. And I, shockingly unpresumptuously, have not started to call her "tu" regardless, but continue with "Madame." This can be awkward when speaking to my host dad in a group, because I call him Joel and then as soon as Marie asks me a question I have to switch to "vous" and call her Madame. It's hard, and confusing.

Been doing a lot of watching of Lady Gaga music videos, such as "Bad Romace," "Poker Face," and "Just Dance," which has almost 87 million views! She's really something else. What's her deal? And what does she say about us as a youth culture in how we feel about her? If you're curious, I hear Drew Millard has the answers. I, personally, think it's genius. She went to Julliard for Christ's sake. The reason I like her is the same reason I like Kanye West. Pop music rules all.

Got a letter from 1870s France this morning and was very happy about that as well. The final walking tour of the semester is tomorrow, thank the lord. In the meantime, watch Miley Cyrus's "Party in the U.S.A." video and tell me it doesn't make you smile, at least from mirth and irony.

A bientot!

"I'm very much into the saloon"

Tonight there will be explorations of new recommend areas of Paris, namely the 11eme, around Bastille and a bit north up towards rue Oberkampf, where, according to my married friend in my French class, there are lots of cool and cheap dive bars. Now, everyone knows a dive bar serves primarily beer, which has become my M.O. going out here in Paris: to find decent-to-delicious beer for a decent-to-free price. Now, as I have done some research on the recommended spots, it seems as though "L'Orange Mecanique" (A Clockwork Orange, happily) has some of the best prices not only in the area, but in fact in the entire city. Though this evening will probably end up a late one, their typical happy hour (from 6-9pm) cuts prices of almost all drinks (and beers!) in two, leaving cocktails at around 3 Euros and beers at even less. Yessss.

Not much to report otherwise, other than Onze Novembre which consisted of me Sally and Abby having various adventures on Pont des Arts (where I had to get this creepy homeless guy to fuck off not once but THREE times and I ended up just yelling at him in English because that's the best way to get rid of anyone in this country), at Galeries Lafayette (talk about opulent, with the best salt displays I've ever seen!), and subsequently on the metro, through Forum des Halles, various cafes, and finally! a Mexican restaurant with the greatest tamales in the world (other than in Mexico, probably). Then we saw 2012 in a French movie theatre (my first time), which was quite an experience in itself, especially after a pitcher of margaritas and Sally's ever-so-handy flask-sized bottle of Label 5. Whenever anything amusing or impressive happened, the entire theatre would explode with shouts and applause, followed by lots of laughter. French people are almost always in a good mood and when they get irritated at something, it rarely lasts for more than a few moments. This is something I appreciate and respect and also strive to achieve myself.

My film teacher is insane, we have 2 weeks of class left, and the best part of all is that it was about 60 degrees all day today. In France in November. Thanks, global warming.

A bientot!

"J'ai coupe mon fringe"

Translation: I cut my bangs. Just another French phrase that doesn't and cannot be translated. It amuses me.

This weekend began with my headaches bothering me too much to feel like doing too much of anything and so I instead returned home Friday after class to watch Jennifer's Body (which was just as ridiculous as the girl from Copenhagen in my French class said) and stand around with my brothers talking shit. They hung out in my room with me for a while and I did Mathieu's girlfriend's makeup. She looked good with a little bit of blush. French girls have lots of brown tones in their skin and don't seem to need bronzer/blush of any kind, but just a tad looked quite fetching on her little cheek.

The four of us then walked through the neighborhood to the same house where I went with my French mom for that fashion show/party. This time, the theme was "Noches de los Muertos" and it was an art exposition with 18 different artists and we were served wine and proceeded to smoke cigarettes (the only other time I've gotten to smoke IN an art show was at the Soapbox back in Wilmington! Way to be European, y'all.) and walk around looking at the wide variety of skeletons and skulls and blood types of situations. I dug it. Being horrible at French makes those situations more personal though, and I sat at the long wooden table in the center of the room rolling cigarettes for Paco & Julien and looking at all of the awesome t-shirts with Dia de los Muertos skulls screenprinted all over them.

Jeez this blog post has taken me like 2 days gosh darn it. Saturday Abby & I went to Musee d"Orsay for some quality time with Van Gogh, Rodin, Art Nouveau, and James Ensor. The Ensor and A.N. expos were, respectively, wonderful and excellent, and I was really pleased to hear The Velvet Underground playing out of a speaker in the Art Nouveau exhibition (the section with album covers on display as examples of "psychedelic art"). The Ensor exhibit, while less elaborate than the one at MoMA, was nonetheless gorgeous and his egoism and subtle European hilarity captured in French quotations around the walls. It was wonderful to get to check out his masks and skeletons again, even though Musee d'Orsay neglected to display my favorite piece "Two Skeletons Trying to Warm Themselves." Drat!

After that, we scurried over to Chatelet to get some piercings (my septum, Abby's eyebrow) and then for some post-trauma beers before the football match in Parc des Princes at 19h00. Met up with Val and Ariana and grabbed our spots in the cheap seats with a bunch of mangy French men who tried to explain to us what to yell at the referees. Found out that stadiums sell NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER which is such a travesty and spent over an hour wondering how the game went by so fast??!! Paris-St. Germain lost 1-0 to Nice, sadly, so there was less partying than otherwise and Abby and I retreated back to Rive Gauche for some Rue St. Jacques exploring for that elusive Mexican place. Didn't find it, got pizza instead and took the metro home. Did nothing yesterday except cook a little.

The "greve," or metro workers' strike today seriously dampened my Monday, making me walk unpleasantly and unexpectedly far and have to take the (shudder) line Nine home, pressed against smelly people like it was the mass transit freak-out that will happen at the apocalypse. Bought some food to cook, had dinner with my family (Croque Monsieurs and green lettuce... it's a regular thing), watched "Mad Men," which has gotten seriously crazy, watched the news, "Deep Impact," and some tennis with my host dad and brothers, looked at photos of their trip to Morocco, and am now doing research for my last Cinema paper which will be on gay French cinema since the 1980s while cleaning my new nose ring.

Tomorrow, rien. Wednesday, 2012 and a bit of debauchery with the girls, then maybe Mexican? WHATCHY'ALLTHINK except only Sally reads this fuck you Abby for being so lazy and reading "books" instead of my "blog."

On Thursday night though, I made butter and pepper-poached salmon and a parmesan asparagus risotto for Sally, Abby, and Sally's adorable mother. A true girl's night in, we drank wine and talked about girlie things and lauded the awesome apartment right next to Place St. Michel that we want to share! H. Walker if you're reading this the apartment was like what I want to share with you in New York: tiny, big windows, ample counter space. Perfect!

I think I'll continue to talk to Drew on Skype, read "The Sportswriter," and fall asleep to "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

A bientot!

Moyen

An update tomorrow, I promise. In the meantime, new face bijou!:

Bastille, Mouffetard, Pasta, and Soccer

No offense Cours de Civilisation Francaise at the Sorbonne, but I am sick to death of you. I really like my teacher, I have learned a lot of French, I have even made a couple of nice European friends because of you! But you're still a class with a final exam on a subject that I (no offense meant to any of the wonderful French things I have discovered) don't give a shit about.

I am happy to be able to understand French and read/write/speak it not horribly, but I have never been a French language enthusiast, especially considering my horrific grades in the classes at UNC and my weekly crying spells as a stress outlet after I fail yet another French quiz. I am not really a school enthusiast either. A supporter, yes. An attendee, yes, always. But I can't say that school is really "my thing." I don't enjoy highlighting my notes, I don't enjoy studying verb tenses and making flashcards. It doesn't fulfill me. And, CCF, frankly your class time makes it difficult for me to do many of the things here in Paris that I would like to. So, between you being in French and, in fact, a class, I am tired of going to you every day and now that I have experienced the realization that no matter what, French will never ever be the language in which I write poetry or a blog post or a series of autobiographical essays. I am an English-speaker, through and through. For this, I am grateful and also very very lucky.

So, France, I love you. I really do. But as of now if an old bartender wants to flirt with me in English when I order in French, and if the man selling the baguette corrects my pronunciation and then asks me how I'm liking visiting Paris, I will not be irritated. I will, in fact, be flattered that he is nice enough to ask and impressed that he is so capable in English! I have tried, I will continue to try, but French is not the language of T.S. Eliot or Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Spanish - a whole other can of worms!) or even of Hemingway (a Parisian nonetheless!), nor is it the mother tongue of Jesse Rice-Evans. It's alright.

Saw "La Boheme" at the Opera Bastille this evening. It was wonderful. They sang in Italian (help!!!) but the show had French subtitles which I largely understood. When we first got there it was very crowded and there was some sort of constant ringing in the lobby which was giving me a migraine, which wasn't helped by the vertigo induced by the unbelievable height of our seats nor of the dreaded "group excursion." I shudder. However, it was our next-to-last group excursion and I will be going to the final one drunk because otherwise I won't be able to sit through a dinner with a group of people who I will probably never see again in my life. Much more fun after a bit of whiskey.

Abby and I explored Rue Mouffetard and Rue Monge a bit before the Opera in accordance with my Lonely Planet guidebook (merci Alejandro!). Discovered a cute pub with the aforementioned old bartender where we ordered an Irish coffee (my new favorite winter drink) and a French coffee (like the former, but with cognac - yummm). Delish.

Came home to my family watching football, so I put in a load of laundry and joined them. Now I will be reheating my dinner from last night (sausage and tomato sauce with herbs de Provence with shells), which will be especially good since it is raining again and also very cold.

Been thinking a lot about Morocco and Amsterdam. So excited to see a snake charmer, some acrobats, and a veritable shitton of delicious Mediterranean food in Marrakesh! Still need a CS host, but have high hopes.

Love you all, hope things are well in the States. I am very happy.

A bientot!

Indulgence Abounds

Working on my autobiography. Let me know if you have a preference for what you want your fictional name to be, because if you are reading this, you are a character.

Went to a French party with my dear brother Julien (see previous post for photographs) and spent most of the time playing better music than "Poker Face," the Black-Eyed Peas, and Bob Marley over and over again, like Daft Punk (obviously) and Drake ("Best I Ever Had" is now all the rage in France. Here we go again.).

Camilla from GSE poetry 2006 came to Paris on Friday night and went out with Abby and me for sangria at Le Dix (I suppose I'm on the verge of being a regular!) and then to Cafe des Artistes, where we drank Delirium Tremens until the bar closed. Then after a bit of walking and a few more drinks and unsuccessful attempts to eat garlic bread, Camilla's beautiful self had to be dropped off and Abby and I somehow walked around until the metro opened at 5h30. Then a sleepover occurred, then a day of hangover, followed by an uneventful Halloween of CSI (the original, obviously), celebrating Victor's 12th birthday, and smoking with the older brothers through Julien's window while watching our 12-year-old neighbor's band perform the Star-Spangled Banner. Funny to me that they all knew the tune and the words and I don't even really know what the national anthem of France is called. "Marseilles" something, je crois.

Then today Abby and I braved the god damned rain to attend an art show at Place de la Bastille. Very entertaining, lots of interesting paintings, and only one booth of bad Picasso rip-offs. However, the malaise of the rain and my very realistic dream of hugging my dearest friends gave me a bit of a bad start to the day and I pretty much spent hours browsing things on eBay and finishing my book/starting a new one. After dinner of chicken and green beans with my family, I watched the French news (H1N1 AHHHH!) and Skyped and now I am writing a poem about my host brothers playing soccer and yes, I am actually writing my autobiography. Really, why not?

Thx for reading.

A bientot!