Installment 4: Chantilly and The Fellowship of the Roo

I left my apartment early in the morning to get to the metro at Nation, a giant, bustling station that looks almost like an airport for underground trains. We, however, were scheduled to travel to Chantilly, a suburb of Paris that like all suburbs of Paris is painfully charming and features some kind of historical chateau in order to foster some kind of local economy from the tourism that stems from whoever actually wants to leave Paris (there are not a lot of people in Chantilly.) After waiting the mandatory 45 minutes past the scheduled departure time, we drove an hour into the suburb and the bus driver, who astounded me with his dexterity as do most bus drivers, began to navigate the narrow cobblestone streets of Chantilly toward the hotel.

Every suburb of Paris that I have seen looks like the same movie set for a film about Joan of Arc. My suspicion is that this colorful Medieval allure is actually the nature of most towns in France, but Paris takes their daily patterns and simple food while juxtaposing it with a metropolis through which run efficient systems of public transportation and cars carrying important people to important places. We drove past the town's chateau on the way to the hotel, and its sprawling, Arthurian perfection widened my eyes considerably. The hotel itself was, in a word, beautiful. It is an estate situated on a hilltop and has an outside appearance that is, to me, vaguely Florentine. The space behind the building is a rolling meadow with tree stumps for lawn chairs and lavender for weeds and paths through dense groves of trees for the more curious residents. There were tennis courts and, perhaps inappropriately, a ping pong table rested outside some of the ground floor rooms. Only this place could mix such motel-ish outside access with such well-manicured landscapes and stay flawless. A ground floor of high-ceilinged, velvet-curtained "conference rooms" led onto an outside terrace with trays of macarons (being constantly replaced with fresher macarons) and juice machines and up a luxurious staircase into an equestrian-themed bar and through the lobby onto another terrace that was a balcony that overlooked the green estate grounds out onto the straight border of conifers that signified the end of the scene. Apparently NYU decided to put us up in this place for further "orientation." It was here that I realized the full gravity of my dumb luck. It is at this present moment that I realize this blog should be called "The Gravity of my Dumb Luck." I was rooming with Cody, and after a round of meetings ranging from "here are your courses" to "try to lead a healthy lifestyle" to "let's talk about the summer's required reading" to "introduce yourselves..….again," we were served an incredible lunch and made to go to one more meeting before being set free before dinner.

Around 60 NYU students then descended onto the grounds of the estate, filling the pristine country air with the clouds of smoke that accompany us. Carcinogens are a sign of our university affiliation and I stand by them with pride while attempting to hide the fact that I am breathing quite sparingly and, if possible, between collective drags that punctuate group conversations. (I suppose I'll never get rid of the paranoia that comes from growing up around oncologists.) Some played tennis, some drank coffee, some sat and basked in the sun, sharing iPods and one-upping each other with varying amounts of unknown artists; the frolicking continued until dinner was prepared and, like a sheltered young prince, I stopped tying flowers into bracelets for mama and went to my room to put on a shirt and tie for dinner. This was an important juncture because I was introducing my new peers to my tie collection. Until now, I had refrained because I didn't want to be the kid who's ALWAYS in a tie. For anyone who doesn't know, four years of Catholicism and being able to wear nothing of my choice except neckties caused me to channel a lot of creative thought and a good deal of money into a sizable tie collection. I love ties; I appreciate their construction, their minor details, their versatility, their timelessness, and their ability to infuse outfits with appropriateness and irony at the same time. I chose one of my favorites, the narrow (but not obnoxiously so) one in a rich blood red and sporting a pattern of the RCA record logo (a jack russell terrier listening to a phonograph.) The repeating picture is barely visible and manages a sort of proud whimsicality like the Hermes ties with ducks and whatnot (I wish.) I feel as though this was a good choice.

Dinner, of course, was fantastic. A chilled Gazpacho (which is very well-loved here) and sliced baguette preceded a boned thigh of chicken salted heavily and wrapped in crisp phyllo dough like beef wellington. It was phenomenal (although it didn't surprise me; maybe that's what it is to be French. You eat like a king and don't visibly care.) I struggle to find an adjective for dessert and have discovered that there isn't a really a noble word for chocolate-based items. I'll take up that burden: dessert was cacaosomous, and the wine was on NYU. Espresso and the setting of the sun led naturally to a migration into the equestrian bar I mentioned earlier. Maya was talking about her favorite music and her difficulty with detoxing from her piano. It was immediately evident that she doesn't play music like other people play music. With other people, an instrument is a hobby or even an important component of their life or livelihood, but it isn't something that merits tears in the eyes of someone who hasn't touched piano keys in a week and a half. With some coercion, we managed to get her into the bar, which was lit moodily and held aloft the stale scent of dusty mahogany and old liqueur. Horses, horseback riders, photographs of old equestrian competitions, and posters featuring things related to horses (like Hermes) decorated the walls, and sitting directly on top of the piano (nestled against a wall in the back left corner) was a bronze sculpture of an old jockey and his steed. They were sculpted to look like they had experienced each other extensively; it was an intimate little piece, and they both looked down at the piano bench to watch the musician and ponder the floating chords being hammered onto strings as tight as the horse's sinews deep in the belly of the instrument. Maya sat down and fiddled with her hands, having promised something jazzy to a small group of us who were discussing jazz outside. She looked down and touched the ivory pieces, claiming immediately that she simply couldn't play anything. She seemed paralyzed by desire and embarrassed by the inability to resist it. Encouragement led her to evoke a few sweet notes, gifts to an unknown household, and she brought her hands to her face in exasperation. It had only been a little over a week and she was fighting her ecstasy like a heroin addict who tried to stop. Stillness fought its way into the atmosphere as her fingers became ten shepherds of unruly spiders running for their lives and Debussy's Clair de Lune, with all its confounding dissonance and heartbreaking changes in cadence, told its aggressive story through hysterical bouts of melody. The music, however, was not the main spectacle; Maya was. I have seen many a pianist become one with her piano and play something lovely, but the relationship between Maya and the piano is distant, an abusive relationship of constant fear. It is tense and engaging to watch every pass overpower her so completely that she is forced to jerk out of her poised classical training and shift the grin on the corner of her lips to a frightened, concentrated scowl while stifling a trembling ankle against the pressure to perform with something that throws such wild energy back over her body when she asks for nothing but functionality. The bronze jockey looks down in understanding. He knows what it's like to be on a horse whose wild desire to run can barely be controlled once he commands it to move. The ribbon affixed to her sock sways with the nervous energy like a dry leaf in the winter wind, and the black thicket which falls about her face seems a protective measure for her eyes. The music begets honesty. Around the bar with tables atop old gaslight poles and a linear pattern of recessed lighting in orbit around bulky paper fixtures, I hear confessions. We all realize that we're supposed to be here, and she keeps falling deeper into herself. She changes her lips again and begins to collect the scattered pieces of a descending trill as she furrows her dark eyebrows and glances away into a distant conversation like she thinks the spectators can help her. She's wrong. We can't. She punishes her addiction with perpendicular strikes of her fingernails, then apologizes to black keys with the pale pads of her fingers which seem to bleed in the maroon light about her. Maya doesn't control the piano; she resists it. Eventually the night became more jovial and everyone around the room offered their musical talents or their voices to the gathering of friends, but her electric performance stayed with me and flavored the trip to Chantilly with a small piece of what can happen when someone seems to love something so much that it inspires a real and present fear of descent into nonexistence.

The next morning, we toured the Chateau Chantilly and its surrounding grounds. While one group went inside, a few compatriots and I decided that, despite having only about an hour before our group met to go into the chateau (now an art museum called the Musee Condé), we would travel to the opposite side of the castle grounds to try to find a rumored kangaroo zoo. A professor by the name of Christina Van Koehler had told us about it, and even though we weren't sure whether she was being sarcastic, we felt the need to risk lateness and find those kangaroos.

On through the bending back roads and though the wooded areas we went, coming across mine fields of goose feces and lovely ponds of water clear as crystal. We had a map, but it didn't help very much, and we ended up a long way away from the main chateau taking a sharp right through trees because we thought…well we didn't think. Maybe the kangaroos were back there?

And they were. Across a clearing peppered with dandelion on the other side of the trees was an enclosure through which ran about a half dozen chilly, bored wallabies. It was incredibly strange to see a collection of such foreign animals in the middle of a Parisian suburb in such a cold climate, and so far from where anyone would ever want to maintain them. Anyway our victory was documented for Facebook and we were back on our way toward the chateau, power walking down a straight road that ended up taking us back to where we had been in much less time than it took us to get there.

The chateau itself is a vision. I myself think it beats Versailles in beauty, plus it has a moat. Where's Versailles' moat? Across the bridges to access the entrance, stone sentinels sit atop their posts and represent different royal characteristics. There are lions for bravery, dogs for loyalty, stags for grace and strength, and some animals that don't exist just to give visitors a sense that Anne de Montmorency had an imagination. Intricacies are carved in stone over every window; shields bearing the crests of old families rest atop the doors, and griffins guard each corner of the exterior. The masonry that went into building this place is mind-bending; it's possible that I simply prefer its Renaissance style to the golden gaudiness of Versailles, but I really think that its construction required more thought. On the inside are rooms upon rooms of masterpieces about which I know little but feel a great deal. The famous Three Graces is hidden away in a little corner with a velvet rope around it beckoning visitors to look away from the mythological storyboards on the ceilings, and there is a room of stuffy portraiture that features a painting of Mary Queen of Scots.

We followed the trip to the Chateau with the compulsory tourist lunch in the surrounding town (which of course has menus in international languages for the hordes of tourists.) We passed the time in a little pizzeria where I had a Florentine pizza with a fried egg in the middle. I am beginning to want fried eggs in the middle of everything. Life with a fried egg in the middle. This is a good way to live.

The group then climbed back onto our buses and returned to Paris satisfied and ready to begin our real lives as students. Thus begins the days of preliminaries...

Installment 3: Up to Speed

Chronology has always been less important to me than it should be. The days that span the space between the last installment and the writing time of this one twist and turn like wrought iron and pleasant dreams of untraveled roads; the preludes to the year ahead are almost cruelly numerous. I myself ache again for the daily academic grind and healthy amount of time spent standing on one foot between the territories of scheduling stress and descent into real schizophrenia (not the vanilla kind where you talk to yourself in Chinese.) I cannot in any way complain about what I've been doing. This post, or in any way the next few if I decide to uncharacteristically divide them, will all deal with the last two weeks and how unjustly incredible they have been. The "preludes" that I mention are the "orientation" activities. The welcome events have been very many and very unevenly spaced; lunches with RAs and dinners with deans and "find your phone" trips and club information lunches and heartening spoken treatises on the truly global vision of NYU President John Sexton have filled in the spaces between what feels like far too much collective time spent looking around. Adam Gopnik, in his hotly contested Paris to the Moon, had to be correct when he talked about how the day-to-day manners and mannerisms here are some of the world's most beautiful. It's easy here to get an espresso and sit.

It could be a linguistic difference that makes the word "sit" feel absolutely sufficient in regard to a French cafe; s'asseoir, with its tragically hip apostrophe and sassy internal consonants, is definitely a more pregnant word for "sit" than "sit." However, it's probably more likely that people walk around with a lot on their subconsciouses when everything is visually stunning even if it's a dirty Turkish butcher shop or the sight of very possibly tailored garbage man uniforms, and the idea of taking a seat in a wicker chair by the street and jumping from face to foreign face searching for someone who might agree with you about the whole show is an appealing and well-practiced pastime. It's like the whole city is a discussion. One of those warm, quiet intellectual ones that take place at 4 AM between two people who are physically exhausted but mentally stimulated into a state of what I daresay can become sharing. I'm one of those guys now.

I've been finding bits of those linguistic details to be quite relevant vis a vis my thoughts of Paris. The French are not a people who have to insist they they are cooler than Americans; most of them simply are. There is a nondescript swagger to the well-shod masses of Paris, but it goes without saying that sometimes (rarely) everyone loses control. Sartre once criticized the writing of William Faulkner for being overwhelmingly histrionic; in this essay, he cited Marcel Proust as a better example of how to unleash emotional angst--namely, in small bits. The two thinking men on the French side of the argument demonstrate very accurately the nature of French anger. There is actually a verb in French called "stopper." It means what you think it means, and it was taken from the English "stop." One may be inclined to think that this is normal because of the many cognates between the two languages, but one detail betrays an unflattering secret about the French--stopper is only used in the imperative tense. In other words, Angeline cannot "stop" Guillame from doing something, but in the middle of a frazzled and furious moment, Angeline can shout at Guillame, "stopstopstopstop!" Here, Angeline reveals her more primitive tendencies while under the pressure of the short stressful, moment. Angeline takes to her savage, pilgrim instincts and flees her European language for the promise of a word that may convey with more force and less syllables that Guillame needs to stop. Angeline becomes American. However, she regains her composure instantly afterward and switches back to her native tongue, avoiding stolen cognates like the plague. It's possible that stopper is a small and delicate shard of knowledge that communicates the precise differences between the American and the francais.

The French, who might be the only people with a 40-member committee at a National Institute who meet to decide annually what is and is not part of the French language and who/who not to honor for achievements involving the French language, give away a lot with their verbs. Like stopper, "falloir" is a curious little artifact. It's a simple one; you can learn it in French 1 in any high school in the world, and it means "to be necessary." However, falloir is classically French because it only exists sometimes. As is it were a gift of symbolism passed down from the Grand Institut de France to the mortals of the world, the subject pronouns "I," "you," "she," "we," and "they" are not deserving of falloir's conjugation; it can be used only in the masculine third person to express that "it is necessary to" or "there is a necessity that I have for…"

Falloir is just like the French. Above ground, the manners between strangers are polite enough to be considered militaristic; if you don't wish the boulanger "bonjour," you will be punished karmically. But once on the metro, a French person will do absolutely anything to avoid eye contact or any glance or word that might acknowledge the existence of a fellow human being. In French consulates, whoever brings the completed visa application and all the necessary documentation may be granted a visa. But once a worker decides arbitrarily to erase the tangible existence of the letter she holds in her hand, a visa becomes a distant light beam that dies halfway down a dark hole with a copy machine where all the other nail-biting, file-shuffling visa rejects are imprisoned. In France, the title of "student" carries a cultural weight. Since students are young, educated people and young, educated people like to protest and Parisians love nothing more than protests, resources to students here are fantastically extensive. A student can enroll in a sport for free, fly to Krakow for eleven euro, eat a three-course meal for 2.90, or access some of the best and most well-kept libraries in the world. However, the library might close at 7:24. A country that values its young people like no other country might shut its tax-funded doors on their educational goals for the simple reason that it is 7:24. I find more and more that every culture spices its language with pieces of its soul; like French manners, like visa acquisition, like student benefits---falloir exists only sometimes.

If you refer again to the beginning of this post, you'll find that I promised to detail the happenings of the last two weeks. In following this blog, you all might have to deal with a bit of dishonesty from time to time, because my life here has been so eventful of late that I regarded Installment 3 as something of a painful obligation. Once something incredible happened, I would write it down and think "Oh no…I'll have to find a way to put that in the blog too." This is not a healthy way to live. Already there are complaints about the length of the posts, so I truly do regret leaving so much time between them. I'm still working out the kinks with how my writing will fit into the frame of my day-to-day life, but now that a day-to-day life is really beginning to emerge, I feel that it is time to talk of many things, including but not limited to: the rest of my move-in, some people I've met, some things I've done, my current state of affairs, my dreams, wishes, fetishes, fantasies, turn-ons, turn-offs, and whether I enjoy children and long walks on the beach. (I don't.)

I suppose I left you all with the night before the day during which I became the guy with the appliances. Anyway, we found 3 brilliant variety stores on Boulevard Voltaire, and we bought up everything I could possibly need for my future culinary experiments. I have a food processor/blender that has already found use in the production of bruschetta, a Foreman-esque grill that has already found use in the production of grilled chicken, toasting bread for hors d'oeuvres, and the grilling of a panini for a Canadian friend who paid for her use of the grill with a Snickers bar which I could not find the wherewithal to eat and gave to Cody. Cody is a new character here. He's a slender, sunshiny chap from Washington State who lives on a diet of baguettes and candy and with whom I experienced an immediate mutual gravity upon move-in day. We've been hanging out a lot and I know he might read this, so I won't describe him in lengthy or creepy detail for the world wide web to see. To continue this tangent, the phenomenon of instant friendship is as common as meteors on Mars here at NYU Paris. The admission staff funneling the freaks into the underground Liberal Studies program must have impeccable eyes for who could get along almost immediately after being thrown into a foreign country. I actually had a conversation two nights ago over a mind-numbingly delicious onion soup (thanks Winston) about the merits and pitfalls of the Oxford comma. To anyone reading this, the merits and pitfalls of the Oxford comma (and the tragically perpetual feeling of inadequacy for those learning foreign languages, about which we also converse frequently) are less than thrilling subjects. To me, however, the Oxford comma can cause a sentence to ring with all the authority of established linguistic law or make a phrase seem portable, spartan, sleek and effective. It is minor points of punctuation and the life of a person lost in all the world's words that ignite the voracious academic dreamer in me---and everyone here wants to talk about it. At the risk of sounding like an ecstatic schoolgirl, I am happy here. The idea of being in Paris and the opportunity to slip into the background of the world's best background to just watch it all go by would be enough, and has been enough for centuries of young intellectuals, artists, expatriates, etc, but I'm having a hard time absorbing the credibility of the notions that I'm not doing it just to do it, I have a greater direction, and that I'm not alone.

Back to my story. I realize my tendency toward rambling, so I'll list some of the next events in a concise format with little regard to the passing of time and much regard to important highlights for the purpose of saving the reader some time and also for the purpose of expressing their overwhelmingly rapid succession:

-I walked into a store run by a Chinese man to buy a wheeled grocery bag/cart thing

-I could not adequately describe the bag in French, so, hearing the man's accent, I switched to Mandarin, the better of my two foreign languages

-I did the transaction in Mandarin

-He switched back to French and asked me a question which I did not understand because I was still thinking in Mandarin

-He switched to English because I didn't understand

-I responded in French because I didn't want to speak English and now realized he was no longer speaking Mandarin

-He too switched to French and completed the transaction, which included many helpful household items

-I switched to Mandarin to say goodbye

-He said goodbye in French

-I leave with the taste of embarrassment bitter in my mouth but with the somewhat exciting knowledge that I just had my first trilingual conversation.

-I go to sleep that night to wake up the next morning on official move-in day

-I wheel my things to the residence where I meet the RAs and a professor with a strong presence who I will talk about later

-I see my apartment and its low, samurai-ish bed, French windows opening to a courtyard, charmingly-dysfunctional-though-functional-enough kitchenette, surprisingly spacious bathroom, and leprechaun-sized bowls in the cabinet.

-I am pleased

-We unpack my stuff and set me up

-Molly and my mother peace.

-I go back to my room, alone for the first time, and like an absolute lout begin to assemble my door-supported pull-up bar. Clearly it's time for a petit workout.

-I muse on the nature of my idiocy

-The pull up bar cannot be supported by the door, which is French and does not feature the generous precipice of moulding sported by American doors and required by my favorite workout toy

-I begin to wrap socks and toilet paper around the ends of the bar to engineer it to be able to sit at a right angle and support my hopeful, tired, sweaty body

-This endeavor fails; problems of construction may not be solved with tube socks.

-I meet some people in the lobby to go get my metro card. Here I meet Cody for the first time and walk to Oberkampf to get my navigo pass (similar to the PATCO freedom card)

-I begin to contemplate the contingencies of the navigo swagger--how will I flash my pass? Will I hold it between two fingers like a poker player tossing a winning hand onto the table? Will I look straight ahead and not at the admiring tourists? Will I remove my sunglasses? Yes, I will remove my sunglasses….etc

-I am mistaken for a Frenchman when I am asked by a man on the street (in French) where to find Cartier. Since I assumed he was talking about the watch store, I told him I did not know. It occurs to me later that he could have been asking about a specific neighborhood (a "quarter.") I nevertheless consider this event a smashing success.

-We all gather in the lobby to go to dinner at the restaurant right next to the residence.

-There are so many people that the restaurant closes off a room for us

-Jacob and I, the two young gentlemen from New Jersey at the table, are the only two who order alcohol. I flatter myself with the noble first impression and representation of my home state.

-I order a filet of beef topped with foie, which after plasma was named the fifth state of matter.

-I meet a student from Toulouse studying at a business school in Paris. Her name is Melanie (Melonie?) and Cody and I share a strange mutual obsession with her. At the risk of breaking the list format in which I engaged myself to tell you points of a story that should have been told in small bits throughout two weeks but instead is being told in an epic of a blog post, Mel(a)(o)nie is lithe and tall, with artfully delicate proportions--long face, long hands, long neck; in such a venue her elegance is almost awkward to behold. In conversation, her narrow eyes are shy and cast not forward, not down, but directly diagonal like those of a swan craning its neck. With no misplacement of emphasis on her physical features, her voice is her most outstanding quality. It lilts inquisitively and sounds always a bit helpless within the brutal realms of English and flows in its own element with the high, rich timbre that is perfect for the more feminine and less Germanic French. I've seen her around the building a few times and she has not become less striking. Back to the list! I'm sorry!

-I get to know some more fellow students on a walk after dinner

-I see the NYU center and take a French placement test

-I go vintage shopping through the third and fourth arrondissements and watch as Winston, a fashion connoisseur and fellow Philly boy, gives fashion directives to my new friends Will, Maya (who I decided I had to befriend after watching her rant loudly in a curious and endearing North Carolina accent about the indignity of the flip flop), and Tess. I realize that haute couture, even in stores that sell it, is in some part only an expression of the potential story that might take place with the designer's element being worn by a participant. Wearing haute couture is like asking the question, "What do you think would happen if I went back in time and prevented the Louisiana Purchase?" It is in this way an art form and not totally a type of clothing.

-One of our first orientations takes place. It is held in the basement of a large church and includes introductions of student life coordinators, professors, and the resident psychologist/counselor/medical advisor/superhero, Dr. Cynthia Mitchell. Later she invited everyone to her apartment to sit on pillows and talk about feelings. We are allowed to go to her at any time to play with the nature of our insanity or retrieve free condoms.

-I feel slightly more like I'm actually in college after talking about classes and all

-We hold our first picnic on the Seine. We have since repeated this practice and become people who eat communally because it is easy on the budget. Instead of going out to a restaurant, we each buy a little bread or cheese or wine or meat or chocolate and go to the Pont des Arts. Party Smartly 2010.

-I have a bit of trouble sleeping because my mind is still adjusting to the complicated storm of joy that has become my life

-I begin to treat my shoulder, which I injured a long time ago and is recently hurting badly enough to restrict certain movements. Yoga, warm showers, and water with whey powder become the norm.

-We have another orientation event during which Fred Schwarzbach, dean of NYU LSP and bearded wearer of very long suitcoats with a voice one step more lively than that of Ben Stein, makes me feel like a very special person because of the way he goes about welcoming us to Paris.

-I eat far too much of the delectable cornucopia of finger food offered to us, meet Mr. Schwarzbach with my second champagne in hand, and am forced to take home leftovers by French professors. I oblige.

-I no longer feel like I am in college

-The next morning we go to Chantilly for more orientation-related activities. Here I will stop the list as I believe the trip to Chantilly and the following days represent a new phase of my adventures.

Installment 2: Paris As Sung By Barry

I awoke today to what is consistently the best day of any trip—the second day. The second day of any adventure is the moment at which one swallows the first bite of the fruit that tempts the compulsive traveler; it is the warm rush of calm washing over the body injected with the antidote for wanderlust. The spirit of adventure is always in full swing when I wake up for the first full day in my destination. That helped with the six hours of walking.

It was a productive day during which Molly, Magpie and I came across a few diamond mines. The first inspired more joy than the view of the Champs Elysees lit up from the top of the Arc de Triomphe; it was more beautiful than all the treasures of the Louvre and the gentle elliptical tessellations of the cobblestone streets on the Place de La Concorde……we found Wawa. Be still the racing hearts of every South Jerseyan reading my report; it was not a true Wawa market. As you all know, transatlantic shipping would ruin the principle of fresh, local supply that defines our precious convenience store as the finest in all the galaxies of the universe. It was, however, a French market with prepared salads, cheap coffee, multiple smoothie options, tempting sandwiches, walls of extensive and exotic refrigerated options, and a cornucopia of snack bars. The name of the impostor that offers me consolation is Chez Jean. Mere blocks from the hotel, it will doubtlessly be a common pit stop over the next year of my life. I even saw a man with a bright violet NYU hoodie walk in. His wheelie bag and bountiful mustache made him look professorial, so I look forward to being educated by a man of such obvious good tastes.

Next we hiked down through the 3^rd arrondissement in search of Monoprix and Carrefour, two European supermarkets we planned to visit in order to compare prices with those of the local “eries” (patisseries, boulangeries, charcuteries, etc) Monoprix was of course closed promptly at 12:50 pm, but in our pursuit of Carrefour (which turned out to be a small café called the Carrefour café…thanks iPhone walking directions), we stumbled across a Carrefour city, which is apparently some type of different Carrefour with all the exact same Carrefour brand products. We found here the place I will be visiting weekly to pick up all or most of my groceries. Without providing the boring details of the prices, which we found to be incredibly generous (“THIS much salmon for HOW MUCH?”), I can probably just tell you that the next thing we did was wander straight across the city of Paris.

We actually walked a relatively direct route across the entire town--from the third arrondissement, to the eighth (LGBT Paris featuring a Renaissance garb-clad percussion brigade giving out phone numbers for something spoken in rapid French), all the way down the Rue de Rivoli into the history-and-tourist-packed lower numbered arrondissements (first, second, third, etc); we caught glimpses of the Ile-de-la-Cite as we came near the Seine and the Eiffel Tower, and then we crossed into the realms of the rich and famous where I will study at NYU’s academic center (located, as is NYU’s practice, above some sort of obscure boutique behind the gates to a courtyard under the cobblestone streets in a dimly lit passage with booby traps, over the river and through the woods and across a rickety bridge under which is dug a den of hungry wolves and into an alcove where a giant toad asks three questions and out through a maze which ends in a high-stakes game of baccarat with an impatient magician wearing Versace.) Our destination was in the heart of the swanky sixteenth, where well-to-do residents strut quietly up and down the rolling streets and pretend not to judge the well-to-do English tourists strutting less quietly up and down the rolling streets who have a silent understanding with the uncool Americans who probably struggle as much as they do to understand why all the sandwiches on the café menus are listed under “snacks” and not “dejeuner.” Either way, I began what I think will be a long-term affair with the croque-madame. For any reader who doesn’t understand the nature of the croque-madame, let me explain. It is virtually the same as the croque-monsieur, the fried ham and cheese sandwich with shell of melted and crusted cheese on the top bun---but there’s a fried egg perched prettily on top of the whole scene like a gooey bonnet of golden sunshine. In France, eggs are used in a (ironic) Reaganomic way; they are placed on top of stuff and are meant to trickle down onto everything else to be eaten as part meal component, part sauce, and part shepherd of stray baguette crumbs. However the citizen chooses. Perhaps wisely, they confine this practice to dishes involving eggs. It’s possible that the egg-Reagan (Reggan?) parallel, however, is loose and inaccurate, because the eggs here cost enough to incur tax-based revolution. I haven’t seen them for less than 2.50 euro per dozen; this dashes many of my hopes and dreams of eating oatmeal and eggs until I can afford train tickets to fantastic places where I’ll eat to my heart’s content (a lofty and time-consuming pursuit for a heart like mine) and return to Paris full and ready to graze lightly until my next journey. On the tentative list are Brussels, Munich, and Venice. On the dream list are Florence, Chamonix, Zurich, Lisbon, Athens, Madrid, Barcelona, Marrakesh, Dublin, Howth, St. Malo, Stockholm, Geneva and literally anywhere else that isn’t St. Petersburg (I would love to go but have learned it costs about 200 euro at the French consulate to get into Russia as a tourist. Fuhgeddaboddit.)

We took the metro back under the Concorde where the city’s roots converge in the twisted iron of the Eiffel Tower, we saw a woman who looked just like Queen Latifah, and we got back to our hotel somewhat tired and not very hungry for a decadent French meal since we had just recently made love to our late croques-madame. A little later, Magpie suggested that we go out for beers in the bar next to my apartment building. There was a sign that read “Guinness” hanging outside of it, so we, following our magic summons as people of Irish descent, decided to go. Alors, it was closed. We walked down Rue Oberkampf until we saw a strange little place tucked away on a distant corner, the name of which is “Oxxy’D Bar, Restaurant, and Jazz Expo.” If one were to design the interior of an opium den based on the box art from the game Clue, then consult Hugh Hefner and employees of Hot Topic and Nifty Fifties on the nature of the décor, then decide that the best entertainment is youtube requests and low-quality speakers, one would come up with something like Oxxy’D Bar, Restaurant, and Jazz Expo. The small main room is laid out in two separate alcoves on either side of a column. One side is enclosed, features humungous studded leather chairs, and is lit by a lone wax drip candle. This was our side. The other side has no wall and faces the street. Behind it are two rusty metal cafeteria tables and maroon 50’s diner chairs. This is lit by moonlight and a kitschy disco laser ball that shifts firefly- sized neon beacons of pink and red and blue and green and gold across the dark-stained walls and the projector screen of questionable functionality. This side was occupied by the band, (presumably the people who make Oxxy’D part jazz expo), who were off-duty. The bass and guitar players were potbellied Frenchmen with wrinkled blazers, messy goatees, and stiff, bright ascots. The singer, who crooned softly in the corner something beautiful and treacherous to hum around the rim of my well-mixed Manhattan, looked like a street rat taking shelter in a Forever 21. She looked almost like a vaguely attractive witch; a crooked downbent nose and a mess of stringy dark hair piled atop precarious regions of her scalp and held in place with a heap of butterfly clips and age-inappropriate barrettes framed themselves mysteriously through the moody light. The drinks were excellent—a gin and tonic for Molly, the aforementioned Manhattan for myself, and a Long Island Iced Tea for Mags. Snack mix baked into the shapes of playing card suits and spiced olives completed the still, quiet scene. There was also a dark library in the back, a la Beauty and the Beast.

Our server and bartender, whose name I intend to acquire on my next visit, was a narrow- shouldered young man with skin and accent that suggested heritage in the Middle East. He was incredibly friendly and a good partner with whom to practice my French because he (not being a Frenchman) spoke very little English. His French, German, and language he spoke with his shady friends who floated in and out of the bar area were all sharp and quick, and it took a few sentences to get me to be able to talk music with him. I told him I liked what was playing, so he asked what else I like and gave my companions and me a pad on which to write our requests, which he searched on youtube and blasted at drastically varying volumes. I think the constant changes in sound were an appropriate complement to the wildly eccentric nature of the bar. I wrote down Miles Davis because I thought his music would fit the ambience, and Magpie asked for some Ella Fitzgerald. He played both of these artists with a bright smile from behind the bar that searched for and found our approval, but then he took some free reign in searching for the music of my country because I had told him I was American (the success in this story is that he didn’t know because he, too, spoke French with an accent. I now consider us to be close friends.) Mariah Carey’s “Hero” was the next song to pulse loudly then quietly then loudly then quietly through the overhead stereo, and then the musicians left as the scene got totally awesome when our bartender-turned DJ hit us with a culturally spot-on coup de grace: a double whammy of the immortal Barry White. He and I engaged in a little more small talk as we prepared to pay and leave, and then we sauntered back down Oberkampf through the rain-soaked streets and to our hotel for the night. That’s how you earn patron loyalty.

Installment 1: The Departure; A Day En Ville

Allow me to describe, from the broad to the specific, the details of my life as it exists during the very moment I write these words: It is a cool, windswept night in Paris, France. The breezy air buzzes with the tinny growl of passing vespas while the smell of cigarettes permeates our windows and the corner cafes are lighting their charming windows to solicit visitors for an evening snack the type of which I do not feel cultured or informed enough to guess (so far I’m the only person I’ve seen actually eat at breakfast. I wolfed down a huge omelette du champignons while everyone else prepared for their day with nicotine and espresso, so I really have no idea what’s appropriate). I am in a quaint hotel nestled in the crosshatched streets of the 11^th arrondissement; outside my door the walls are split with deep cracks that lead down like funneled rifling into a dark spiral staircase that is a favorable alternative to the drawer-sized elevator. I’ve just finished committing caloric mortal sin at Au Metro Café, an establishment recommended at random by a dapper French septuagenarian who felt that I looked hungry and confused. The walls in the room are white and sparsely decorated; one painting depicts a disjointed collage of dusky pink provincial images of mills and flowers and dancing farm children carrying picnic baskets and wearing frayed knickers. Bruce Springsteen’s harmonica liltingly carries my mother to sleep and next to me is my dictionary of dirty French words and a bag containing the sundry items I felt were necessary to carry on for a year abroad (shoe trees, teacups, and other items I use to demonstrate my heterosexuality.) A few blocks away is Paris’ murky green aorta, the heartbreakingly beautiful River Seine, and a few blocks in the other direction is the inviting cerulean door of my new home for the next year. Welcome to the blog.

Tomorrow, Never, or Friday is less of a philosophy than I will inevitably explain it to be. Ask me about it, and I’ll tell you it demonstrates my views on time management and the delicate, ever-changing nature of the unpredictable world around me. That’s mostly crap. The truth is that it’s something I said one time about a paper. Someone asked me when it was due, and I had no idea, so I said, “I don’t know. Tomorrow? Never? Friday?” I identified with the phrase, which I found self-satisfyingly hilarious, and it’s been something of a tagline ever since. I always said I would title my memoir “Tomorrow, Never, or Friday,” but I am not a person worthy of or patient enough for a or concentrated enough for a or interesting enough for a or capable enough of legible grammatical organization for a….book deal.

Anyway, here I am. Brief recap for anyone who doesn’t know the broad outline of my recent life (as if people who don’t know me stumble across a blog about Paris and decide to read it….((you can find the same outline on my other travel blog, www.sanfranc1sc0.blogspot.com)) (((I recommend that one)))):

-High school (not my scene)

-College Applications

-Acceptance to NYU with participation in a freshman year abroad program

-Summer of thinking about what to pack

-Approximately 31 hours of processes related to actual packing

-Flight

-Arrival

-Blogging and extensive (excessive?) dealings in the world of parentheses

My mother and sister and I set out from Stratford (known as the Paris of Jersey) some time long, long ago through the hazy layers of jet lag and time zones that cloud my tired eyes, and after a series of nervous events that ranged from near-OCD list checking to a charming gas station fist fight to forgetting and consequently retrieving retainers…we got to PHL. Without delays or issues the lack of which were undoubtedly related to Maggie’s US Airways “Gold Preferred” Status, we boarded the flight and passed seven hours which felt more like three or four.

I had no immediate culture shock symptoms because I’ve already seen Charles de Gaulle airport, but it did take a few minutes to realize that the hilly, cushioned walkways and system of plexiglas tubes coupled with the angular beams and modern layout of the airport feels like what I imagine would take place somewhere scattered across the landscape of a vacuum cleaner’s subconscious. I made sure to quickly assert my American nationality by fumbling with my gum and accidentally dropping it onto the floor before throwing it out without a wrapper into a trashcan.

The swarthy, ponytail-bearing driver of our shuttle held our last name scribbled on a whiteboard and greeted us awkwardly. He struck me as a Fernando or a Fermin or any sort of inappropriately suave name beginning with the letter “F”; he was dressed smartly in creased black trousers containing some element of swishy nylon, a racecar jacket with button cuffs with his company affiliation, PariShuttle, printed across the back, and slick black boots with the diagonal layered ridges one sees on the shoes of many a Frenchman. He made it work. His most immediately evident vices were his ripe body odor and his nervous laugh, but I have no qualms about the job he did; Fernando drove us to our hotel with all possible efficiency while we listened to French pop music on the radio (interesting that much of it sounds like it may have been composed by Bach but sung by Enrique Iglesias.) We tipped him generously because we felt a magnanimous American responsibility.

I’ve heard Paris described as “New York on crack,” but I couldn’t disagree more. To me, it is more like New York’s much older brother who hints at having gone through a cocky, gregarious phase but now makes a lot of money at an important office job that has become mundane despite its impressive nature. It is a mature metropolis with clean highways and brilliant simplicity shining all over the streets; public toilets are an example of this. Toilets. Something everyone needs and will always need but my advanced civilization seems to have forgotten in its eager and rapid climb to greatness. In an American city, public bathroom options are limited to hunting for construction site porta-johns, sneaking into Starbucks and buying something to get the key to go to the bathroom, or simply going home. In Paris, there are bathrooms. Everyone talks about the fantastic features of Paris as being the artful pastry shops, the breathtaking architecture, the personal identity of every establishment, the lights on the Champs Elysees, the beautiful women, the romantic atmosphere, and most of all the un-fucking-believable food. That’s all there, but I like the toilets.

We couldn’t check in to the hotel for a few hours, so we jammed our cargo into a small closet and walked to my residence, an apartment building called Les Estudines. Along the street leading up to it were more places to purchase rotisserie chickens than I could ever want, let alone need. I already plan to buy one approximately once a week and feast on it like Hoth’s cave-dwelling abominable snowmen throughout the next seven days, deriving any kind of recipe possible to finish every single part of it. If necessary, I am prepared to happily gnaw on chicken bones for a matter of days in order to afford EUrail tickets (travel around Europe is a big goal of mine and one of the foremost reasons for this blog’s existence.) Under these tantalizing cases of poultry slowly turning like Burlesque dancers to show all the details of their sweaty golden skin lay beds of potatoes content to bask in the fire and adoringly catch and imbue themselves with the falling juices. They are not bottom feeders or lazy peasants; they are a quintessential slice of the Parisian window rotisserie ecosystem.

After seeing the residence came a great deal of walking, which passes quickly because of the lovely scenery and accessible, pedestrian-friendly nature of the city. We strolled all the way down Avenue de la Republique and the posh rue de Vieille Temple, eyeing shop after café after shop after café after shop after café after dry cleaner; every block in Paris seems contain its signature essence of lazy civility. We arrived at Pont St. Michel and Ile-de-la-Cite and saw a gypsy get arrested at Notre-Dame. We navigated like hungry pirates to the fabled “The Panini Stand,” a cart full of delectable sandwiches in the Latin Quarter on Rue de Buci touted by my pseudo-uncle Dr. James Metz to be the best thing in the whole wide world of everything. In regard to the 3-cheese panini, he was right. The idea of melting grated mozzarella cheese and eating it between bread has often occurred to me and the other members of my immediate family and social circles, but the brilliant notion of melting camembert, Roquefort, or chevre (or whatever else was in that seraph of a sandwich) only presented itself to me earlier today.

Throughout the day, I struggled with finding the indifferently arrhythmic French swagger I sought and acquired to the point of being mistaken for an Englishman (good enough) last time I was in France. My high school French teacher’s educational philosophies have made me a very good reader of written French, a somewhat skilled listener of spoken French, and a relatively pathetic speaker of French. I can formulate fluid questions with a decent accent like “How do I get to rue Oberkampf?” or “Can we have more bath towels?” but every time I am answered and understand, I, unaccustomed to long exchanges, secretly hope that the conversation ends. Often it does not and I have to surrender to the inevitable English that follows my confused face and fumbling attempts to resuscitate the conversation.

As the day wore on, I became dead tired. My reflection in the windows of the metro conveyed an air of midday intoxication, and when we got back to the hotel, I passed out for a few hours. I eventually awoke feeling much better and ready for dinner, which we had at Au Metro, the place I mentioned earlier. I ordered a millefeuille de saumon, which turned out to be a titanic column of diced boiled potatoes covered in thin pieces of smoked salmon filet and coriander crème. It was phenomenal, and I ordered my first ever legal drink, a bottle of 2006 Chateau Tourbadon Saint-Emilion Grand Cru. I found my French improving with the setting of the sun and the consumption of wine. That remark is in no way playful or sarcastic; when I lived in China it took almost a whole summer to find out that the ideal conditions for “apparent” fluency in Mandarin are to be angry, brash, and annoyed. Each language, I find, is like a part in a play. To speak a second language is to play a character, and I consider myself a budding method actor. There are conditions under which different languages just flow more easily, and I discovered tonight that French happens to roll more sonorously from a wine-soaked tongue.