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.
No comments:
Post a Comment