Pour some sugar on Sara

Ouch.

2011-05-06T01:47:00.000-07:00

When you are used to something, it doesn't precisely stop hurting, but the pain is less of a surprise. I was talking to a friend who suffers from migraines, and she was explaining her symptoms to me. She told me that the worst part of migraines was dreading the next attack.

As soon as one is over, you cannot stop wondering when you will be in pain again.
At the moment, I feel that I am coping with events. My mother's cancer has been removed, she is undergoing radiotherapy. My father's chronic illness and perpetual hospital hopping. My own mood swings. Ok, so I still spend too much money, I still fuck up, I still feel that it's so OVERWHELMING. But most of the time, I'm used to it.

Lately though, I feel like spring. I feel like an excited, crazy person. The sadness feels like a burden, like an annoyance. I want to run away and board a ship, I want to run another marathon until all the voices shut up, I want to hug a stranger, I want to write a song, I want my sister back, I want to wear braids and floaty white dresses, and I want to be free.

What I have been doing

2011-05-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hi there! Wondering why I have been so quiet, apart from the major health problems in my family?

I've been co-directing this book!

This is an English book for 6th graders. It will be on the internet as well. The company I'm working for is a startup, so there was a huge amount of pressure on me to get this thing right. If this project goes down, it could mean jeopardizing the company.

It's going to the printer's on Monday. I hope it's good. And not only because I'm being paid by the sale.

I have a lot of anecdotes about my job, but I promised to myself I would wait until this was over so I would not be breaching any confidentiality agreement.

I need to finish up all the edits and write a 100 page project summary this weekend, as well as finishing my two finals for school, and then I will be done for the year, pretty much.

42,2 KM=26 miles=tired

2011-04-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I ran my first marathon. It was in Marseille, a really pretty Mediterranean city.

It took five hours, about 5 liters of water, 3 oranges and 2 bananas on the way, a lot of cheering from nice Southern people, and a crippling fear of disappointing myself even bigger than the fear of actually crippling myself for life. I did think about it. Will I be a cripple for life? And then I thought that this could not happen to me. Or maybe it has. I can't walk at all. I have the strangest gait.

Four things gleaned from yesterday:

-Buy magic anti-rubbing creme! The ad said "great to prevent bleeding nipples" and you have to admit no one wants bleeding nipples. Except if they were weird desserts from France, where we can enjoy the "Nigger in his Shirt" and other non-PC delicacies. Even so, bleeding nipples!

-Become friends with innocent bystanders. I jumped on the mild-mannered person having breakfast next to me, and he squired me to the marathon start, helped me during the race and was ADORABLE.

-Eat like an ox the week before. Fun and useful!

-Forget music for running, my podcasts on mental disorders worked fine.

I feel terrible and a bit silly, I HOPE I WILL SOON BE PROUD AND BOAST OF A FIVE-HOUR MARATHON.

I just did, though.

Immigrant

2011-04-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

My mother is the first French person in my family. She was born in France, studied in France, works in France. She pays money each month for retirement funds and social security and public policies.

My father is British.

My sister and I have "double nationality", but I think she as well as I would admit that we don't feel British at all, in the usual meaning of the word. We must have spent less than a month there if you add up our short visits. We never talk to our British relatives. Although I believe J would gladly live in America for the rest of her life, she is French.

So am I.

But not entirely. We speak English at home, albeit with a French accent in my case. We don't follow French traditions to the letter. My grandmother, who was half-American, half-Spanish, used to tell me she felt "European". My grandfather was half-Egyptian, half-Belgian, and died in London. Tricky thing, identity.

In France we are approaching our presidential elections, and never have battles about Islam and society, Immigration and jobs raged more violently. I know that I have preferential treatment compared with other second generation French people. I look European. My French is good. That helps to "integrate".

I am dreading the heightened racism, the insults, the dirty politics that await us here in France. Maybe because my father is an immigrant, and my mother the daughter of immigrants.

Spring musings

2011-04-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

SPRING! Girls wearing skirts...Men in short-sleeved shirts. Hay fever.

PLans are being made here. My sister, after kicking ass at her senior year concert, is about to graduate and I'll be spending a weekend in America in the vicinity of Boston! Yes! Tired! Already! The book I'm editing and directing and co-writing will be done by then, I'll have done my finals, and in 4 months I'll be a researching and teaching professor.

I'm almost not a student anymore.

Other fun plans: buying an apartment...travelling to Mexico with my boyfriend...getting my sister back for at least two years before she shoves off to grad school...It's going to be nice.

About reading people's correspondance

2011-04-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

My mother can't carry things. She can't cut, slice or dice; she can't do anything that could get her arm infected, since her operation removed lymph nodes as well as her breast. So now that she's organizing major remodelling in our Paris apartment, I've pitched in a little. We have a second floor which is half a very beautiful room, which used to be mine but will soon be my sister's since I'm moving to Lyon soon, and a large workshop where an artist friend of my mother's used to work. Now this space will be converted into a guest bathroom, bedroom, living room and the terrace will be refurbished as well. It's exciting to say the least, and I know my mother gets a lot of comfort out of the idea she is turning a new leaf after her parents' death.

Now a lot of this workshop was used to store shit. There is no other words. Piles, and piles, and piles of books we don't read or haven't reread in years (I'm talking in the hundreds here), dusty carpets and my father's stuff from the year my parents moved into this apartment together, in 1988. Yes, he hasn't opened these boxes in more than 20 years. Since he is still in the hospital, my mother and I decided to go through it so the workers could do the work next week.

My father is "an old father", being fifteen years older than my mother, and I haven't known him for most of his life. I'm always surprised when I see pictures of the young, handsome English chap and compare them mentally to the broken-down invalid I visit twice a week. I know they are the same person. It just doesn't feel that way.

Seeing all the boxes on the floor, all his life, now restricted to a hospital room, made me very sad. And when my mother started reading his private correspondance and getting angry at what she was finding, I was very depressed as well.

I don't like thinking about my things being opened after I'm gone, whether to the hospital or dead. I'm thinking about entrusting my web codes to a good friend so she can erase every account, every mail, every blog post. I never want my parents, family or friends to discover the random annoyance I may have felt at some point, the rants, the anger, the pissiness. People get on our nerves without negating the love we have for them.

Sometimes I'm at my boyfriend's apartment, and he's left his computer on. I could log on to Firefox and read his gmail account. Does he write about me sometimes? Does he complain? I read my ex's diary when I was convinced he was cheating on me and I regret this deeply. Not only did I violate his privacy, nothing I learned in there help me process the breakup or even his new relationship. All I read was bitterness, which is not illogical since the fellow was falling out of love with me and having to bear my unhappiness through cohabitation.

I can't lie. It can be tempting. But I won't.

We'll have fun

2011-03-16T02:13:00.000-07:00

I love this picture of my grandparents during their honeymoon. They look so young, carefree and beautiful.

Now that they are dead the family is trying to find a new way, to regroup, to celebrate christmas differently, to be happy.

I miss them.

Rom Com

2011-02-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

I have a tradition, when my father goes to his usual hospital: I donate blood to the blood bank. It's there, I usually have to wait three quarters of an hour while he is prodded/massaged/scanned/tested, so it's not a huge thing, just a habit. Every three months, I give blood. It's not the most agreable thing in the world, but it's hardly painful, and it strikes me as so laughably easy to help others in this way...Just lie down, hold out your arm, and then go eat cakes and drink from juice boxes.

Anyway I went this afternoon. Last time my blood pressure was too low, so they wouldn't let me donate, but this time I was fine, so I went in and just talked to the ladies in the donor's room while the nurse set me up. We were all people with this kind of routine apparently, people who go to the hospital twice or three times a week, who know all the nurses and doctors and who have what we think of as a secret hospital life.

It feels like limbo: the hospital is airport-loungy in atmosphere. Potted palm trees, people pushing carts or drips, people taking cigarette breaks outside.

The nurse came to bandage my arm and gave me a juice box. The nice neighbour I had been chatting to giggled when I asked her if she came here often:
"That sounds like a terrible pickup line. We should write a romantic comedy about people meeting at a hospital when they give blood."
"Or while donating organs."
"Or while waking up from an anesthetic."
"Groggy love"
"Yes, that sounds amazing."

We shared bits of our secret hospital lives.

It was nice.

Hospitals blow

2011-02-14T01:15:00.001-08:00

My mother was dreading chemo.
I had forbidden her to read online forums, because I am WAY too used to the rather depressing state of mind they can elicite in you. She read them anyway, and everyday brought a new tale of woe from anonymous 36 on the WORST CANCER STORY website.

We didn't even know what kind of treatment she was going to undertake, and I already knew more about chemo side-effects than others, since I saw both my grandparents go through with it.

My mother called me up elated on Friday. The biopsy was OK, and the doctors saw that the tumor was unresponsive to chemo, so they are going to go with an operation and then radiotherapy. My mother told me gleefully that her tumor was just like her.
"UH?"
"Well, it doesn't want to do chemo."
"OK."
"Also it likes drastic measures."
"Right."
"This tumor is just like me."

My father had a really bad spell a few days ago and had to be hospitalized in intensive care again. I'm going to see the doctors today during my lunch break, but reports differ: some people tell me he's doing oK, others seem to think he is very weak. Tracheotomy is an option. Anyway, my mother was telling me about her operation, which is in two weeks, and will require a lot of after-care. A nurse will help me at home, but it will be a lot of cooking, hand-holding etc. I have planned to have family and friends help, but still.

My mother and I chat together, thinking about how it will work out. Then she thoughtfully says:
"I do hope your father won't get worse and worse while I'm recuperating post-op. Then what will you do?"

I still miss my sister a lot. It would be so much funnier to have her around, since she is funny funny .

I may start reading forums for people who hate hospitals.

Overloaded

2011-02-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

I looked around the classroom. The teacher was still talking about the Millenium Goals to beat poverty. The students were scratching away on their note pads, or as it happens more often, compulsively checking their Facebook page on their Macbooks. I felt very, very far away.

That is the thing with so-called new technologies. You always want to be somewhere else, on another Firefox tab, texting someone new, escaping into another playlist.

This Saturday, I was running with the cross country team. We wanted to run 10 miles. So we did. We had to keep together. I realized how seldom I spend hours with people. Meetings between two work meetings, hurried lunches, drinks. Those take an hour. Running for miles means talking or listening to other people, no escape, unless you decide to run a bit faster and make everyone breathless.

Running means you have to focus. On the pain in your legs, the slight wheezing I get from asthma, so you never overreach yourself. This is also something I don't do enough of: the quiet assessment of my body's thresholds.

My mother sometimes talks about cancer being an opportunity to slow down and block out "the noise". This would be people ringing at home all the time. Yes, I am the human answering machine.

Have you noticed people always say "the noise"?

What's your noise?

The twisted road

2011-02-01T22:23:00.000-08:00

I was finding it hard to write here. My computer got hauled off to undergo repairs. I'm trying to find a way to get my father in a retirement home, against his will pretty much, which does not make you feel like daughter of the year. I would look at my last entries: death, depression. It would make me say that as soon as I had something funny to write, I would do it. But I realize I have to make a habit of it. Because the strange turn of events making 2010/2011 a bad, bad time for my family has just continued impressing me with its motivational anger.

My mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. DISCLAIMER: It's breast cancer, the most easily taken care of cancer, she's in good hands, it seems that she is OK, it's going to be chemo and an operation and all that, but the doctors have so far been optimistic and kind.

I'm so scared of not being up to the challenge. I sometimes resent the fact my father is always at the hospital or sick. I look at him and think that I want to be alone, not talk to him and have to watch him so diminished. Now my mother is going to be weakened and exhausted and I'm afraid of resenting it in the same way.

Also I feel so guilty all the time. Guilty that I'm trying to put my father in a retirement home because it is hard to care for him, but also because I have so much work and a part of me can just forget. Yes, both my grandparents died in the last six months, my father is still in the hospital and my mother has cancer, but in the end, I think I could get into the mindspace that this is normal. After all, I'm used to being worried.

The worst part of all is thinking about my sister. J and I are incredibly close. We have our own lives, but when things go bad we immediately start working together.
J is in America, miles away, and has to "enjoy" her last college semester while scouting for jobs, knowing that everyone is sick at home...And yet I want to rely on her. I want her support too.

This to say that I have given up on writing when things go well at the moment. This place is a shelter for me, and I need to accept that life can go twisted and dark, and that it doesn't make my blog "boring".

So we all go down the twisted road. I hope I'm a good traveller.

Rest in peace

2011-01-03T02:00:00.000-08:00

My grandfather died yesterday, almost exactly six months after my grandmother, his ex-wife.

Obituaries to write, a funeral in Holland to organize, Ave Maria to rehearse before the ceremony takes place.

So much to do, so little time to think. It's been a good year and a hard one, a beautiful time and a painful one. I feel ready to turn a new leaf and take time to grieve.

I wish everybody a wonderful 2011, with all my love.

Writing a book is hard

2010-12-02T04:48:00.000-08:00

Thank you everyone for the lovely messages and support.

You are wonderful.

I'm currently working for a fledging company that publishes school books and co-directing the English book for beginners. This is complicated because 1° I didn't learn English at school and 2° working is complicated and 3°I'm working for very bureaucratic people and I'm a bohemian freelancer who needs hours off to help tidy up apartments, empty houses and other fun tasks.

My partner is called F, and he is sweet, befuddled and very, very clever. He is learning Persian and spends his time comparing English to Persian (NO) and telling me amusing adventures of his youth. I like him. It's fun going to his apartment and working on the book, imagining the drawings and the dialogues and which accent to pick, AMerican or British? And which American? Which British? Lots of questions like that. It's great.

When we first met, he shook my hand, pecked my cheek and told me earnestly :"Don't fall for me, because I'm tired of girls falling for me." If you had told me I would come to be very fond of him then, I would have rolled my eyes.
But I am very fond of him. He's such an old romantic, always falling for the wrong guy, always depressed about love, and then incredibly perky and stimulating.

I'm very grateful to him for bearing up with my moods.

Can't wait to finish our preliminary work. How fun will it be to see the finished product!

Still looking for a title. It seems that every thing is taken: Connect, Listen up, New Springs, Apple Pie, Enjoy, Teamwork, Borders, New Borders, Discover...

If anyone has a snazzy suggestion, I'll send you delicious French sausage. Now if that isn't tempting...

Watching

2010-12-01T07:30:00.000-08:00

This is the time for contemplation. After my grandmother's death in July, my grandfather took a turn for the worst and called my mother up yesterday to tell her he was dying and had only a few weeks left.

I watch my mother cry on the phone, feeling helpless and bruised and lost.

I watch the world, a little slowly, retreating inside myself.

I'm still here, on the sidelines. I feel like asking for help, but I realize I can only help myself; that when my sister comes home for the holidays, the person who knows me best will be there, understand. No need to talk.

Snow everywhere.

I feel frozen.

Being yourself

2010-11-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

I hate that sentence. Aren't we all a dozen different people every day? Aren't we all bits and pieces and experiences and unexpected reactions?

I'm not doing so well at being myself at the moment. I feel like I'm too tired to make the effort. Yes, I am a well-oiled machine: I have my social niceties, and my small talk, and even some ammunition for the big, difficult topics of life.

I'm tired. I'm afraid that I can't be happy right now because I don't feel the bounce. I want to be. But I'm just exhausted. Can we wait for a few months? Can you let me sleep this bad moment off? Then I will be Sara again, or at any rate the Sara I can be when social and active.

Phi Beta Kappa

2010-10-31T00:20:00.000-07:00

Now I'm not good about American Universities slang, or lingo, or whatever you might call it. So when my sister called yesterday to tell me she was invited to her college's Phi Beta Kappa society in the fall of her senior year, this did not ring any bells. In fact, I thought she meant she was entering a sorority, although that also made no sense since her college has no sororities.

My mother, currently with me in Berlin, seemed to know and was incredibly proud. I resolved to google after dinner.

So I did.

You get a golden key! I'm not sure why! But it's amazing.

I may burst with pride.

Ubuntu 4 ever

2010-10-28T11:46:00.000-07:00
In France we don't have geeks. Geeks are that quintessential American creation. Sure, we have computer engineers, physicists, mathmos with an intense manga obsession, but we don't think of them as geeks.

My first ever boyfriend was a geek. He liked writing computer programs at a time when we didn't have broadband internet at home. I then befriended a World of Warcraft fan who let me watch him plan world domination and organise druidic poetry competitions. But X was in so many ways (video games aside) the perfect geek. He is a chemist with an unhealthy love of lolcats, a collection of punning tshirts, and can spend hours fiddling with Linux; oh, I got him hooked on Battlestar Galactica. He switched my computer from Windows to Ubuntu back to Windows. It never did recover!

He would hate being called a geek.

But he is.

So now that my boyfriend has introduced me to the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, I am obsessed. It's clichéd and predictable, but it reminds me of all the wonderful geeks I've known in my life. The ones who pull all-nighters to join their American guild and live a jetlagged elf life, the ones who discuss how many microwave ovens you would need to power a jet engine, the ones who read comic books, and of course, all the wonderful computer obsessed people out there.

Because the truth is, we all spend ridiculous amounts of time online, but these guys actually KNOW what they are doing.

Here's to all the geeks who have let me use their science and enjoy their company.

SURPRISE

2010-10-27T22:41:00.000-07:00
I'm coming home on Tuesday and have packed nothing, prepared nothing, have to find gifts for everyone, write cards, welcome my mother, clean the apartment. I have made a list, which depresses the hell out of me, so I ignore it zealously.

Well, on Wednesday I was supposed to have dinner with my boyfriend for the first time in more than a month.

And then I got an email in my inbox.

"Let's all celebrate Sara's return to Paris on Wednesday evening!".

A class friend sent this email to about thirty people.

I can't really express how stunned I am. All I can hear is my sister's voice lovingly and sarcastically saying that I've become Miss Popular. YES I HAVE J!
Well, most of the people invited to this thing don't like me, so I suppose I'm not Miss Popular, but Miss Good Excuse To Get Drunk. And that works for me.

I called AD to tell him our plans were cancelled due to my huge and out-of-control fandom.
We are having breakfast together instead. Meal of Kings.
Oh, and I'm getting a set of keys to his place.

THE LIST THE LIST THE LIST is taunting me. If you think this post makes no sense, wait until Monday sets in.

TEDIOUS RANT

2010-10-19T15:57:00.000-07:00
One of my colleagues doesn't like risotto...doesn't listen to any type of music...has been in Berlin for a year and hasn't visited a museum...thinks men should be "manly" and women should earn less so as to not scare prospective suitors away...is worried that she is putting on weight and keeps talking about it, no matter how much you tell her to relax...

It's hard.

I think I'm not very tolerant because I so often want to brain her. It's because I'm a snob, right? The fact that she thinks Twilight is the most romantic book ever should not arouse any wrath, or should it?

Berlin is a city with three major opera houses, a million art galleries, lots and lots of beautiful streets, great theatres, innovative design. This is a place where things are happening on a large scale. And she could be living in the middle of nowhere. It's such a waste!

I'm a snob.

OK, what about this? She's going off for a six-month sabbatical with her BF to the other end of the world in 8 weeks and she hasn't cracked open a guide book? How can you be so passive?

I'm intolerant.

But she is driving me crazy and WHERE CAN I VENT? Not at the office because the sole topic is how often a week is too much argh argh don't want to go to work tomorrow.

I'll settle for this. Don't talk during the entire day. And I won't rant anymore.

Yeah.

The Depression Whisperer

2010-10-10T10:46:00.000-07:00
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I'm going to say Macbeth suffered from depression. Just a hunch.

I'm one of those people. Tell me you've been having problems, family problems, work problems, any problems, and I will lean over intently, gaze into your eyes and say:
"You're probably depressed."

I am a shameless arm-chair diagnostician and my friends, I WILL DIAGNOSE YOU WITH DEPRESSION.

October is National Depression Awareness Month (Poor October: Breast Cancer AND Depression). Sara is National Depression Awareness Blatherer. Anyone unlucky enough to cross my path will get a lecture on the topic.

Why do I do this? Apart from adoring the sound of my own voice?

Because I believe this is still a taboo topic.

Depression is not cured by "a nice long walk". Depression does not mean you are lazy. Depression does not mean you are a failure. Depression is a mental illness that can make you lose your family, your friends, your job and ultimately your life.

However I also believe we can fight against it. We can decide to get better. Don't get me wrong, it is a long, difficult decision to make, and people in the throes of depression are often not in a state to accept those efforts.

Yet there are therapies. There are ways.

Watch the people around you. Do you know someone who has been unhappy for a long time? Withdrawing into themselves? Do you know someone who is no longer themselves, for lack of a better word? It could be a midlife crisis, could be a bad patch, but if it is depression, what do we have to lose by asking that person how we can help, if they are in need of comfort, or advice.

It is hard to reach out to depressed people. They don't want your help. They want to die.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

To anyone who stumbles accross this message, if you feel you are depressed, please see a doctor. Please talk to someone. It's so hard to do this alone.

I have been greatly helped by people sharing their testimonies and stories with me throughout my own battle with this disease. If anyone should want to talk to me, please do not hesitate to do so.

Depression can happen to anyone.

But I promise: you can get out of it.

3 is the loneliest number

2010-09-30T10:35:00.000-07:00
Three.

Three often means two plus one.

I have two friends I met my first year of "junior high" for lack of a better word, when I was ten. We remained in the same class until I was 15, and then they both went towards economics and then prepared the entrance exam for business school, and I went towards literature.

French school system.

I was not a very gregarious child, and had very few friends. My dream, from the age of 10 onwards, was to be someone's best friend. In that internet-less age, best friends called each other every evening on the house phone, and annoyed their parents expecting calls. Best friends had sleep-overs. Best friends could bond against the world.

This never really happened for me. Like the booty call who hopes against all odds that he/she will become the official partner, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my potential best friend-making moves. Should I be funnier? Should I have cuter clothes?

When I finally got close friends, it never felt that I was the one. My two closest friends and I formed a trio, an uncomfortable one at times. I will never forget a trip to Vienna where I felt completely left out and cried myself to sleep every night. I was a very immature 17.

I don't know why the moniker best friend was so important to me. Now I have many friends, all important for me, all wonderful, and I laugh at my past self for having set so much store on a label. How insecure. How silly. No one can be everything to someone.

Now my two oldest friends are going back to school together. Like when we were 15, they will be laughing about teachers, sharing in-jokes about fellow students, spending hours in the same classroom. I suddenly realised this a few days ago and thought "How nice for them."
Then I thought "Damn it. 2+ 1 AGAIN?"

And I call myself an adult.

The Perv leaves

2010-09-28T00:04:00.000-07:00
My pervy co-worker is leaving today, after a small office party. This is the man who 1° always makes terribly lewd jokes I don't understand in my general direction.
2° squeezes, strokes and squishels his female collegues as a jest.
3°once cornered me in an elevator and playfully grabbed my bottom.

Now he is going away for good.

"Slap him", says my boyfriend. "Let him get drunk at his own party, make bad jokes, and when he tries to touch you or anyone else, slap him."

"Throw a drink on him."

"Tell him his behaviour is unacceptable."

I think I will talk to him. Tell him it's not funny when you don't understand the language perfectly. That it's awkward when you're an intern and he works there. And more than that, that touching people without their consent is appalling behaviour.

My French colleague told me with a Gallic shrug: "Let's hope for him he never works in America."

Yes indeed.

raining all the time

2010-09-26T23:40:00.000-07:00
Don't know why
There's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain't together
Keeps raining all the time...

I love that song, especially sung by Lena Horne.

RAIN RAIN RAIN.

Random news and bits and pieces:

Only 5 weeks left in Berlin then I'm going back home...It went by really fast. Now I have guests every weekend, will try to keep up with my friendships here and a lot of lobbying work to do. We shall see.

Planning to spend NYE in Venice. I never celebrate NYE, being so stuffed at Christmas I need a week to recover from indigestion. My grandmother was always the soul of Christmas for me, so this year should be very different, and quite sad. Maybe I should start celebrating NYE!

My grandfather is not doing well at all. My mother is not sure he will still be with us in November, but if he is, I will probably go to London to help take care of him or do daily visits at the hospital. I hope I will see him. I have great affection for him.

I'm looking for good American fiction to read, can anyone recommend something contemporary?

And with this, I go forth through the rain.

Changes

2010-09-25T00:12:00.000-07:00
I'm not an adventurous person. My idea of the perfect evening is a good book, some lapsang souchang tea, and maybe a cat purring somewhere in the house. But I have some adventurous sides. I like travelling, I like meeting new people in strange circumstances, and discovering new things.

This clumsy introduction to say: I sometimes surprise myself by doing out of character things.

Almost ten months ago, still shaky from my breakup, I asked a man for his number at a party and called him the next day. Subtle! None of the usual rules we are taught to apply in the seduction game counted then, because I was not after a relationship, just what we call in French an "aventure", a fling. I went for it with careless energy, not wondering if he thought I was crazy or weird, or investing huge amounts of emotion in our dealings. In retrospect, this probably explains why we got along so well from the start. Neither of us was pretending to be someone we were not. It saves time down the line.

Now of course we are going towards...something else. We have plans. He is cautious and commitment-phobish, and to a certain extent so am I. I don't want to move in with him, I am certainly not planning my life around him, but still. We have plans. Plans to spend New Year together. Plans when I come back from Berlin in November. Little plans, like making reservations in a nice restaurant to celebrate my academic success, and bigger plans, like vacations.

I don't feel secure with him. He keeps the distance, always, and I do too, in other ways. It's not safe and nurturing. It's something else. And I trust him more and more, with my feelings and with myself.

I never thought I would be happy in a relationship like this.

Maybe I am less needy, less insecure and less annoying.

But as my sister would laughingly point out, still a serial monogamist!

A diamond as big as the Ritz

2010-09-23T11:53:00.001-07:00

An old picture of me which is the closest I can get to the EAT PRAY LOVE look. The "I look so natural and free-spirited! When in fact I took hours to find this flattering angle!"

Last night I was tired after work and decided to go see a shitty movie. That movie turned out to be Eat Pray Love. I had listened to the book while running and not really gotten into the whole ~~guru-following, yoga-practicing balooney~~ idea that spirituality was something you could wilfully acquire. Anyway, I just wanted to see Javier Bardem and James Franco.
It turned out to be the film première, and to celebrate it, some German magazine called HAPPY had organised for glasses of sparkly wine to be distributed around. All the women in the theatre were rather tipsy then, and giggled extremely loudly. I struck up a conversation with my two neighbours, who were speaking bad French to each other, and we quickly decided that we liked each other. Funny how that works.

So the movie was very depressing. BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES...JULIA ROBERTS AND HER GIGANTIC MOUTH...Finally some Javier Bardem.

The story of Liz Gilbert is supremely relatable. I suffer from depression, I know almost no one who hasn't felt trapped in their lives at least once, this is good material. I may hate the mumbo jumbo of the ashram episode, but I could certainly respond to her other themes. Food is my antidepressant of choice...

When I left the movie house, I felt very unhappy. Vividly unhappy for the first time in months. I simply did not want to go home. Going home meant going to sleep, and that meant coming closer to waking up and going to work. I decided to drink a cocktail at the Ritz.

The Ritz Hotel in Berlin is right behind the Sony Centre and Potsdamer Platz, formerly known as No Man's Land. It's now a land of hotels and office space. I swept inside and ordered a Virgin Berlin. My bike was waiting outside and I don't drink and drive...

It was a perfectly soothing experience. Lavish, extravagant, dumb. Sipping my 11 Euro cocktail, I sank into the thick leather bar stool. I think I waited for an hour for my melancholy to go away.

Years ago my sister and I would sometimes dine with our grandfather at the Ritz for Christmas. We would wear our nicest clothes and people watch: older men with ravishing young women, plastically enhanced bimbos, and the occasional family treat scene, like us.

I miss my sister so much. Sipping my Virgin Berlin, trying not to go home, feeling low, I thought of her in America, and felt strangely comforted.

I rode home gently, feeling at peace.

~~A wonderful spiritual experience~~ A nice drink in a nice bar is sometimes all it takes.

Where I am

2010-09-13T15:00:00.000-07:00
Some days I wake up and I can't remember where I am. Last weekend I was in Munich, this week I'm flying to France, to do my presentation on my thesis in Lyon, then going back to Paris for a couple of days. It's going fast. I'm sorry I've been in limbo these past weeks, but I was never quite sure where I was. I wanted to write about the funny things that happen to me all the time here in Germany, but I felt sad and withdrawn; I didn't want to write about this sadness because it will pass, and it hurt to think about it too much. Many people in my family are not well, many things worry me, and I like this blog to be not only doom and gloom, although it often is melodramatic, as befits a Frenchwoman who talks with her hands.

Crossroads. I am deciding my professional future/ do I want to be an academic, with all the freedom that entails? Do I prefer working for a private company and make money, or at least, more? Do I want a quiet life or a busy one?

Where am I?

I wish I could say answers are coming in fast and steady, but it all feels confusing and hard to me. I like permanency, and everybody is changing. Things are moving without me. I want to be able to hold on to a sense of self, of place. I want to wake up and know where I am.

Overdramatic...as usual.

The easiest thing in the world sometimes is just to feel. The warm yield of an apple crumble, the sweetness of grass under my back as I fall asleep, drinking in the last days of summer, the soft skin inside my boyfriend's wrists when we hold hands. These things are easy. These things are now, and gone as soon as they are felt, and no questions needed.

Why isn't it enough, I wonder.

The things we miss

2010-08-25T22:33:00.000-07:00
My grandfather is dying. He has cancer, it's spread, and his doctors say we have to wait to give him palliative treatments because he doesn't feel enough pain yet. My twisted sense of humor loves that sentence. My mother is nursing him for a couple of days. I can go to London in November during my holiday, but who knows if he will still be living at home then?

Nice summer.

I feel like calling people up and boring them with my sadness, but instead I bore my sister who is contractually obligated to listen to my moans. I feel like not going to work this morning. Stay in bed and eat crackers. Except I am still running a fever so this could be stupid.

I don't experience a lot of homesickness here in Berlin. I miss people...But I love living here. Yet these past few days I realise that I want to help out my mother, who after losing her mother is watching her father deteriorate every day. Nothing I can do for the moment. Except listen to her.

I'm grieving for my grandmother too. It's a summer of loss, but also a summer of fun, of meeting people, of dancing and of happiness.

It's never black or white.

So it really has been a nice summer. As well. As well as being a horrible one.

And I seem to have no more crackers left.

Salsa makes everything better

2010-08-19T12:55:00.001-07:00
"WHO CARES HOW BAD YOU ARE. Life is too short to watch the others shake their hips while you get drunk on the side because you're shy."

Our salsa teacher is wonderful.

And I totally agree. The most satisfying moments of my life came when I decided not to care how bad I was at something and just enjoyed how I felt, how I moved, how I danced.

Letting go

2010-08-18T10:27:00.000-07:00
I still have bursts of anger. They come without warning. I'm enjoying a cup of tea, reading a book (today, a hilarious tome debunking homeotherapy) and I just get this ball of churning anger inside me. I get angry so rarely that it's always a (disagreable) surprise when it occurs. I want to punch a wall. I want to smash windows. I want to punish people who get away with being horrible to others. As you can imagine, reading the newspaper is not advisable when I'm in this state.

I have several theories on why I get so angry. My hatred of confrontation makes me repress a lot of feelings. I suffer from depression and when I crawl out of it, anger is usually my first emotion, maybe because it's the opposite of depressive lethargy.

None of this really matters, except that I never know how to let go. I've tried breaking things, but this is only a very short-term solution. I've tried getting angry in front of people, but usually burst into tears, undermining the whole effect. I've tried writing long, psychotic letters or mails I don't send, but their baleful presence in my Draft box makes me feel terrible: small blobs of quivering irrationality, there, reminding me that I have lost my temper.

Running works sometimes. I also talk loudly to my imaginary target. This can get weird. I have no long term solution.

ANGER. I get so angry sometimes; I dream that I am a vigilante superhero and that I can find people and scare the stuffing out of them. Pf course, in these dreams I also ride a dinosaur to work. We're talking heavy realism, here.

If I ever get my hands on a decent superhero outfit, I may well do just that.

Office meltdown

2010-08-17T14:07:00.000-07:00
I like my Kolleagues but lack of sleep + rain-induced headache= irritation.

I am so tired of the baby talk. All the time. Between the moans that they will never be "a young mother" because they are 25, and that having kids at 30 means you are an old mother (thus depriving your child of precious time in your company), I am thoroughly bored.

THEY JUDGE ME. All the time. Because I get annoyed when they go on and on about how old parents are terrible. "If your father were younger he wouldn't be sick and burden you."
Hmmm...perceptive and kind comment!

Because I say having children isn't fun all the time:
"You are so negative." No. I just think we shouldn't idealise motherhood and say it is a bed of roses 24/7. And yes, I find newborns boring. No, I won't apologise.

They keep making comments like "careers are less important than children."
To whom? To you? To me? Can't we agree that everyone is different? You know what? Maybe if men pulled their weight, if governments made paternal leave compulsory, there wouldn't be any discrimination against women of child-bearing age in the workplace! Let's talk about that instead of moralising.

I know I'm tired and cranky. I shouldn't bite their noses off, because they are sweet and helpful and bear with me, thus deserving a medal.

Note that I bore them quite as much: today's book was a historical essay on code-breaking and the submarine battles during the Second World War. I talked and bored.

Cool topic though.

Split identity

2010-08-16T22:04:00.001-07:00
I'm reading a wonderful book for history nerds, called Masculinity and the middle-class Home in Victorian England. Part of why this book is so much fun is that the anxiety linked to the place of man in his family, his role as father and husband and his socio-economic rights is still very much a topic of thought and controversy.

I could quote the entire book, from the description of marital tasks, sexual mores and club culture in 19th century England, but this passage held particular meaning for me.

"The more alienating the employment, the greater the tendency to conduct life in separate compartments. The classic literary expression of this split comes in William Hale White's autobiographical novel, which draws on his own experience as a junior employee at Somerset House in the 1850s.

I cut off my office life from my life at home so completely that I was two selves. I was a great comfort to me to think the moment the clock struck seven that my second self died, and that my first self suffered nothing by having anything to do with it..."

Now that I have started working in a office, I understand this so completely. I feel like a split personality. It's the language thing as well. In German, I'm demure. I know no swear words. In French I am...different. Articulate. I love swearing in English. It doesn't feel real. So at the office I'm a slightly stupid, nice girl. At home I become me again.

I miss my family and friends most of all when I transition back to myself.

All in all, I wonder how many of us change drastically in the work place.

Done

2010-08-16T13:40:00.000-07:00
I sent it this evening, while munching on some candy. I thought I would feel only relief, but instead I'm a bit sad. My paper is off to be judged and critiqued, and I put so much into it, so much energy and research and sleepless nights.
My poor little paper.

So...sleep. You know you're sleep-deprived when...

*you have the shakes and can't type anymore
*your boss asks you if you are ill and when you demur tells you that she knows a good family doctor. And then sends you his phone number by email. Twice.
*you fall asleep when you lean against a wall waiting for a bus.

Now onto some Berlin exploration!

I feel like I should celebrate, a bit, but I'll wait until my supervisor tells me it's shit. Or not.

In the meantime, this candy is really delicious.

My Playlist of Post-Work Bliss

2010-08-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

In a few days I should be done. After not sleeping a lot for what seems like a couple of months. I want to see it all ship shape and done; and then I will reward myself handsomely.

Like writing acknowlegments, imagining what you will do after the writing-incarceration is the best part of it all.

The fact that I'm even writing this instead of a pithy paragraph all about Voltaire and his take on pre-revolutionary constitutionalism in the texts of Benezet GIBBERISH ALERT GIBBERISH proves I need a nap. But it's only ten in the evening and I have seven more hours of work ahead of me.

OK. SO...Here is my playlist of things I want to do:

*Read books not for work but for pleasure. I have some great German books to read, including all of Tucholsky's short stoires. I have some Murakami I'm dying to start. I have a Maria Callas bio I'm dying to finish. And now I have to read all Trapedo's work so I can catch up with my friend L's blog on women's lit.

*Sing. Sing a song. Sing it loud...sorry. I haven't had time to learn any new pieces since...six months? Frack the neighbours, I'm getting my Bach on.

*Enjoy my office job and not try to find places to nap. Note: it is impossible to find places to nap, but I'm still trying.

*Run; stop exclusively eating chocolate-covered things; brush my hair every evening, a hundred strokes, the way my grandmother did.

*Get lost on my bike in Berlin. Go to salsa classes. Meet new friends. Actually keep in touch with all my friends and answer postcards and mails with something other than SOSOBUSYTALKSOON.

*Enjoy the last days of summer. It's been raining so much here, I think it will stop as soon as I am done with this baby.

*Sleep. Sleep more. Sleep and then have brunch.

*Plan my wonderful November holiday.

I should get back to it...I have a few good reasons to finish it, as you can see...

What's on your playlist?

The Love-o-meter

2010-08-07T08:15:00.000-07:00
My Kolleague is in a relationship that she just won't stop talking about.

It's pretty standard stuff: they met when she was eighteen, he was seventeen. They broke up a year ago, when he turned twenty-three.

"He told me he had fallen out of love. But isn't that normal after six years? You don't feel as passionate as you did?"

Finally after a couple of months he came back and now they live together. But he keeps telling her the most passive aggressive stuff, telling her he doesn't fancy her anymore, that she is letting herself go etc. Once, tired and not feeling tactful, I asked her point-blank why she was staying with him. The way she tells it (obviously with her own bias) makes it feel like he is trying to get her to break up with him. She is planning the wedding and the kids.

"I will never love anyone in that way. That's why I know he's the One."

She nibbles on a cookie. She looks at me.

"Have you ever felt that way?"

I tried to explain that there is no love-o-meter. If you are in love that is. Each love is different. Each relationship too. I asked her if she measures the love she felt for her friends.

"I don't have that many friends. I feel love is more important than friendship."

Again with the Love-o-meter.

This woman fascinates me. She is the incarnation of old-fashioned ideals. She just wants kids. No career. For her, jobs are just for money. He takes all the decisions; he is the more intelligent. I met the guy once and found him nice enough, but I wonder if he wants to get married. If he wants kids in 3 years. If he feels imprisoned. Why he came back.

"I sometimes feel we met too young. We're perfect for each other but if he had a bit more experience maybe he would want to get married more."

So those are my office lunches.

Hard

2010-08-06T12:29:00.000-07:00
It's hard to write. You have to be strong enough to own the fact that you consider your voice important enough to be heard. You have to be brave enough to acknowledge that you may well be writing utter rubbish. You have to delve, dig and dig some more.

I'm so angry. So sad. So happy. So depressed.

It's like therapy.

Even if you're writing a historical essay.

So a lot of stuff is coming up. I want to let all those emotions wash over me, but right now I'm too busy. I want to curl up against you, feel your calm and let it seep through my troubles.

I'm very tired. I sometimes get the feeling that everyone hates me at the office. Or that my friends don't like me anymore. That you are so far away, that you'll never come back. That my heart will be broken all over again. That everyone in my family is sick or dying.

It all comes back to the little things: my daily talk with my sister. The smell of curry sausages in the street. The way women here look so beautiful without any makeup. The color of the sky when it falls asleep, Brahms' quintets. Reading about your lives, your experiences, you.

It's not always hard.

The rain is pelting down tonight and I feel all my layers melding together, strong, weak, tall, so tiny I could fit in a pocket, angry at the unfairness of the world, disgusted by my failings, elated, up down up down.

There is always that moment-I want someone else to do it-I want to be oblivious-I want you to tell me it's all right, I'm here baby.

And here I go. I'm running towards the goal.

Thank you.

Question

2010-08-05T11:12:00.000-07:00
...How do you manage to have an office job and a family and hobbies? When do you sleep?

I'm working a normal 8h30-18h30 schedule at the office and it is killing me. I have to write all evening afterwards. I need at least an hour to quit feeling stressed.

How do you do with a family on top of that?

The levels of exhaustion must be insane.

Cheating

2010-08-03T13:10:00.000-07:00
One of my best friends in the world, A, has known me since I was 10. She is amazing and delightful.

She is convinced my boyfriend is cheating/will be cheating on me.

This is very confusing to me. I discussed it with my sister who not only agreed with me but gave me some needed perspective.

I don't think my boyfriend is cheating on me, for the record. I'm troubled by the fact she is so adamant. She doesn't know him well, or know anything particular that points in that direction. It's just that we are long-distance for a couple of months more; that he is travelling alone with his best friend who is his ex; that they will occasionally share a room to save money.

When X and I were together, he once slept over at Emilie's house, the girl who would ultimately be his rebound fuck; I did not like it because I felt she was attracted to him, but I trusted him. I didn't make a fuss. I didn't fight her.

When I am with someone, I trust them. Now my past experience tells me this is foolish, because my previous boyfriends have cheated on me. I think my friend is trying to protect me against similar disappointment.

But in the end, you have to trust your instincts. I pretended to be OK with X and Emilie's sleepover thing, but I wasn't.

I'm fine with AD travelling with his best friend.

New friendships

2010-07-31T04:16:00.000-07:00
Nowadays, I am just as excited about the prospect of new friends than about the prospect of a new love when I was a teenager.

Once you leave a university background, or start working, it's hard to meet new people, and especially hard to meet new people you like.

So when you do meet that special someone, when you click almost immediately, when conversation flows and witticisms crackle, it feels...It feels completely unexpected, magical, perfect.

Biological clocking it

2010-07-30T11:58:00.001-07:00
I'm that old it seems. All the women around me are talking about babies. Getting married. Settling down.

Not all actually when I think about it. The ones who are not planning the family are complaining about the fact that they should be thinking about it.

My problem with this is that I don't want children. I KNOW I KNOW. I'm only 24. I have about a decade in front of me to reevaluate. And maybe I will. For the time being I just express how I feel-I do not want to procreate.

Several reasons, some silly, others more deep-rooted. I think there are already too many people on Earth... I'm afraid that depression is hereditary and I would never willingly transmit my illness to another living being...I'm not crazy about babies and toddlers.

It's scary to think that these are decisions my friends are considering. My girlfriends. Men, of course, don't have to think about it as soon.

There is the whole work thing too. In France we have amazing day care facilities. In Germany not at all. My Kollegues discuss whether it's better to jeopardize your career by being a stay-at-home mother or pay someone your entire salary to raise your kids. It's a different environment here.

Why am I rambling like this? What, exactly, makes me so uncomfortable about having to choose a life, childless or with children, job-orientated or family-orientated?

Is it my grandmother's death? Am I thinking about generations renewing themselves?

When does the biological clock start ticking?

Sex in Berlin

2010-07-18T07:47:00.000-07:00
I know why people read this blog...Because of the sex. Well, I am here to pander to those so-called baser instincts. I visited the Museum of Eroticism in Berlin, and boy have I learned stuff.

The museum is mostly about pedagogical information. Confusingly, it also presents a collection of antique erotica and paraphenalia. There's a sex shop on the ground floor with very nice and helpful salesladies, in case you didn't understand the exhibition section on toys.

An 18th century dildo, in ivory. It's very decorative!

The BDSM section was not very informative. It was mostly a photo op ploy, with sniggering tourists taking pictures of themselves within or around the contraptions. I didn't like the way this was shown at all.

As usual, my photos are atrocious but to be fair, the lighting was bad.

The two great things about the informative sections were how homosexual sex was always included in the videos, not as a separate thing. So for "kissing" or "erotic massage" you would see gay couples as well as straight ones. There were interracial couples shown as well. A whole wall of plaster molds of penises and vaginas was titled "every size is right" which I also thought a good message. Surprisingly the snickering tourists usually went silent in front of the wall, maybe busy comparing themselves to the different models.

A safe sex video was well-made, with STD descriptions and a catalogue of symptoms. Very non-judgemental.

Finally, a bit of hands-on action with the following photo where you can see a German incitation to look for and feel the G-spot. Two mannequins with realistic inner body parts were shown, one for women and one for men. I enjoyed how sheepish the tourists look when looking for where the prostate was. For all their swagger, they seemed very ignorant.

This was about how nature looks sexual. Cue pictures of rocks.

Finally, a bit of information on how to understand men and women. The museum really went against the usual clichés, and refusing the submissive woman/aggressive man dichotomy.

All in all, I thought the museum was odd but useful in its way. People go there for the giggle factor but will probably leave slightly less clueless.

Office talk: what makes a relationship work

2010-07-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Oh look, a sweet strawberry stand. They are all over the place in this season. Just give two euros to the nice strawberry people, and eat your Erdbeeren in the subway. Sommer in Berlin!

Let me rephrase that.

What makes a relationship work?

First of all, I'm never quite sure how you're supposed to understand the word "work" in this context. Is a working relationship one that lasts forever? Doubtful, no? Because I'm sure that we've all had relationships that did not last but which could be defined as having worked.

(Just typing the word relationship makes me think about my sister who mocks my "serial monogamy" and I miss her so much even summer strawberries can't really compensate)

I've been thinking a lot about this topic because ever since I've become a German working girl, I've been listening to my co-workers chat. And boy do they chat. And they chat about relationships. Men. Break-ups.

It's like a wave of stereotypical oestrogen; it's like I've become one of the GIRLZ: braid my hair! tell me about how your boyfriend encourages you to diet! und so weiter!

So all they do is complain about their relationships. None of them work, yet they stay in these apparently miserable unions, bitching and bitching about how boring/predictable/slobby/bad in bed their Männer are.

So once in a while I'll open my trap and ask the question: why do you stay?

Maybe what makes a relationship work is realizing that nothing is perfect, as one co-worker told me. "Of course, it's not perfect. But it's better than many other relationships I know. At least he respects me."

Or maybe it's shared passions, like the co-worker who is a photography geek like her boyfriend.

Or maybe just fear of the unknown.

I have no idea what makes a relationship work. I know what worked in all my past relationships: learning how to become an adult with someone you trust, discovering adventure and passion with someone you admire.

When the nosy and nice co-workers quizz me I can tell them about my past. I like remembering the funny, teenage years with H and the thrilling, rollercoaster years with X.

So I can talk about that, but not about my boyfriend. Not about how I feel, how it feels. Because it's all so fragile for the moment. Life is so fragile at the moment.

On my bicycle

2010-07-12T10:41:00.000-07:00
I bike to work in the morning; in the nascent heat wave. 98°F at 8. The road looks fuzzy because of my dirty sunglasses. The world is incredibly perfect when you're on a bike, swift, efficient, slightly sweaty, perfect. It smells like trees and brown bread.

I watch the Berlin girls in their shorts, long bruised legs, perfect skin, black tattoos on their shoulders. I watch the men, tall, square, casual.

I'm a watcher on my bike. I forget my sadness. I forget how hot it is, how I can already feel my heart beating between my ribs because the heat makes me nervous.

And I want to tell you that I'm OK. I'm not lost, I'm just biking around because I like feeling free.

I know where I'm going.

After the funeral

2010-07-11T21:22:00.000-07:00
The funeral was beautiful. My aunts had conjured up seemingly in no time at all flowers to decorate the church, flowers on the casket, flowers billowing down to the floor. My grandmother, who was a garden writer and a garden designer, would have loved it. Around 400 people arrived. Most of them had known her well. People had flown in from America, Tunisia, London. She was a very loyal friend.

We did a very simple ceremony. A string quarted played some Beethoven, excerpts from Mozart's Mass in C were sung. I was relieved no Wagner was on the program. She had loved the Ring. My mother said a few words, as did the priest and some of Gramama's friends.

I read Saint Francis's prayer.

She had read it to us many times aloud when we were children. I'm glad I read that.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
fair and stormy, all weather's moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,
who sustains us
with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,
for love of You bear sickness and trial.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,
and serve You in all humility.

And then we all gathered in terrible heat to talk about her and mourn.

My grief will come soon, when I have time. For now I am stunned. And tired. Thank God for my sister.

Writer's block

2010-07-06T23:08:00.000-07:00
First of all, thank you for your sweet thoughts.

I'm going to Paris this weekend for the funeral. My sister and cousin are coming back from New York and Boston respectively.

I have to read an essay in the name of the grandchildren. I cry at the drop of a hat. I feel so nervous about writing the damn thing, striking the right note between funny and sad. And then I have to read it.

I have total writer's block.

Funeral

2010-07-06T15:28:00.000-07:00
My grandmother died on Saturday.

I miss her

Why football matters (...can't call it soccer) to me

2010-06-27T06:08:00.001-07:00
I like being French for a multitude of reasons. Football is not one of them.

So why is the premature end of the French team's adventures in South Africa bumming me so much?

Let me preface this by saying: I love watching sport. I watch tennis, rugby, basket-ball, volley-ball, skiing, curling, (CURLING), track and field, swimming, you name it.

I don't enjoy football that much. And I hate, hate, hate the French obsession with the sport. All the sport newspapers talk about is football. Who is winning the national cup, who is winning the Euroligue, who is winning the European Championship, who is winning the World Cup.

Boredom.

I was 12 when France became CHAMPIONS DU MONDE, world champions, in 1998. It was an amazing day: the whole of France went down in the streets, dancing, singing, hugging. Racism, faced with the amazing achievement of a team composed of white, black and Arabic players (or in French black blanc beur), appeared to be obsolete. Newspaper editorial after newspaper editorial celebrated the success of New France, which integrated its minorities and became leaders.

Fast forward to today. THe French football team has been utterly disgraced. I won't bore those who don't care about the game, but suffice to say we were bad, lazy and atrociously boring on the field.

Why do I care? I care because people are talking back home. People are saying that the team players who come from other countries are lazy because they can't be patriotic. And by people, I don't just mean people on the street, which is bad enough. I mean our elected representatives.

Can you imagine Senators of America commenting on the failure of the...I don't know, golf team for the Ryder cup and attributing it to the fact that some of the players have foreign origins???

So football matters to me at the moment. As a symbol. Racism never disappears in France. It just hides while we're winning.

PS: I'm in Berlin. Adventures to follow!

tell me about your first job?

2010-06-13T04:53:00.001-07:00
It's that time again.

Time to leave home.

My sister is gone and with her a part of me, but also a voice of reason. If she were with me now, she would dismiss my fears and make me laugh, and I would remember how excited I am to live in Berlin for a few months (only four!) and that it's going to be amazing.

I'm leaving in a week. Next Sunday is my going-away party. And then I'm going to do a job I don't even understand, in German.

So this is a request: can you tell me about your first job? I'd love to know how it went.

Visiting Greece II

2010-06-07T09:31:00.000-07:00
After Athens, AD and I decided to wander around on two islands, Santorini and Paros. Santorini is a volcanic island in the shape of a crescent moon. The sand on the beaches is black, which is very impressive. It's also one of the most touristy places in Greece, so it was quite a feat to get it relatively free from visitors, May being the beginning of the season.

AD and I are both huge eaters, and we ate our way through Santorini. One evening, I slipped on a pretty dress, AD put on a shirt and we went to an excellent and very chic restaurant, which was entirely empty! New food crush: beetroot salad with yogurt ice-cream on top. Amazing.

So what did we do on the islands? We spent a little time on beaches...but not that much. We walked a lot, inhaling the soft, almost sugary smell of fig trees. We rented a quad bike and wandered around the coasts. We climbed up black volcanic rocks and ingested a huge amount of olive oil.

I loved Greece. Before I left, I was pretty nervous. It was my first trip with my boyfriend and we've been dating for six months-it's all very new and freshly painted still, and I was afraid a whole week of twenty-four/seven exposure to Sara would drive anyone mad. But it was wonderful. Even when I got earache on the plane coming home and dragged my suitcase through a rain storm to get home, before preparing for a gruelling week of hellish exams, it was so worth it. I'll never forget the colour of the sunsets, or the way I could feel the past come back to life around me.

Now that I'm preparing for new adventures in foreign countries, I'm thankful I had a true week of holiday, with sunburns, giggles and yogurt ice-cream.

A few snapshots, mostly taken by AD, so they look much better than usual!

Beautiful Santorini and its ridiculously photogenic troglodyte houses...

Enjoying the black sand beach with my partner in crime...

Looking ridiculous with my Birkenstock sandles on our vehicle.

Drying octopii. The fishermen bash them first before hanging them out in the sun. I was both repelled and fascinated by them.

Visiting Athens (Greece, I)

2010-05-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start the travelogue with our first few days in Athens. We booked our tickets ages before the trip but then didn't bother to organize anything until our arrival in Greece started looming in the horizon. We booked hotels on the internet, vastly helped by comments on the different travel websites, and just went there, thinking we would play it by ear.

Boy did this plan work.

To start, I have to thank A.D, my tireless GPS and restaurant finder extraordinaire. He never gets lost. He never gets confused. He is always hilarious and entertaining, even on a night ferry when you have earache and want to kill everyone, especially the dehumanized ferry voices telling you to RELAX ON THE FERRY PLEASE.

Ahem.

Back to Athens. So the plan was 2 and 1/2 days there. And the plan worked amazingly well.

We went to a nice hotel near the centre of the capital and decided after a quick change of clothes (huge change of temperature!) to go visit. We went on top of one of the small mountains and saw the wonderful view there, I was quite enamoured.

As I wrote a few days ago, I became very emotional in Greece. I love ruins and ancient history, and visiting all the places I had read so much about...

For some reason I packed a lot of dresses. I don't wear them so often, but I was on holiday!

Love turtles. Their adorably slow and awkward gait touch me and I always feel like stroking their prehistoric heads before they slowly retreat.

This handsome fellow was later rejoined by his wife and child. A.D didn't feel like taking his giant camera out though, but they looked very comfy next to the Dyonesian temple.

This is the theatre where Sophocles, Euripides and Eschylus performed their plays. I may have squealed loudly when I saw it.

This is the agora, which was described in my guide book as "a badly organized, messy area where Ancient Greeks met to discuss political affairs". Harsh!

Travelling with a biologist=ant pictures. You don't want to know how many Hellenic Ants I now have on my computer.

The Acropolis was wonderful, but the museum was very boring. Most of the frieze remaining on the Temple was "bought" by Lord Elgin in 1805 and brought to England, so all the movies in the museum kept mocking the British. All the red lobsterish English people looked even more lobsterish as they listened to a broad Texan accent discussing Corinthian columns.

In the Acropolis museum, I took a few pictures of Hellenic art.

I especially like this pervy showing.

This jockey riding a horse is disturbing, but amazingly graceful, wouldn't you agree?

Not many tourists (it's just beginning to be tourist season at the moment) and so much fun. We had lavish dinners and amazing ice creams, oh and more tomorrow.

Back from Greece

2010-05-25T23:39:00.000-07:00
When I was a little girl, my mother woud tell me and my sister stories from Greek mythology. I grew up with Gods and Goddesses who behaved very badly indeed (almost every story about a nymph starts with her rape). Visiting Greece has always been one of my dreams, mostly because of this tradition.

I have so much to tell. I've come down with terrible earache and sickness, and I'm overwhelmed with work, but as soon as my boyfriend sends me some pictures, I'll do a nice travel diary.

Walking up to the Acropolis...Drinking cocktails above the Santorini Caldera...Driving a scooter around Paros with sun-burns on my shoulders...Swimming in the Aegean sea...

It was an amazing week.

Move that body

2010-05-16T03:49:00.000-07:00
I dragged my sister to a Zumba class. It's a fitness/dance thing, mixing lots of different latin styles, and it's really exhausting.

I've done fitness classes this year, but it's only running that give me quiet. My brain stops talking talking, and my legs feel the pounding, and the world has a beautiful perfect silent quality to it.

I'm a terrible dancer (although an enthusiastic one) so I was hoping I could keep up with the Zumba teacher, an adorable Cuban man in his late thirties who could shake his money maker in a way I can only aspire to.

Something happened to me during that class. I lost myself in the music, in the gestures, in the tiredness of trying to keep up with the steps and not succombing to the heat, I found myself in that emptiness I love about running. I was pretty bad at anything requiring a good hip movement, Shakira has nothing to worry about yet, but I loved it.

That's the thing about exercice: I do it because it's the best cure for depression. I would do it if it bored me horribly. And I'll be honest: I don't like "fitness" for the sake of fitness, I don't care if I don't have perfect abs. One of the reasons I hated my bodysculpt class was all the negative body talk: "Come on ladies, let's get rid of that fat!" It was noisy and vulgar. People talked about dieting in the locker room. I'm a recovering bulimic: I don't need people talking about themselves as if they were slabs of meat.

I like the feeling that everything is slowing down and that I'm enjoying my own little nirvana for a while. And if it comes with a healthy dose of Cuban sexiness, that's pretty OK with me.

As I wrung the sweat out of my Tshirt at the end of the class, I exchanged a smile with my sister. She looked happy and worn out and delighted.

We walked slowly home, and I can't lie, I may have practised some of those hip shakes this morning.

America the Great

2010-05-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

When I left home to live in Chicago for a year, I was twenty years old. I had been with my boyfriend for about three years, and we were wondering where we were going, if we had outgrown each other. I was embarking on an entirely new adventure, and to be honest, I was doing it to see if I could-if there was a possibility for me to be independant and free. I could have gone to England, which would have meant the possibility of going home more often. But I chose Illinois.

I wasn't ready. Or was I?

At twenty I was pursuing post-graduate studies in France. American students my age seemed so much less mature- they struggled with paper writing, and went to class wearing sweatpants. The teaching, too, was strange. You could talk to the professors after class, and sometimes they invited you to their home for tea or dinner. This was terrifyingly different from the very stilted university atmosphere in France.

On the other hand, all those American students I felt so superior to were juggling their studies and a job, sometimes more-they had a driver's licence, they were street-smart. I could snigger all I liked about the plush toys on the bed and the prudish attitude to sex and the ridiculous way they consumed alcohol, they certainly looked independant and free.

I had a nervous breakdown. It had been some time coming, obviously, it didn't spring out of that year in America. I believe that realizing just how incapable I was of making choices was a definite trigger-America made me feel bad about myself. I had fallen in love with so much of it- the energy, the ambition, the goals.

When I went to visit my sister two weeks ago, I was afraid I would feel the same anguish. I visited her beautiful campus gingerly, chatted with her fun, ambitious friends, went to the library, saw a few dorm rooms (no plush animals!).

My sister is so happy in America. She went there at 18. Now our situations were very different- I had to fend for myself, had no one to explain anything, struggled with administrative labors,etc. But her achievements there are nonetheless remarkable. We're talking 4.0 GPA here!

My sister has blossomed in America and that makes me so very happy.

Going there again was liberating. I no longer felt the need to justify how French I was. Yes, I believe that Americans work too much, that Americans are sexually prudish and that everyone should be allowed to drink at 16. But I have a lot to learn from the driven attitude of people my age, who make their own way and never apologize for being successful.

It's been an on/off affair between us, but I truly love America.

Back from the USA!

2010-05-02T07:08:00.000-07:00
Because I watched the Cartoon Network as a child in Holland, these vitamins completely won me over.
I <3 Northampton.

I had a wonderful time in America. First of all, I have to say that I love America, I love how completely gargatuan everything is, I love how junky the junk food is, I love how beautiful the country is, I love how nice everyone is. It's perfect. I'm very happy living in Europe, but whenever I go back to the USA I am struck anew by the sheer scale of everything-in a good way.

So I went to visit my aunt and my sister, and I got to visit two college campuses (or should it be campi? Whatever, as any good Freshman would say), Bard College and Smith College.

I'll focus on Smith College because I lived there! For three whole days!

The American Way of Education is just amazing. From the libraries to the gym facilities, to the splendiferous campus, it's just NOT THE SAME THING AS IN FRANCE. The incredible lavishness of it all...Anyway, I intend to talk about this some more, when I'm not ridden with jetlag.

The forbidden word

2010-04-21T04:35:00.000-07:00
The French don't talk about money, as a rule. I remember when I lived in America, being shocked at how easy it was to casually refer to your salary, or talk about money problems. Jokes about mortgages. Paying for the kids' education.

I haven't been brought up that way. We always laughed at my sister who was inquisitive as a child, wondering what job would get you what kind of wages. In retrospect, I don't understand why we discouraged her. It's certainly rude to ask people point-blank what kind of money they make, but is it wrong to be curious about it?

Money. Cash. Moolah.

My parents are pretty bad with money, but then they don't really care. My father is certainly the worst person with money I know. Unfortunately I'm a close second.

My short stint in the Catholic Church could be to blame; or maybe chalk it up to bad parental example, (though my sister disproves both theories): I tend to ascribe my unthrifty ways to lazyness and fear of being selfish. I've had such an enchanted, easy life, that it seems churlish not to give money to charities, buy drinks for students who have a hard time ending the month, and of course there are all the silly purchases that add up. My book habit. My obsession with asos.com. Shoes.

I've decided that it's time to care about money. It won't be fun to keep track of everything I spend, but it's necessary. I'm tired of being irresponsible about money, because there's nothing carefree about being stupid financially. I'm not a kid anymore. So I'm making a budget and sticking to it.

Any tips for this financially clueless girl? Are you money-savvy? Do you give to charities?

Bruises

2010-04-10T04:02:00.000-07:00
I'm often covered in bruises. Running cross-country when you fall a lot can create a devilish amount of scratches and blue blotches. Currently I am sporting attractive yellowing marks all over my legs and even my shoulders (damn tree branches).

I still wear skirts. I don't care that people can see my training injuries.

But I feel shy about those other bruises.

It's almost been a year since I started writing here. It's almost been a year since X broke up with me. The bruises are fading, but they are still visible.

The fear that no one will ever love me for who I really am.
The feeling that I'll never be enough.

Recently I was on Facebook and I saw a notification that one of X's closest pals had become FB friends with the Rebound Fuck. My heart stopped. It all came back.

What would help me get over this last hurdle? I wish X would tell me he felt sorry for the way we broke up. I wish he could call me and tell me that part of the end of our relationship was that HE has issues, problems and the like.

I wish he could give me closure.

And he won't.

I've been trying to cover up the bruises. But when it all comes back, with the smell of spring, my face pinker because of the sun, the taste of strawberries, it still hurts.

You can stop loving someone and they still have the power to hurt you.

I am happy. I'm in another relationship. Things are going well for me.

And yet, some of my worst fears have his fingerprints on them.

Overwhelmed

2010-04-06T09:38:00.000-07:00
I'm feeling a bit weird. I'm allergic to pollen, so this season is a bit trying to me. I'm depressed, for reasons that I can't really get into, because there are no real reasons.

Sometimes I feel like such a burden to the people around me. Help me. Listen to me. How often can you hear that without feeling overwhelmed? After all, it's my life, not theirs. I'm the one meant to figure stuff out.

In a perfect world, everyone would be honest. Or at least a bit. They would tell you that they are busy when they just can't take your drama anymore. So you could always be sure of when you are annoying them or not. You wouldn't have to guess all the time. I'm not afraid of rejection as much as I am afraid of mute boredom and annoyance.

I hate bothering people but I'm convinced I do it all the time.

Jealous

2010-04-04T02:13:00.000-07:00
I come from jealous stock. Some people in my family, most notably my mother, are intensely jealous. It's not an emotion I feel very often. As a child, I was jealous of the attention my sister got, like many children, I suppose. As a teenager, I felt jealous of people who had friends. Now I sometimes feel a twinge of envy when people go on awesome vacations. But it's not much to write home about.

Both of my ex-boyfriends were/still are flirtatious, attractive men who were surrounded by women a lot of the time. Some of whom were trying to go out with them. This never made me particularly jealous. And then X actually did more than flirting with one of his groupies.

And I felt so jealous. I suddenly realized what jealous meant. And I hated it!

Jealousy is one of the most pointless emotions I can think of. It brings you nothing but pain. Sometimes I remember in a flash of horror just how bad I felt. How eaten up. How wrecked.

And you never know when it may come again.

talking about sex

2010-04-01T11:11:00.000-07:00
Do you talk about sex with your family? With your friends? With your colleagues?

If you look at my sidebar, you will see I read blogs that occasionally talk about sex, and not in an abstract way, in a this-was-last-night way. I don't read them because of the content, per se, I read them because of the voice of the person writing. Because they are not judging me. Or themselves. Or anyone. Just enjoying their life.

I don't think sex is a very intimate subject to write about. It can be, of course. Any topic, skillfully explored, can lead to honest, revealing words. But the topic itself doesn't strike me as more intimate than talking about work problems, or how your children are coping with changing schools, or how much you hate your cousin.

I wonder why, then, is sex considered so taboo, so "dangerous" to write about on a public or anonymous platform. Why people will judge others according to their tastes. Food writers complain that when they criticize some species of asparagus they get endless hate mail, so the Internet is probably full of insane, angry people, regardless of the topic.

But then I don't consider sex "naughty". Or "nice". Or "vanilla". Or "non-vanilla". I don't even understand such distinctions, and why people enjoy the labelling Maybe they like to be thought liberated and edgy. I would go with Oscar Wilde here, who so aptly said that "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all."
I think the same of sex.

I don't like talking about sex with people because of the labelling. Because sometimes people who tell me about their sexual practices expect me to react in some way: shocked maybe, because I am very conventional outwardly, or perhaps jealous.

I'm sure there is a better way of talking about it.

Spring

2010-03-31T22:13:00.001-07:00
I wake up and the window is open.
"It's spring."
He smiles at me.
"It is. Do you want some tea?"
"No, I want to look at spring."

A.D holds me as I look through the window. I remember being six and my mother explaining to me what pollen was, after my teacher had told us about all the pollen in the air. Cherry blossoms in Normandy. Perfumed wind stroking your face.

I love spring.

I loved spring in Chicago, when the sun would be still be melting the snow on the street. I loved spring in Lyon when I ran in the parc and saw all the animals coming out of hiding, still in their bulky winter coats, shedding liberally. Spring in Berlin is so beautiful it breaks my heart.

And spring in Paris...All the pretty girls are wearing short skirts again.

"Let's go have ice cream for breakfast before you go to class."

And we ate our ice cream in a park, watching sleepily as kids fought over spades and shovels, talking nonsense and being happy.

"I love you."

loving my flaws

2010-03-31T21:58:00.000-07:00
I used to think that lying to people would make them love me.

I used to think that I could have anything I wanted, as long as I really wanted it.

I used to think that love was enough.

It's always more complicated than it looks.

What I find most hard about growing up is accepting that things are not always someone's fault. It's not enough to attribute blame, you have to fix the situation regardless of who is guilty.

I believe that one of our biggest fears, in general, is that people will stop loving us because of our flaws. As soon as they get close enough, they will be afraid and leave.

What I am trying to say is this: I'm not thinking so far ahead anymore. Yes, some people will never get past some of my flaws. Our faults are just not compatible. That is perfectly fine. Painful, but fine. I can't live my life waiting for people to be disappointed.

Because I don't spend my time expecting to be disappointed by others.

Travels, tips and nudity

2010-03-30T10:45:00.000-07:00
It's good to be back. You know you've been a bad, bad blogger when your sister tells you that you're not updating enough :)

I've been reading everybody's blogs but much too stressed out to write anything. I am very superstitious and am always afraid to jinx my good news until it's a hundred percent sure... But now I'm ready.

Here's my good news: I got an internship in Berlin, working for a BIG COMPANY, and I'll be doing environmental lobbying. In German. Pray for me. I will be there from July to early November, and I am stoked! I love Berlin more than I can tell, and I can't wait to rent a cosy flat and work and read and write my Masters on the weekend and go to concerts and take trains to Leipzig and Dresden, and eat masses of pastry. By the way, I will have in all probability enough room on my couch and in the aforementionned flat for visitors, so if anyone wants to spend time in Berlin, email me!
Ahem.

This brings me to my first request: does anyone have any advice on how to dress corporate in the summer? I am the everlasting student, so while my cupboards groan with the weight of a thousand witty T-shirts and ratty jeans, I do not seem to own anything that screams SERIOUS WORKER HERE! WATCH ME LOBBY, GIRLS AND BOYS!

Here comes my second request: I will be going to America on the 25th of April to visit my sister and family. I will be staying there for a measly 6 days, because my university is a pain. I will be staying in Boston for a couple of days, and then going off to Northampton. My sister will take care of the Northampton bit, but if anyone has a wonderful tip about a place I should see in Boston, send it in.

Life is busy. Apart from writing letters to big companies in Germany hoping they would want me and my passionate belief in wildlife conservation, I have been working and working. After my uni term is finished, I have to write and deliver a paper for my other Masters diploma and it will be gruelling work as well. So I have decided that I will only have one week of real holiday this summer, beginning of June. The boyfriend and I are trying to organize it, but since he is going to Brazil (jealous), Italy (ditto) and probably a million other places as well, it's a bit complicated. So far we want to go to Greece. And yes you will get postcards.

In the past month I have also done a naked reading for a squatters' happening, written my first international law essay and ran a lot.

The naked reading was one of the most bizarre things ever. A girl in my class, M, is currently living in a squat next to my parents' house, a very posh neighbourhood. It's a huge empty building, with architects and students living in each flat. No hot water and they steal the electricity from the un-thrilled neighbours. They are constantly being threatened with eviction, and since the rents in Paris are astronomical and the lodging situation dire, they decided to stage a big happening to raise awareness about their story. M asked me if I would participate in her "naked reading". At first I was curious why she picked me from all the other people in the class. I found the concept intriguing: we would be in one of the bathrooms in the building, and while two of the girls would take a bath, I would read texts out loud. I like reading out loud. So I accepted.
As I arrived in the squat, I realized that there were a lot of people around. Suddenly being naked in front of an audience didn't feel so carefree and easy. And then I met the owner of the bathroom, who would be taking a bath with M, and she smiled at me. She was stunningly beautiful, in a goth way. As I took in her flawless face with its vivid eye makeup, she whispered: "Do you mind if I wash my hair? I'm covered in sperm."

From then on I felt quite comfortable. We made tea, and then took our clothes off. A curtain separated us from the crowd. They could have a glimpse of us, but mostly they could hear my voice, the soft splashing of the water, and the giggles we shared. Anyway, I was fascinated by the reactions our happening provoked. The men were shy, but many women came to talk to us, and sometimes took their clothes off too, sitting on the warm tile floor.

Some women told me they missed a sense of community between other women and themselves. Some women told me that they hadn't felt so peaceful in a long time. It was quite lovely.. We felt free to be who we were: young, old, fat, flawed, thin, muscular. No one was judging. It felt as if we had created an instant community of acceptance just by facing the gaze of others and being brave enough to put ourselves at risk.

It was a bit like blogging.

Sara does skiing

2010-03-08T07:11:00.000-08:00
When I was a kid, my mother invested large amounts of money in my skiing education. My sister and I, every year, heavily kitted out, would be sent to the mountains to learn how to ski. I was never very athletic, but I liked skiing. There's an element of fun, of freedom, of swishing glory about going down slopes. And when you go up again in the mechanical chairs, you get to enjoy the beautiful contrasts between the dark rocks and the crisp, smooth layer of snow.

My boyfriend's parents own a lovely apartment next to a skiing resort and he invited me for a few days. I haven't skied seriously in years, but I jumped on the opportunity. I needed a break, and I wanted to spend some time with AD, and even the prospect of meeting seven of his friends was not enough to deter me.

The train station in the mountains was typical of any small French station: empty and gloomy. I waited for the bus that would take me up, and discovered that I was the only passenger in a 200-place bus. Up we go. The driver was a small, bearded man, with clever eyes. When he engaged me into conversation, I answered politely, trying to keep my eyes on the road so I wouldn't be violently sick.
Turns out he was a militant Muslim and obviously quite keen on converting me.
"What does faith mean! Why don't you accept God in your life?"
I was slightly worried by the fact he did not seem to pay any attention to the winding roads ahead, and tried to talk in a placating way. Whenever he got heated up, he waved his hands away from the steering wheel. I was feeling very nauseous by this point. After swerving violently, the bus almost crashed into a rock. I was almost hoping we would have to stop, so I could be quietly sick behind a tree. No such luck: I was theologized at for an hour.

Finally we arrive.

AD was waiting for me at the bus stop and I was so happy to see him. Still very dizzy and unwell, I went to the apartment to Meet the Gang.

It went quite well. I liked his friends and got along well with them. And oh, the skiing. AD is a very good skier, but I'm a very reckless one. I love skiing very fast and jumping off bumps, and taking difficult slopes. I had a lovely time. At the bottom of one of the slopes, AD smiled at me.
"You have a very...aggressive style."
We skied mostly with his ex-girlfriend-turned-best-friend, who was a good skier and great company. She also adores mountain cheese, so we bonded over that.

Skiing all day, cooking huge cheese-based meals in the evening, and then talking all night to AD: pretty much perfect.

Of course, on the way back to Paris, I had to take an (empty) bus back with my theologian driver, who continued to proselytize and piss me off, but this time I didn't feel so queesy, so I could react intelligently, instead of murmuring monosyllables while clutching my seat.

Now it's back to work. But I have a few freckles on my nose to show that I had a holiday.

Body image, aerobics and me

2010-02-28T01:05:00.000-08:00
Maybe it was the way the instructor talked.
"Come on girls, shake that ass, we don't want any cellulite on the beach!"
"If you're not in pain, you're not shaping up!"

Maybe it was the techno music, including a remix of Whitney Houston's version of "I will always love you" which sounded like a child had tinkered with a DJing program on his parents' Mac. Some things should not be remixed. Or even sung. Dolly Parton's version is much better.

Or maybe it was the locker room. I hate locker rooms. They remind me of being chosen last for gym classes and they have a horror movie vibe about them. When I open a locker, I half expect to find a severed head with a post-it on its forehead.

Anyone who knows me just a bit will eventually hear my long rants about how we are conditioned from birth to hate ourselves so we will eventually buy stuff from advertisers. Whether you are thin, fat, in between, or even on a diet, you can love your body and it will show in your confidence. Ahem, here I am ranting again. Moving on...

I had an opportunity to put my endless speechifying to the test this week, when I went to an aerobics and stretching class with a friend. I belong to a track and field club and run about four times a week, but my friend wanted us to do something fun together and I accepted. Also I'm as stiff as a poker, so a bit of stretching won't harm me.

All the girls in the class were incredibly slim, lycra-clad and glossy-haired. I felt incredibly awkward among them from the beginning. I had no trouble following the class, even though I sometimes doubt I own abdominal muscles, and I enjoyed some portions of it, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was ugly. That I took too much space.

I had this feeling all throughout my eating disorder. I'm too big! I'm too tall! No clothes will ever fit! After months of cognitive therapy, I managed to feel proud of myself. I started running. I never feel bad about myself while I run, even if I'm slow or not feeling very well. I feel free, happy, and attuned to myself.

So why did that aerobics class make me feel so terrible?

It's not the other girls. In my university, almost all the female students are affluent and very groomed, with that thin look that most people associate with French women. I am usually the biggest person in any given class, but also among the tallest. This is fine.

So what to do? I've decided to give the class another go. Maybe I was cranky. Maybe I was having a bad day.

But if it still makes me feel bad, and full of self-loathing, I will drop it. At least I won't have to stick my bottom up in the air while the instructor intones: "Come on, girls, stretch those glutes!"

Is there an uglier word than "glutes"? I hope not.

Birthday Me

2010-02-26T06:53:00.000-08:00
I'm 24!

Wish me a happy year please, I have high hopes!

Holland for the day

2010-02-23T12:45:00.000-08:00
The lakes, rivers and moats in Holland were almost all frozen. It's been one of the coldest winters in Europe this year. I love this picture because it reminds me so much of the time we skated here, and would then make hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I went to Amsterdam on family business Friday. It was great fun. I love Dutch houses. This is a house in a small village. The weather was pretty atrocious and my photo skills are what they are, but I hope you can see how quaint it looks.

This is the sweet shop where my mother and aunt used to go and eat Drop, which is the Dutch word for liquorice, and ice lollies, which I think you call popsicles in America. My favourites are King peppermints. I think all sweet shops should look like this.

When my sister and I were kids we would go to this playground and push each other on this swing. I missed her so much this time around, I asked my mother to take the pictures thinking of her. And yes, I've gone back to brunette.

What's up? I'm busy, looking for an internship in environmental science, writing a Masters dissertation on Quakers, planning a trip to America this Easter, getting ready to celebrate my birthday. Oh, and falling pretty heavily for someone.

Holland is home to me. Just being there for a day was enough to stop time a little. I love the flat horizon, the endless rows of houses, the growling language, the tall, tall people, the bicycles everywhere.

We all have our Heimat, that wonderful German word that describes the place we call home, not necessarily our homeland or the place we live in, but that mysterious link that sometimes bind us to a place.

My Heimat smells like King peppermint.

milkshakes and fries

2010-02-15T09:39:00.001-08:00
It's snowing outside, and I'm reading a book about international law statutes. I'm holding a cup of hot tea between my hands, warming them, trying to concentrate. I like his desk, but I work on his dining room table, with art books and novels scattered about, and the Harrowgate Toffee I brought back for him from Cambridge. Just slam the door when you leave, he told me, before going to the movies. I like working in his flat, surrounded by his things.

I took him to his first classical concert. He overtipped the usherette, so that she moved us to wonderful seats in an empty theatre box, full centre, and we listened to Beethoven together. Then we drank lots of champagne and I forgot the entire conversation we had. I was afraid I had said something wrong, something mean, something scared, but the next morning he was there, and he hugged me. He was there.

Let's take this day by day. I said, OK. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to try. We have our own lives, our own things, and when we go out together to have dinner with friends, we never stay too close. But then he smiles at me from the other side of the room. There's a tacit convention between us: this is who I am, this is how I am. I'm not better than this. Day by day.

For my birthday we're going to have milkshakes and fries in the best milkshake place in Paris.

You're strange, he said. And it's strange how well we get along. We're very different.

I like him.

Almost Birthday

2010-02-14T04:27:00.000-08:00
The 14th of February was never about Valentine's day for me. It's the day before my mother's birthday.

My mother is funny, irritating, loving, giving, obstinate, insane, beautiful beyond compare, sad, giggly, a card-player, an adventuress, a stay-at-home internet nerd, someone who loves Bach and Mozart and Queen and the Beatles, someone who took in my sick father after their divorce so I wouldn't have to take care of him all by myself.

My mother is amazing.

She gave me my best friend: my sister.

She taught me to stand up for myself.

Never to depend on someone else for material comfort.

To hug people, when in doubt.

She forgave my painting on the walls of my room with lipstick. And the time I cut my own hair. The time I tried to take my own life. And the time I came home with a broken heart. She always knows when my sister and I call her. She always knows how I feel and why. And when she went out to parties when J and I were little, she would leave a sugary confection on the side of our beds so we would know that she had thought of us and come to check on us before going to sleep.

Happy Birthday Mums.

I love you.

SRSLY

2010-02-11T03:21:00.000-08:00

I'm learning that I don't have enough time ever to do all the things I want, but that it's OK, really, not to be able to do it all.

I'm learning how to play poker. First poker night today, and I'm equal parts nervous and excited. Which prop should I use to bluff??? A pair of glasses or a baseball cap? After watching some World Poker Tour footage, I'm guessing both.

I'm learning that life with my sister so far away isn't as much fun as when she's around, but then I always kinda knew that.

I'm learning that some movies should be watched late at night, when you can't sleep, because they take all sorts of strange meanings.

I'm learning that it's wonderful dating a 6'2 man, especially when I'm wearing heels and I'm 6'1.

I'm learning that Environmental Law is very interesting.

SRSLY interesting.

Photo credit: X took this a few months ago when the weather wasn't SNOW SNOW SNOW and it cracks me up. We both love stupid LOL Cats and so when we espied this fun fair sign, I just had to ham it up. Also hilarious to me is the fact that I am, as usual, eating some sort of cake.
He sent it to me a few days ago. Thanks, mate!

Fat talk

2010-02-08T04:24:00.000-08:00
Murky waters, here, but I've been hearing a lot of annoying, misinformed and poorly worded comments on fat people lately. Cases in point:
1) Discussion with an acquaintance. She is very slim and barely 5 ft tall, and I am 5'10. She was telling me that she could only find cute clothes that fit in vintage shops since she is so petite. We shared horrible shopping experiences, and then she said: I never understand why some shops sell XXL miniskirts or sequined jackets. I mean, why would fat people emphasize their body?
What really got me was that she had just as much difficulty finding nice clothes that fit than fat women! NO empathy there.

2)Discussion with my track and field group: my coach was telling us to have a healthy diet while training, and I ruefully admitted that I eat lots and lots of candy, chocolate and consume litres of lemonade. The coach then said: Oh, as long as you don't get fat, you're OK.
Hmmmm...so health means being thin, right?

I am a recovering bulimic. I know what it means to hate your body, to treat it like crap, to punish it for existing. Did shaming myself transform me into the thin person I wanted to be? No. Yet this is what we try to accomplish with fat people, shaming them into becoming acceptable in our eyes.

The way we talk about fat, the way we treat people who are fat is disgraceful and wrong. Better people have said it much better than I could, but fat discrimination in terms of health care or travel or anything really is an infringement of human rights.

And I want to talk back.

I hate group work

2010-02-07T14:41:00.000-08:00
Pretty self-explanatory, I think. In my uni program it is required to do a lot of group work. Probably to prepare us for the WORLD, which means the WORLD is only composed of bored people sitting at tables doodling while "listening" to the brain-storming session. I hate group work.

Now I don't mean to say I hate the groups I work with. Quite on the contrary. They are all clever and interesting people. I just hate the waffling around, the ordering of drinks, the way I have to forward emails all the time.

I wish I have some coping mechanism not to just want to blow the building during any session.

Friends with the ex

2010-02-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

People around me are breaking up. It's that time of year. Good resolutions or something. This makes me really sad because there is always the problem when you have two friends together, that your friendship with one of the couple will crumble after the separation. When X left me, we joked that we would share custody of the friends we had in common, and never make them feel they had to choose. And this worked out pretty well.

Now the tables are turned, since the man I'm seeing is best friends with his ex. After years of explaining to people that it was foolish to feel threatened by my exes, and that we now only shared friendship, I'm on the other side of the fence.
And...I have no problem with this. Shocking, yeah? I like it. I like that he can go beyond tension and sadness and create a great bond with someone really awesome. And yes, I've met her.

Somehow I feel this sounds stereotypically French. I should be wearing a stripey T-shirt with effortless style, while eating croissants with my ex-husband's new wife, and smoking filterless cigarettes while accordeon music wafts through the open window.

Anyone here friends with their ex(es)?

I hosted a stew party (and I liked it)

2010-01-29T01:02:00.000-08:00
Or should it be, lived to tell the tale.

I wanted to reciprocate all the kind invitations I've got these past few months so I invited sixty people to my parents' house, coaxing them with the sweet, fragrant promise of stew (vegetarian and goulash), masses of cheese and homemade cookies. Twenty-five people accepted and since I am still a student, still at the stage where forcing people to sit on the floor does not automatically mean dislocated disks or terrible pain, and since I appear to be completely wacked-out insane , I thought this would work out quite well.

Being a hostess is hard, y'all. Not only are you supposed to slave to make your place look nice, cook batches of food for famished and often allergy-ridden ingrates, but you are then to enjoy your own party, or at least, make it look effortless. This three-tier cream cake with sugar rosebuds? Oh, it's so easy to bake! That Ming vase your kid just wrecked? Just an annoying knick-knack that was a pain to dust. Oooh, look: someone is lonely and bored in a corner of the living-room! Must entertain them! You then abandon Promising Hot Man and go talk to Shy Young Lady while your erstwhile prospect goes away.

Plus we had the following situation: I invited people from my new university and old friends together. As we all know, this doesn't always work out. The old friends arrive full of inside-jokes, the new ones want to talk about classes the old ones don't know anything about, and you're in the middle, trying to pelt new conversation topics at people randomly, hoping one will stick. This usually means a newsworthy topic which annoys half your guests and creates a screaming match.

We also had my ex-boyfriend turned best friend and my oldest friend (thirteen years, people) meeting my Fling for the first time.

A recipe for disaster, you say. I was curiously calm during the whole thing, especially considering that I was fresh off the Eurostar, so to speak. I made huge amounts of food. I bought amazing cheese. I baked cookies (but, ahem, not from scratch. Give me a break! I was tired!). I opened the wine bottles to let them breathe. And then I put on clean trousers, smudged my eyeliner and waited for people to come.

It went really well. Everyone loved the party, and I did not turn into a Tazmanian Hostess, whirling around snatching plates from people, forcing dessert on everyone and laughing in a manic way. "HAVE SOME MORE? NO? ARE YOU SURE? HAHAHAHA!"

Magic moments of being a grown-up party-person:

* The wine talk. People talk about wine, instead of comparing cheap beer experiences. We're OLD.
*Someone asked me if they could smoke pot in my apartment and I said no problem. No one wanted to share though.
*No one started necking in my bathroom.
*No one robbed me.
*No one drunkenly slow-danced and then passed out into a coma.

OLD.

I am officially a hostess.

Ostrich burgers and bad phone booths

2010-01-28T01:12:00.000-08:00
I took a lot of random pictures in England. I went marketing (of course) and saw that low-fat is a selling point for ostrich burgers. There is an ostrich farm next to Cambridge. They must love the weather. How did someone get this brilliant idea?
My father asked me if ostriches were a more sustainable form of meat than cows, and my answer to that, as a trainee environmentalist, was to laugh incontrollably. I know that ostrich meat is very healthy, but there is something inately absurd about the bird that makes me snort at the idea of eating it.

The splendiferous part of Cambridge is how ornate everything is. You're walking in the street, minding your own business, and POF! Raise your head and you see this. You also meet people in bowler hats (the porters) who tell you about the history of the colleges. If you are a history nerd, this makes progress through the town very dawdling indeed.

I saw this every day in the Quaker library. I love that sentence. I'm not a believer, but as a recovering depressive, this rings a bell. I know, too sugary for words, but bear with me, turn up the Mahler, and have some fudge before it's all gone. There are moments where the light comes from the strangest places, from people you hardly know, or going on strange adventures, even from a little corner on the Internet. Sending hugs!

Am I going all maudlin on you? Fear not, I have pornographic phone booths for my finish!

In all the red phone booths in London, you get these pornographic postcards with numbers you can call. Firstly, this is so low-tech it's laughable. Secondly, in a public phone booth? With kids going to school? Or do you stealthily steal a card with a robot-lady wearing a strap-on, saying "I can go through the back door, can you?" and slip it in your business bag, in case of an emergency?

The moral of this is that a girl can spend hours thinking about GOD LIFE LIGHT WORK QUAKERS and end up snapping dirty pictures while giggling like a fool.

Cambridge and London (snippets)

2010-01-25T01:21:00.000-08:00
Hello Cambridge! you are so pretty. Let me take somber and depressing snapshots of you.

What can I say, I love food, and I love sweets, so instead of taking nice pictures of buildings, I took pictures of the fudge shop.

Cambridge, the Bridge of Sighs.

So I'm in the Eurostar station, coming home after a lot of work, and some fun too. I went to London to do library research in the Quaker library, which is amazingly quaint, filled with sweet and insane people doing research as well, and filled with the rythmic sound of people turning pages at the same time. The way I like it, baby. And in the evening I have nice dinners with friends who bore with my endless prattling. When you spend 7 hours a day writing, you feel loquacious, you really do. You also seem to think that your arcane subject is FASCINATING. I apologize to my friends, but that's what you risk when you get yourself an over-enthusiastic multitasker pal.

But it wasn't all work. I popped into Cambridge to spend the weekend with my friends N and Am, cuddled baby Sym, ate so much food (damn those triple chocolate butter Belgian biscuits from Sainsbury's) and slept. I needed a break. And my friends made me feel like a Wonderful Butter Biscuit of a Girl.

Those of you who've exchanged emails would have an inkling about why I like anything Holmes. Inside joke!

Can you tell I'm a bit frantic/happy? The internet connection here is prehistoric so expect more pictures at a later date. I'm crossing the Channel back to classes and WORKWORKWORK, but all in all, I feel regenerated. It's all in the fudge, really.

What's your accent?

2010-01-22T03:59:00.000-08:00

I can't pronounce my "th"s.
I can't say "three", I say free. Insert joke here, my family has been laughing for years about how "frilling" my life is.
I can't say "there", I say vere.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't embarassed by this. I went to a shoe repair shop this morning in London, and as I asked about sole remplacements, the shoe man asked me where I came from.
"That a nice accent you got, love." Yes I know! I spik like dat! And once someone makes the remark, it gets worse and worse. Ze split perzonality, don't you know!

I'm self-conscious about my voice in English. I have trained as a singer for years, so I hate not feeling in control of how I sound. My sister has a sponge-like ear for language, and now talks with a thick American accent, whereas I hesitate between British and mid-Atlantic, with a nice dollop of French. Not only the "th"s, but also my intonations, which are energetic, as opposed to the usual monotone. The great test, apparently, is how you say "bottle". If you're British, you'll use a glottal stop and say "Bo'll". If you are American, you'll say: "Boddle". I say "Bot-El". Which sounds like a Superman character.

Is there a class distinction for accents in America the way there is in Great-Britain? There is a geographical one, certainly, but does the way you talk mean anyone knows how educated you are?

I can't address this topic without including Professor Higgins' great rant in My Fair Lady.

An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him.
One common language I'm afraid we'll never get.
Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!

My Valentine plans

2010-01-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

This is a strange time for me; I'm acting so much out of character all the time that I'm coming to doubt that I have a character, or maybe I'm morphing into someone I don't know yet, which isn't bad per se, not at all, just troubling.

I booked two tickets for an all-night dance party in a big industrial space in Paris, on the 13th of February. I love dancing, but I am very, very bad at it. Imagine a 5'10 graham cracker on LSD and you'll have an idea. I hate dancing in front of people, but when I'm in need of some cheering up, it's up with the music and on with the prancing around in my room. Also, most people are shy when it comes to dancing, and rely on chemical components to loosen up. Which for me is totally out of the question.

Well, we're taking this show to the road. We're going to break some moves!
Oh God, I'm so bad at this stuff. I have no game. Why? Why can't I just glide effortlessly on the dance floor, shake those hips and seemlessly weave my magic around my prey? Because I have no coordination, that's what.

And I've invited someone I like to come with me to a 90's Dance Music Rave Party. On Valentine's night.

"What is this thing all about, anyway?"

"We'll dance all night in a warehouse. And I'll be wearing a Spice Girl T-shirt."

Small pause.

"Done."

I like him, I really do.

ps: any dancing tips will be very very appreciated.

Twice bitten, thrice shy

2010-01-20T08:14:00.000-08:00
Maybe I could make a check-list to hand out when people hit on me. It would state my political preferences, my favorite book, why I am a vegetarian,and so forth. Like that people would immediately know if there was something so offensive to them that they could politely decline: "Sorry, eating pulses is morally repugnant to me." Of course, I could also quickly peruse their check-list (hmmm, hates puppies...hates watching sports on TV...I'll pass).

This fantasy is completely dumb. Let me rephrase that: it's not dumb when you come out of a long relationship. When you remember saying:"Just got a call from So-and-so" and your boyfriend looks at you with compassion because he knows the deal with So-and-so, and you don't have to explain anything. Maybe my allergy to exposition is why I'm a serial monogamist. It's pure laziness.

"Relationships take a lot of effort." I agree when someone says this to me (usually just before they get married, for some reason) but I would say that meeting people is a lot of effort as well. Trying not to be fake, but also trying to make a good impression. It's all pretty exhausting. Add to that the jittery feeling that you are about to discover something terrifying about your date and the whole thing just does me in. Like that night when my date told me that immigration was a sin. Slowly backing away now...

Every single one of my boyfriends has been someone incredibly different from me. Different temperement, different interests, different backgrounds. So maybe the check-list wouldn't even work, because I like being incompatible with someone. Or maybe the checklist should only be one question:

Picture from the absolutely marvellous xkcd

I need...

2010-01-17T13:00:00.000-08:00
I need a holiday a vacation a minibreak you name it.

I need a long walk in the mountains, with a backpack, a tent and a big crusty loaf of bread wrapped in yesterday's newspaper, a hunk of cheese, one of those thick pale yellow Dutch cheeses, and lots of water.

I need the sound of rocks and pebbles rollicking down hill under my shoes, the smell of trees and soft crushed green grass, and the feel of bark against my cheek when I rest in the shade, swallowing my meal slowly, enjoying the sunset.

I need a night alone, under the stars, thinking of friends and fun times and all the wonderful things of the world. I'll hear strange noises and won't worry, because the air is thick and sweet and summery, and my heart is content.

And I need to go home with scratches all over my ankles, a bad sunburn on my nape, a few scribbles in my diary, a few underexposed pictures taken with my camera, stopping by at the newsagent in the station to get some chocolate for breakfast.

This summer, please.

Paris-London

2010-01-15T12:03:00.001-08:00
Only four more days of this exam hell. I'm heading off to London afterwards to go do research in the Quaker library and I'm pretty excited. I like going to foreign cities on my own and take in things at my own rythmn.

I already have a few postcard recipients lined up, but if you're like me, you enjoy getting things in the mail that aren't bills, right? So if you would like a postcard from London, please tell me and I'll email you to get your address. I love writing to people! Maybe we could start a blogger postcard club.

The Jewish Bride

2010-01-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favourite painting by Rembrandt, The Jewish Bride. I love the way the man looks at his bride, the way he puts his hand on her heart. When I look at this image, I feel a quiet sense of content seep through me again. Rembrandt has the most wonderful way with light and darkness, and when I stare long enough, I get that dizzy sensation of passing from a darkened room to a garden in summer. At first you blink and there is almost pain, and suddenly vividness becomes pleasurable. The smells of August fill the air, and the low humming of creatures makes you walk that much slower.

This painting makes me more aware of other people's body language.

I always wonder what keeps long-term relationships going. I wonder if it's that look, that hand, that infinite trust, that keeps the light from being swallowed by dusk. Maybe it's finding a person that gives you that funny, heart-twisting splash of sensations.

I love that painting.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

2010-01-09T02:56:00.000-08:00
Do you respect yourself? Do you respect your own worth, your integrity, your right to choose what is right for you?

Because I don't. At least, not enough.

Every time I agree to do something that goes against my feelings, my convictions and my well-being.

Every time I avoid conflict instead of expressing my beliefs.

Every time I don't stand up for myself.

I talk a lot about depression here, sometimes in veiled ways, sometimes openly. I think a lot about it too. Can't really help it. Yet sometimes I wonder if I have low self-esteem because of depression or if depression is a consequence of chronically low self-esteem.

In any case, I have to change this aspect of myself.

Respect is something I must earn for myself this year. I have arrived at that point in my life where politeness, demureness, being fracking lady-like, are just encouraging me to shut up and take it. And I don't want to.
Anymore.

So I know I said I wasn't going to make resolutions...but I want to make 2010 the year of self-respect. And courage.

Wish me luck for my exam week!

I <3 teaching

2010-01-06T01:41:00.000-08:00
I enjoy teaching young kids. Maybe because I'm childish myself, but I understand the way their brains are wired. I live in a world of imagination. When you study history, you need to project yourself in a world that no longer exists, and it's something children find easy to do. I often get lost in alternative universes. When a little girl tells me she saw a dragon yesterday, it doesn't irritate me. I've been talking to Benjamin Franklin in my head.

Yesterday I was teaching one of my pupils. This year I have no time to do anything (seriously) and this is a labour of love. I accepted to teach these kids because I enjoy their company. Their mother pays me but truthfully, I would do it for nothing.

We were studying a limerick by Edward Lear, one of my favourite.

"There was a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin:
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin."

After we had both laughed over it and discussed relative pronouns (grammar is fun), I asked him if he ever wrote poetry. He looked scandalized at the suggestion.

"I'm only ten! And poetry is hard."

I told him that poetry didn't have to be hard. I explained how French poetry is all about the length of the verse (so 8, 10, 12 syllables for instance) whereas English poetry is about stresses. I had brought some examples of "calligrammes", like this one.

"Why don't you write a calligramme? It won't have to rhyme."

And he did. He wrote his first poem in English. We read it out loud, trying to feel the stresses, changed a few words, and then he dated it and signed it.

"And I can write one whenever I want?"

It's hard to express what makes teaching so great. It's often a thankless, dreary job. You feel like you're swimming upstream. Have you noticed that when a child fails, it's the teacher's fault, but when he succeeds, it's due to his parents? I don't teach large classes, I can only imagine how draining it must be.

But having a little boy dedicate his first poem to you, and smile as if he just won a lifetime supplies of Nintendo games, well...
As I left the building, holding the poem against my chest because it didn't fit in my bag, I felt like I was over the moon.

So here is one of my favourite poets, Pablo Neruda, and one of my favourite poems, in honour of L's first poem ever.

If you forget me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

Rape culture in France

2010-01-05T03:27:00.000-08:00
I'd like to talk about the way rape and sexual assault are perceived here in France, and how it effects the people I know. I'm not a counselor, or a sociologist, so this will be about my experience of rape culture.

Rape has been recognized as a crime in France since 1980 (you can get up to 15 years in prison). The legal definition is as follows: "Any sexual penetration (otherwise it's categorized as assault and not as rape) imposed upon another person through violence, constraint, threat, or surprise, is a rape."

Marital rape was legally recognized in 1992. These dates tell their own story.

In the media, rape has two different contexts. "Rape in the suburbs" and "City rape". Suburbs in France are not middle-class havens: they are what I think Americans call the projets, or ghettos. Young people who come from the suburbs (especially the Parisian ones) tend to describe themselves as "ghetto members". A few years ago, gang bangs became the subject of many an investigation. Young Muslim girls who would not wear a headscarf had been raped by several young men (usually men they knew socially) or set on fire. This brought about the idea that only immigrant religious extremists would rape. Rape was the product of alienation and misinformation.

On the other hand you have the City rape. This is defined by walking home late at night and being assaulted in the street. Victims of City rape are mostly pitied, but sometimes you'll read an article describing how drunk/skimpily dressed they were.

This is what I would call mainstream rape. Everyone agrees it's rape. Voilà. You don't go alone at night in some areas, it's a fact of life. As a runner I avoid some parts of Paris if I'm running at night. It's automatic. You go against the rules, you will be punished.

Much more problematic is date rape. I'll take the Polanski example, not because I'm not tired of that polemic, because I am. Yet the reaction of French intellectuals to the rape was scary and illuminating. It wasn't a rape because the mother of the girl entrusted her child to a known womanizer to do nude pictures. (So she pimped out her kid, basically). It wasn't a rape because the girl was not a virgin. You get the idea.

If you know your rapist, good luck to get your rape recognized as such. You egged him on. You sent the wrong signals. He was drunk. You were drunk.

As a French girl, you're taught how to flirt, that is, how to go far enough without going too far. If you go too far, you might end up in a situation beyond your control. This will be your fault. Rape education is focused on girls. We can avoid rape. Little is done to prevent rapists from raping.

Do I feel afraid, threatened every day? No. Am I bothered every day by some random person in the street? Yes.

"Hey pretty girl, want to come over tonight?"
"No, thanks."
"Have a good day then!"

This would be the nicest version of the typical exchange. Usually it goes along these lines:

"Hey pretty girl, want to come over tonight?"
"No, thanks."
"You fucking slut, just die already."

When I complain about this, I mostly hear people telling me that I'll miss it when it stops. Middle-aged women sigh wistfully about how they enjoyed being complimented, how they feel invisible now. The same women who tell me that I would be asking for rape if I went to a man's apartment alone. That I'd be sending out the wrong signals. To me, rape is less about sex than it is about violence. When I ask these people if it would be my fault if I were beaten up by a guy in his apartment, they usually say no. Yet rape would be my fault, somehow.

What I can tell you about French rape culture is that regardless of how "good" I am, someone will blame me for being raped, if this terrible thing happens to me one day. It will always be partly my fault. If I'm not drunk, it's because I wore a short skirt in a dangerous area. And why was I out in the middle of the night, anyway?

One day I was explaining to X, who's Australian, that I was afraid of travelling on my own because of violence and assault. He looked at me as if I were crazy. I realized how much I had internalized the French message that I had to restrict the way I live in order to be protected.

It's my responsability never to be assaulted. Even if it means living less of a life than if I were a man.

STFU Couples?

2010-01-04T07:21:00.000-08:00
I stumbled upon the tumblr (hee) STFU Married. While some part of me was amused by how TMI some of those Facebook wall posts were, I was only seriously annoyed by the ones that expressed hatred, passive-agressiveness and bile. Why would you insult your ex-wife and sling accusations in a public forum? I hate it when people argue in public-it's one thing to have a disagreement about where you want to have dinner, it's a whole other ball game to describe your partner's poor skills in bed, horrendous parents or awkward mullet phase in front of a train compartment or in a hotel lobby. Let alone the interwebz.

But lovey-dovey messages? "OMG you are the best boyfriend ever I love you so much my little rabbit"? What's so wrong with that?

Last night I was invited to a lovely dinner party. Three couples were there, and I was the sole single person in the room. At one point all the couples were semi-cuddling (hair-stroking, neck-nuzzling) and one guy asked me if I felt uncomfortable. Of course not! Even at the height of my break-up misery, seeing two people staring in each other's eyes, lost to all things trivial, wrapped into their own paradise, never failed to make me smile.

The honeymoon period! Is there anything nicer? When your partner can do no wrong, when each phone call feels too brief, when the days are too short to cram in all the romance and excitement?

I remember mine, and I think back on it fondly.

Dear couples, I'm really happy for you and I hope your honeymoon phase lasts as long as possible. Because being in love and blurry-headed with passion is a wonderful thing.

STFU, haters.

Scarlet woman

2010-01-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, I was a demure brunette. But secretly I yearned to go red.

I've always been fascinated by the mystique of the redhead.

There's Rita Hayworth.

I was so in love with Rita as a child. Her song-and-dance turns in Cover Girl or You never were lovelier fascinated me. In Cover Girl she's shot in Technicolor, and you get to see just how lovely her hair looks, in thick, red curls. She was certainly beautiful, but mostly enthusiastic and energetic. I associated her with freedom and happiness.

Then came my next obsession: Franka Potente in the indie German success Lola Rennt.

Potente plays this punk small-time gangster's girlfriend, and as a twelve-year old the simultaneous discovery of techno music and bright ketchup red hair was overwhelming. I dreamed of being her. She was resourceful, stunning and different. She wasn't afraid to dress differently, the way I was. She was badass.

But I was afraid to go red for a long time. It's not an easy colour to maintain. It gets depressingly pale very fast. It's trying to the complexion. It's noticeable. And most of all, I thought I would have to be a Jessica Rabbit to pull it off. Sex on legs, if you will. I never found myself pretty: sexy was a huge leap.

So it took a great deal of confidence to go red. I started with a slightly more russet tone to my originally brown hair back in May. Then in Germany I went to a seedy hairdresser and he gave me something starker. By this time I was beyond caring what other people thought. I loved the way red made me feel. Like a woman, and not like a girl. I stopped feeling uncomfortable when people complimented me. I started enjoying dressing up, changing sartorial personalities.

Bad picture, of course. My sister helped me refresh my colour yesterday! Good job, J.

I'm proud of being a redhead. I'd like to have Rita's graceful allure, Franka's punk pride, and Jessica's sex appeal, but in the end I'm happy to be my own version of the scarlet woman.

Playing it casual

2010-01-01T14:14:00.000-08:00
"Can I bring a teapot next time I come? I really need tea in the morning."
He laughs at me.
"Why don't we take this slowly? Bring a saucer.I don't want you to think that we're going out or anything. Don't get too involved, Sara."

We joke about it but I am super nervous. I've never played it casual before.

I've always fallen in love before becoming someone's girlfriend.

I've never had a one-night stand. I'm a serial monogamist!

This guy is so relaxed about everything. I tell him what the situation is at the moment, not looking for anything serious, not wanting a "relationship", all that jazz. He just takes it all calmly and tells me to take things one day at a time.

"Just tell me when you feel uncomfortable and we can scale things down."

Which is terrific advice and I know I shouldn't overthink this. Yet...
I'm terrified of getting back into the mess I've just extricated myself from; the passionate love story that ends with someone feeling that I'm too complicated and difficult to deal with. I need some time outfrom all the compromises, and talks that come with coupledom. Where is this going? Am I giving enough? Am I taking enough? No more for some time, please.

I was at his place. He was cooking for me, as we chatted about this and that. I looked up at him shyly, hoping this is the right way of saying it, the right time, the right thing to do.

"Sorry I didn't answer yesterday. I was feeling very depressed and I tend to crawl into a hole."
"Do you get depressed often?"

Deep breath.

"Hmm. I do actually."
"Well, next time I call and you're not feeling so good, why don't you tell me what I can do to help? Maybe talking to someone would make it easier."

And there it is. That moment. The moment when I wonder. Now he's nice about it, but who's to tell when it will irremediably put him off? And anyway, where is this going? Am I casual enough? I don't want a therapist. I want a friend with benefits! Shut up head.

I'm not convinced I'm good at this casual game.

French women don't get fat

2010-01-01T05:34:00.000-08:00
This post was inspired by Britni's photo essay on plus-size models.

When I was living in America, two things surprised me: the way people would discuss their weight problems and diets while actually having dinner; and the way exercise was seen as something virtuous, even necessary. "I don't exercise" got incredulous looks. Don't you know it's good for you???

In France, you don't talk about diets during meals. Being on a diet is not something you share with other people, it's shameful. It means you are going to be a bore at parties. It means that you are going to annoy friends and partners with the question:"Can you tell I've lost X kilos?"

Exercise is not seen as something virtuous: it's bewildering for many of us. Why would you inflict pain voluntarily on yourself? Sure, people do it, but only for the aesthetic benefits. No talk of "how good it feels".

Yet weight is an obsession. It's a secret, a hidden obsession. It's not that French women don't get fat; many are. I believe our obesity rates are climbing every year. But in Paris, populated mostly by rich people because of rent costs, being fat is something rare and strange. And if you're fat, well, you know...Just stop eating.

When I lived in Chicago, my views on weight changed drastically. On the one hand, I, the "plump" girl, was considered normal. On the other, the American relationship to food troubled me greatly. Food isn't only fuel: it's also taste and pleasure. I was dismayed not by the quantity of food but by its poor quality. I began to wonder if we couldn't combine the French and American attitudes to food and diet to create a healthier approach to eating!

I also met some wonderful people who talked to me about the scientific facts behind our bodies. I became an advocate of Health At Every Size. I realized that my weight (now I'm considered normal/big-boned, at twenty I was called "plump") was something I couldn't control completely, just like my height.

But you know what? Living in France I still have to listen to people criticizing others for being fat, for not being in control. As a recovering bulimic, this is not very helpful, but beyond that, it goes against scientific evidence and common humanity.

We rarely see images of fat people. In my side-bar you'll find an awesome fashion blog by Big Beauty, who lives in Paris. She's one of the rare "fatshionistas" in the French blogosphere. Every month or so, some French lady magazine does a spread on "fat fashion", modeled by size eights.

I believe we are imprisonned by the ideal image of the effortlessly thin French woman, smoking her cigarette while savouring her chocolate dessert. We're supposed to be perfect, while never showing strain or effort. A poll came out recently showing that French women are the thinnest in Europe, and simultaneously have the worst body image. I'm not surprised at all. I'm just sad.

Farewell, 2009

2009-12-31T01:05:00.000-08:00
End of the year, resolutions, blablabla, as we say in French. I don't think I want to commit myself to anything for 2010. I have wishes, sure (health people! I wish everyone good health this year) and hopes (living in Berlin for 6 months) but these aren't resolutions.

In 2009 I....

-lived in the Heidiloft, a small and charming apartment in Lyon, and then moved back to Paris.
-passed a very difficult state exam to become a university teacher specialized in American civilization.
-got accepted in the Lyon music conservatory.
-decided to spend two years getting a Masters in environmental science instead of having a job, thanks to my scholarship.
-made new friends, more than I ever had before in so short a time.
-spent a month using shovels, hammers, and electric saws in Germany, and discovered I could do things.
-Visited Barcelona.
-ran a 20 K.
-had a bad, bad case of heartbreak.
-got over it.
-started blogging and internet-met a bunch of incredibly diverse and interesting people.
-became best friends with my sister after years of conflict.
-went to 42 concerts, 32 movies and 6 plays.

A good year, I think.

No resolutions then. Maybe just to keep my eyes open so I can help others.

Happy New Year, world!

I like to watch

2009-12-27T08:51:00.000-08:00
There's the faint trace of purple lipstick on the narrow strip of skin between his spike-studded cuff and his leather gloves. He stares at the bartender. She leans towards him, her short green hair gleaming under the poor lighting. She grabs his cell phone, using the camera application as a mirror to reapply some lipstick. She looks at him provocatively. He's grinning at her. Her backless dress shows off the huge tattoo etched on her shoulders: "ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME". She throws a quick glance at me: "Wanna drink?"
"A lemonade please."

You know, because my jeans and cardigan weren't conspicuous enough.

I love this Goth bar. I come here when I can't sleep and feel like people watching. There's always a couple making out in front of the entrance door, alternately taking puffs from a cigarette and kissing. There's always a guy in his fifties hungrily staring at the young girls wearing bunny ears, and at the lesbian couples slow-dancing. And there's me, with my book and my owlish glasses, perched on a armchair, using the book as an alibi to watch the scene.

There's the two guys who always argue about nü metal, and the other guy who texts all the time.

There's the other bartender, with his spiky pink hair, who conjures up pastel coloured cocktails with one whisk, and who flirts with the indie guys who turn up already drunk.

I'm fascinated by the courtship ritual.Theway bodies find a way around each other, moving slowly, surely towards their goal. The way it always ends in the same way.

When I lived with X, I hoped his gift for living would rub off on me. One day, I would wake up, and I would no longer feel desolation rushing up to my heart, crashing like a wave against an obstacle. Depression would no longer follow me stealthily, robbing me of what was rightfully mine. I would bounce out of bed and everything would sparkle at me like a promise like passion like love like lust like faith like you.

I watch them as if they will entrust me with their secret.

As I leave the bar, rain pelting down on my bare head, I espy a couple under the bus stop. His hands move passionately down her back, and her arms are wrapped around him. As she breaks off the kiss, I notice the tattoo snaking around her white neck: CARPE DIEM. Seize the day.

I like to watch, because I want to like to live.

In the meantime, I'll fight this bitch off with everything I have.

Taking a break

2009-12-27T05:31:00.000-08:00

I need a break from myself these days. I mean, I went to pick up my cell phone from the lost and found place at the opera house this morning and I managed to lose my wallet on the way.

Great. Maybe I'm trying to tell myself something? (or as my sister says I should just close my handbag better).

It hits sometimes: this need to change, to take on big tasks, big events, momentous things. It can be expressed in physical alterations: the red hair came after the break-up, and I like it, so it's stayed, even though the meaning of it has evolved. It used to be a big Leave me alone sign. Now I just think it suits me.

I feel it coming, this new wave of change. I'm looking forward to new music listening (thanks for the recommendations by the way), and to new authors. I started wearing dresses in September.I never used to.

So when I knew I would have to take a three-week break from training because of asthma, I decided I was going to do it.

Most people don't like it.

Funny how I don't care. Funny how I like it, and how it's my own promise to myself.

I wonder where I'm going, but I'm shedding old memories and dreams, and my newness is startling and wonderful.

All I need to do now is stop losing all my frakking stuff!

Merry Christmas (Snippets)

2009-12-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

There's something magical about Christmas; and I'm not talking about the way my stomach magically expands to fit in all the food it does. You arrive at that point in the year when you're supposed to exude good grace, mellow delight and happiness, effortlessly. Christmas isn't really a choice for most of us. We may sometimes fantasize about skipping everything and just go drink some beers with our friends, but in the end, cultural pressures make us give in. Family tensions always resurface, making us dread the usual tiffs and spats.

But sometimes it just works really well. It's the silliness of wearing paper hats, or the joyful snap of a cracker, or finding out that a gift you chose with love is really appreciated. It's playing with the cousins and laughing at the funny anecdotes and singing Cole Porter with your grandfather.

I was really happy to be with my family and reunited with my sister (who makes a special appearance today).

Hugs from France and happy holidays!

HOLIDAY

2009-12-22T08:23:00.000-08:00
Visiting the wax museum, I enjoyed a leisurely drink with a fellow soprano.

I'm on holiday! I'm so giddy this will be nonsensical. I had a wonderful weekend. X came to Paris to see a few friends, and although one of them got stuck in England because of the snow, we had a great time. We practised duets and went to the wax museum, and just relaxed together. He was in wonderful shape, looking handsome and contented. He's started seeing someone he likes and is enjoying the research he's doing for his PhD. Anyway, life is good for him. And I liked singing some Fauré with him. He still hates Purcell though. Oh well.

So now I have a few days before I start studying again and I need recommendations: any music I should listen to, any good books, any good movies? I want to catch up.

I'm so happy to get my sister back from the US of A, I'm so happy to be spending an afternoon wrapping gifts and I'm so happy I can waste hours on the internet again.

Eternal Sunshine of the...

2009-12-18T07:31:00.000-08:00
What are your memories worth if you are the only one to have them? Often my sister and I bicker about remembrances, and I know how grateful I am to have her as a sounding board. Did this really happen or was it an illusion? We'll replay some of the funniest or worst times of our childhood, and we'll giggle or shudder in unison.

What is your past relationship worth if you are the only one to remember it?

My biggest fear, strangely enough, when X and I were together, was that he would forget everything. Because he does. He can't remember names or faces, or events or anything. I would cuddle against him at night and wonder if he would remember how nice the meal had been, or how much we had laughed during the concert of A Hundred Gypsy Violins. And then I would realize that of course he would not.

In a way my fears have been realized. Sometimes I'll ask him "Do you remember that weird time we had..." and he'll shake his head. I suspect he'll only remember the bad times. Or maybe not even. He'll ultimately remember that we were together at one point, and not much beyond.

I am very good friends with my first ex, we've known each other since we were 16. The friendship we've built goes beyond what we shared as a couple, but it's so very comforting to know that when I make a joke about the time we went wine-tasting around Alsace and got hopelessly lost and rather drunk, he'll know what I'm talking about and smile.

With X, I know our friendship will be completely different if we remain friends. I don't mind that two years of my life have been erased from his memory, because I never expected him to remember anyway, and I've had time to grow accustomed to the idea that I will only have my side of the story.

I guess I'm forgettable, but at least I get custody of all the great memories.

Special Snowflake

2009-12-18T06:49:00.000-08:00

(The sign said originally "Road works closed to the public"-Chantier interdit au public- but some nihilist soul transformed it into "Happiness and opportunities denied to the public"-Chance interdite au public)

It's snowing here in Paris! It hasn't happened in years. In France we react to snow in a way that amuses my now American sister: "What, a couple of inches and you can't deal?"
No, we can't. As soon as the smallest flake arrives, salt trucks arrive. Accidents multiply. People complain. (Well, even more than usual). I'm sitting in the library, looking at the snow from the window. I love watching it. I remember when someone first told me that each snowflake is different. I didn't believe them. I went to look it up and then I tried to examine flakes under my father's big lense, but they always melted too fast.

In America, I learned the expression "Special Snowflake". At first I thought it was redundant, since every snowflake is special, then I realized it was an insult. I think it's a very poetic insult.

And the worse of it is I do think everyone is a Special Snowflake. I don't mean that anyone deserves special treatment, but that we are all different. We may behave in predictable patterns, but then so does snow. And to me snowflakes are so poignant in their sad descent, their perfection beyond my grasp or my lense. I know that many wonderful people cross my path too briefly for me to know just how special they are, and all the alternative lives I could live are as short-lived as a handful of snow.

So I'm reclaiming the expression. It sounds like an endearment to me.

"Come here, my Special Snowflake!"

Impetuous

2009-12-17T12:16:00.000-08:00
I can't sleep. I'm nervous about all the finals, papers and Christmas gifts I'll never have the time to purchase.
My phone vibrates.
"Are you sleeping? Want to watch a movie at my place?"

It's one in the morning. I ponder for half a second, then slip out of bed, throw on a pair of jeans and a warm sweater, don't even bother to prettify my sleepy countenance, and go off in the cold, silent streets.

He has the requisite tiny student apartment, but it's so tidy and stylish, it looks more like a catalogue student apartment. I look around.
"Do you actually live here?"
He laughs.
"Yeah, I do, but since I've been interning and going out quite a lot, I have no food in the fridge to prove it."

I settle on his couch and we start talking. It's a desultory conversation, filled with un-awkward silences and the occasional yawn. We're both tired but I can tell he doesn't want to break off now, because the flow of words feels good. We talk about everything, the way you do when you get to know someone you're attracted to.

The inevitable tension settles in, and it becomes less if, than when one of us will lean in to kiss the other. But as the conversation goes on, there's no hurry. We both know, and we're old enough to enjoy the slowness, the flirtatiousness of this early morning conversation, and the curious feeling that whispering can give to perfectly innocuous words. Every movement feels momentous. Every smile feels like a secret shared. It's pretty much perfect.

And when I fell asleep in his arms, still in my jeans and sweater, it felt like the best impetuous decision I had made in a long time.

Don't push me

2009-12-16T01:42:00.000-08:00
I am polite to the point of absurdity. I've annoyed countless people by over-apologizing, over-thanking, and any other over-politeness you can imagine. A typical exchange would be:

"Sara, can you stop apologizing all the time?"
"Oh, I'm so sorry it bothers you!'

So irritating.

I've been instilled with this since childhood and it's very hard for me to stop these reflexes switching on. It's like helping people carry their luggage in the bus or train: it's something I do because that's the way I should behave. I never question the impulse; I give in to it quietly.

Because of this, many have seen me as a doormat. I've been criticized for being too nice. I'm not nice. I'm polite. It's different. I can be nice, but I keep it for people I care about. I'm polite to everyone.

But underneath this veneer I am, in fact, a very angry person. I hate unfairness. I hate patronizing tones, disrespect, cruelty. It takes everything I have not to blow up when confronted with this in my day-to-day life. I think of my politeness as a protection against my aggressive side.

I treat people with respect. I try to make life a bit easier for everyone by smoothing over the small events of life with kind words and actions. That doesn't make me a good person per se: it makes me a frankly annoying person a lot of the time. However, don't push me. Don't treat me like someone who will accept anything. Because although the surface of the water is unrippled and calm, the turmoil underneath would scare you.

Why I am afraid of taking drugs

2009-12-15T09:59:00.000-08:00
I am terrified of becoming an addict.

My father is an alcoholic, many people in my mother's family have been addicts.
When my sister smokes hash or takes amphetamines "to study" better, she thinks I'm judging her because I am conventional and straight-laced, which I am. But not about drugs.

I can't imagine losing control of myself. I remember taking sleeping pills and doing things and not remembering anything, and I vowed to myself never to do that again. I get tipsy very fast, so I rarely drink more than two glasses of wine at a time, say once a month.

Not everyone becomes an addict. I know people who do drugs recreationally.

I'm just scared that I won't be able to, so I don't touch anything.

And deep inside, I wish my sister wouldn't either. Because if by chance she does become an addict-I don't think I can witness any more self-destruction again.

The Tree

2009-12-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

Coming this winter! THE TREE!

Featuring Mums, a tree, Sara and Adorable Cousin M masquerading as a tree himself. Happy times. And if I look a trifle haughty on the stepladder, it's because I'm afraid of heights.
Kitsch is the name of the game. Each year we go to my grandmother's apartment and we decorate until we drop.

OMG WTF

2009-12-11T16:46:00.000-08:00
Mulled wine. And Class Christmas party.
Sara, the klutz, has just spilled her mulled wine on a friend of a friend. He's tall and nice and works for an environmental consulting firm. We were talking about his job and I just...spilled wine all over his beige trousers.

"You obviously did this to see me in my underwear."

By now he had changed into a pair of pants belonging to our host and I was helping him scrub the wine off.

"This isn't the first time we've met, you know?"
"No, when did we meet?"
"It was in a café, and you were telling these jokes, and everyone was laughing."
"Oh."

I didn't remember. But I liked him. He was funny and self-deprecating. We spent a lot of the evening sitting on a couch, laughing about everything and enjoying ourselves. I remember thinking:wow, I'm having fun! And I like him! I haven't liked anyone in ages.

As I gathered my stuff so I wouldn't be too knackered out for training this morning, he hovered around the door. I took a deep breath.
"Can I have your phone number, please?"
He smiled.
"I was about to ask you for yours."
"Well, that means you're going to have to choose the movie."
"Obviously."
"This is my finals week so..."
"No problem, I'll wait."

We smiled at each other.
"I like you."
"I like you too. Have a nice walk home!"

And I did.

Open relationships

2009-12-11T01:15:00.000-08:00
I went to a bar with my statistics class some time ago. And the conversation turned to the topic of open relationships. Most of my comrades are around 21/22, and many have been in relationships for more than a year. I've noticed this trend among my friends before. I think my generation is into serial monogamy.

So many of them are considering at one point opening up their relationships. Mostly the girls, because they have been their boyfriends' first girlfriends, and feel that they cheated them from the normal playing around boys do(Yes, for French girls playing around is a boy thing). One girl told me as we sipped lemonade: "I feel that I would be able to control his cheating if I supervised it."
"But if you're opening up your relationship, it's not cheating, though, is it?"
She giggled.
"It's Cheating Prevention Tactic! It's a genius idea: you get to spy on him under the pretense of being open-minded.Hopefully I could choose girls that are almost as good as me, but not quite." She smiled evilly.

I come from a family where almost everyone has been divorced, even my grandparents. However I am not a relationship skeptic, on the contrary. I've had two serious, long-term relationships and I wouldn't say they were failures at all, or wastes of my time. But I find it difficult to believe that most people are brave enough or willing enough to put enough energy and effort into something once it stops being fun and effortless. I often see one person doing all the work, and getting discouraged, and that leads to separation.

I have no idea if I'll ever be in another serious relationship. But I've been thinking about what would prevent me from having an open one, and it boils down to this: I don't feel attracted to people only on a physical level, even very beautiful people. This would make it difficult for me to separate the physical from the emotional. And I think I would feel judged and compared to other women/men.

In fact, this second problem has nothing to do with open relationships, it has to do with me-my self-esteem, my confidence. Working on it!

The conversation ended on a funny note: a girl told me about her failed attempts to open her relationship for the summer, because she wanted her boyfriend to have more experience. He spent the entire month griping that no one was attractive/funny/interesting enough. He then realised how much he cared for her, and proposed.

Awwwww.