In the Trough

I think my little adventure in Paris has reached its definitive low point. The weather has been locked in periods of cloudiness and rain for days. I love my two English classes, but my two French classes (taught by the same French woman) are threatening to break my back - not because the work load is too large, but because my professor has no idea what she is doing, and never made a definitive plan for the semester. Now we are assigned papers with two days' notice, given vague outlines for looming research projects, and, worst of all, we are subjected to offensive, contradicting generalizations such as: "They don't teach you how to make sufficient essay plans in American schools" or "You Anglo-Saxons always want schedules." I am no patriot, but I am growing sick of anti-Americanism over here. I have not experienced it just in the classroom. I heard from a female friend that a girl was so disgusted by the fact that she was American that she wouldn't even look at her. Not one, but two writers I have seen speak in the past week have criticized the United States for unfair reasons. The very nice woman who owns the panini shop I go to made some gross generalizations about American eating habits during friendly conversation. It's not that these people are criticizing the United States that bothers me - everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, of course - but that many of these views are uninformed, overly general, or just plain ignorant. Feel free to criticize America, because we certainly are not perfect, but at least be educated about it.

As I mentioned above, I have seen two writers read in the past week. Actually, I have seen three. Friday night, I went to the Red Wheelbarrow, a little Anglo-American bookstore in the same neighborhood as the Bastille monument. Reading there was my Creative Writing professor, Anne Marsella, and a French author. I think both did a great job with their readings, which turned out a crowd that filled the cramped store. It was the French author who spoke ill of the United States, though not in an overtly critical way - more in a mocking tone, appropriate for an audience of English and Americans. I saw some of the same faces last night at The Village Voice, center of English-speaking literary life in Paris, when Jorie Graham read from her latest book of poetry. It was she who remarked that American students do not know how to read or appreciate poetry - an ignorant statement that offended me because I am an American student, and I would like to think that I know how to read and appreciate poetry. She was very wordy, expounding on and on about her poetry, its mechanics, its inspiration, society today, et cetera et cetera. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1996, and teaches at Harvard, which I guess gave her license to do this. Is there a point when one is entitled to a little arrogance and self indulgence? I don't know, but I think Jorie Grahame believes she has reached it. As for her poetry, I am sorry to say I was unimpressed. It struck me as cold, and it left kind of a metallic taste in my mouth.

The good news about this week is that I went to my very first opera on Monday night. It was an interesting, futuristic take on Mozart's The Enchanted Flute, done in its original German with French subtitles displayed on a screen over the stage. The direction was indescribable, really. The major set pieces were what looked like huge, inflatable mattresses (probably 8X15 feet) that were deflated, inflated, and carted about the stage by people in white labcoats, who also sang the choruses. The main characters wore a variety of odd costumes, the oddest of which being the Three Women with LED lights on their...well, you know. This all took place inside of the very modern looking Opera Bastille, which was simply breathtaking in its size and presentation. It is very sleek and does not at all possess the gilded, ornate decor one expects from an opera house. Photographs give it the appearance of blandness and even ugliness, but this is not the case in person. All in all I enjoyed the experience and I hope I am able to see another opera, someday.

A month from tomorrow I will be coming back to the United States. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I am very ready to have a roommate again, to have access to very un-French things like greasy slices of pizza, good beer, and American coffee, and to see all the people I love and miss. On the other hand, I will miss fresh, delicious baked goods, quality wine at affordable prices, and the heightened presence of intellectual/artistic life in the public eye. And all the beautiful architecture. My tastes have changed considerably, as have my views of many things. Many of my friends over here share with me the fear that we will be seen as snobby back in America. I guess that's to be seen, but regardless, I am looking forward to coming home.

Barcelona

This past Friday I think I finally crossed the line into the worldly traveler by taking a little trip into Spain. For the first time in my life, I was immersed in a place where I didn't speak the language (save for a few labor terms, but that's another story) enough to really even get around. It wasn't as scary as it could have been, given that for the most part the Spanish are pretty nice people, and a lot of them speak English anyway. Regardless, as the airplane came upon the pine covered hills peaking over the low clouds, it suddenly dawned on me that I was not just in France, but in Europe. I know this sounds kind of idiotic, but I have been so immersed in French culture and Paris for the past few months that it was almost as if it had not occurred to me that I was on another continent all the way across a big, black sea. I had forgotten there were other countries here, too. That's a very French perspective, if you ask me. In any case, this realization came with a thrill and a little bit of homesickness - I was all the way across that big black ocean...

My first impression of Barcelona was that it was very different from anywhere I had been before. Certainly it belongs in no other place than Europe, but it was very different from even the other Mediterranean city I have seen, Marseille. Shortly after flying in, I met my friend Emily for lunch and a little walking tour. She took me to a set of Roman columns in the old Gothic quarter of the city. It was a bit surreal, taking random backalleys in the falling night amidst a backdrop of Gothic architecture and gently lit storefronts, all to see a cluster of decaying columns left there some thousands of years ago. I don't imagine I will ever get over how splendidly old Europe is. The rest of the tour took us down several grand boulevards, past two of Gaudi's houses, around a humongous monument to Christopher Columbus, and down along the Mediterranean. For dinner, we went to Emily's homestay, who had invited me over. She spoke very little English, but was essentially fluent in French. Her daughter could not speak French, but could speak English. The conversation at dinner, then, shifted freely between English, Spanish, and French. It was very interesting. I didn't expect to get a workout for my French while in Spain! But the Signora liked me very much, and complemented me on my French, which was very nice. It was also good to eat a homecooked meal. I can't remember the last time I did that.

The next day Emily was sick, so I was on my own to explore the city. I had made an itinerary for myself before leaving, so what I wanted to see and how to get to it, at least. The first thing I saw was Parc Guell, a large green space designed by the avant-garde architect Gaudi. At the edge of the park, shown here, was a monument park with buildings Gaudi had designed. What's amazing to know about Gaudi's style was that most of his works were designed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He died in 1926, and looking at his buildings, that is hard to believe. They seem to belong in another universe.

From the park, I descended back down the high hill upon which it sat, and wandered about for a while, enjoying the different sights and smells that came to me. (maybe not all the smells) Then I arrived at the magnificent Sangrada Familia, another building designed by Gaudi. This one is still being built. It is far and away the largest cathedral I have ever seen. The picture does it no justice, and I don't imagine any picture could. It's facade is incredibly elaborate - it looks alive with statues. The back side of the cathedral appears as if it is melting, sliding down itself in gigantic drops which, upon closer inspection, are depictions of nature. For a solid hour I wandered in circles around the building. I didn't go in because it cost 10 Euro, and because I was very hungry. I went back to the Gothic quarter, location of the next stop on my itinerary - the Picasso Museum. I ate lunch at a nice little tapas bar and was served by an extremely friendly waitress who was the antithesis to my experiences eating in France. No language problems, no rudeness, no wisecracks - it was very refreshing. I think the Spanish, unlike the French, have realized that their time for grandeur and world-shaking has long passed. Now they are content to live their lives, and it's very evident. Things just felt much more relaxed in Barcelona.

The Picasso Museum had been highly recommended to me. I found it interesting, as it showed the progression of his work from the amateur days until his death, but Picasso has never been my favorite artist. The building, located in the Gothic quarter, was quite beautiful and a stark contrast to the artwork it contained. Leaving the museum and heading towards another cathedral, I ran into a few friends from one of my classes in Paris. We got drinks together and then I went back to my hostel to rest. Later, I met with my friend Suzanne, who had come with her class in Alicante to visit the city. We ended up at a party on the top floor of an apartment building. There were several French people there, and conversation was held in Spanish, Catalan, English and French. Sometimes I was listening in Spanish, responding the best I could in French, and then turning to another person to speak English. A few times I was mistaken for being French, which I guess means I play the part well. It was a great experience, but a little exhausting - particularly because the party did not end until 5am. I went back to my hostel, and slept for a few hours before grabbing my flight back to Paris.

Oddly, in spite of my increasing annoyance with the French, I was happy to be back in Paris. As with returning from Marseille, it was different to feel as if I was returning home when I knew I was not. Still, I think Paris suits me more than Barcelona, though I hope someday I can return to that city. I am not a fan of hot weather, especially the kind they get in Southern Spain, and it has been delightfully cool here these past few days. It also has seemed that all the leaves changed while I was gone. With another two days left before class, I took advantage of the weather to go to some new places. On Monday, I visited the Musee Cluny, Paris's Medieval History Museum. It is situated in an old Gothic manor, and it has a beautiful medieval garden around it, as well as a nice cobblestone courtyard. The best part, though, was that I arrived just in time to see a concert of medieval music performed. The concert took place in a large hall of the museum that shared a wall with the old Roman baths, and where old statues of headless kings from Notre Dame had been placed. This certainly added to the atmosphere. After the concert I went to see the famous tapestries of the Woman with the Unicorn, that Rilke in particular describes at length in one of my new favorite books The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. It was great to see this crossroads between two works: the poetic description of a piece of art and the piece of art itself.

Yesterday was Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I. In America it is Veteran's Day. Strangely, we don't have a holiday for the end of World War II, either. I don't know the exact reason for this, but maybe it has something to do with what I have written about before - the difference between fear of war, and fear of the threat of war. In any case, I went to Chateau de Vincennes, just east of Paris. Because of the holiday, the chateau was closed, but I was able to wander around in the woods that once were frequented by the King of France - funny how royal hunting land is now where people go to jog and play. That's democracy in action, if I've ever seen it. I would say those woods were certainly fit for a king, though; I plan on returning to the chateau when it is open, and perhaps I will write more on it then.

Turn, turn, turn

The past week has been strange. I celebrated Halloween in a country where it is nothing more than a novelty, not a nationally accepted holiday. It was odd - seeing the random handfuls of Americans walking around dressed up, juxtaposed with the random handfuls of French children with their parents. I guess it was stranger just being somewhere that does not fully acknowledge an annual institution as Halloween. As long as I can remember I have known it, celebrated it in someway - and then, here, it was barely a blip on the social register.

Of much more importance, obviously, was the election. I am actually happy that I was in Paris to see it happen, where my inherent American difference is immediately more defined and more known to me - and where I would feel firsthand the world's opinion. It's no secret that Obama was "the world candidate", and I was a little frightened of what might be my reception in public the next day should McCain have been elected. The fact that I had to stay up the entire night to see the results come in, rather than just watch the prime time news, gave things an added flare of drama.

The café on campus was open all night, so I went there at about 9:30 after seeing the poet Linda Robertson read her excellent essay "Disquiet." It was packed from wall to wall. They were out of beer by midnight. As the results rolled in, the political orientation of the crowd was exceedingly obvious. Each time Obama claimed a state, the roars hit the rafters. Each time McCain got a state, there was a wave of raised middle fingers and boos. I was in the right place.

For most of the night I milled from group to group, talking to people, meeting people. The crowd was truly international - there were French, Arab, Spanish, African, and of course American students all together, all backing the same candidate. Some people, many of them not American, were very optimistic - one friend of mine never doubted once that Obama would win. Others, like myself, had been a bundle of nerves since Monday.

The hours crawled by, the polls closed in giant chunks, and the outcome was getting clearer and clearer. Around 3:00am, many students went home. Most of us had class the next day, after all. I thought about it. But then Obama won Pennsylvannia, and the joy that swept over the bar was incredible. I had to stay to see the finish.

Around 4:50am, the exhausted bartenders starting handing out glasses of champagne. The West coast polls were closing at 5am Paris time. The entire bar stared at the televisions at either end of the room, and the collective anticipation was tangible.

5AM came, the numbers flashed across the screen, and then my heart flooded with a joy and relief that I had never known. Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States of America. The room exploded. People were cheering and screaming. Others were crying. Everyone was hugging, no matter if they knew who they hugged or not. One guy kissed everyone in a ten foot radius on the cheek. And then, all of us together broke out into an off-key rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Chills went up my back, and I could feel my face glowing. I was surprised to find myself proud to be an American.

The bar closed directly after this, and the crowd spilled out into the street. We must have woken up the entire neighborhood with our rapturous and celebratory screaming. Cars and motorcycles rode by, honking their horns.

A few random people and I decided to go to Harry's New York Bar to see Obama's acceptance speech. It had begun to rain as we ran into the metro station, screaming and cheering. A group of Frenchmen gave us high fives. When we boarded the train, shaking with excitement, the Parisians on their way to work stared at us with equal confusion and annoyance. One woman yelled that she had a headache. We didn't care. The reign of the Neo-Cons is over.8 years of shame - over.

We ran through the station we got off in, cheering still. We got lost trying to find the bar, but we still managed to get there in time to catch about half of the speech. The crowd had filled the bar and come well out into the street. It was equal parts European and American, but it was all for Obama. I stood, crammed against the doorway, cold and wet, watching history change before my eyes, which were quickly filling with tears. God forbid that I should ever forget that moment.

Unfortunately, I won't forget something else about that moment. The French have been complaining about George Bush for 8 years, and now that they are seeing a change, what do they do? In the case of the 20 somethings near me, they stood in a circle and talked loudly the entire length of Obama's speech. Another small group stood by the bar and did not seem remotely interested. Then there were the people on the subway, annoyed that history had ruined their quiet commute. I'm afraid my opinion, at least of the Parisians, has been permanently settled on the negative. I've written a few more vindictive things about the French in my diary - words about their obsolete culture, senseless arrogance and cruelty, etc - but I'll stow those now. This is a time of celebration.

The next day I read the French newspapers to get their reaction. Of course Obama was their candidate, but they seemed more focused on the long, ugly path ahead. Still, some of the news blurbs - simple headlines such as An Historic Moment or Everything is Changing - brought the tears back to my eyes. I've been listening to the Byrds a lot lately.

Tomorrow I head to Barcelona for the weekend. I'm glad I will not have to worry about being heckled over the election results. In closing, I shall leave a quote from one of my favorite movies which I think applies a lot to the past few days...

"Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. And years later, they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them how to hold on a second longer."

Beginning to Awake

Have I been awake the past two months? Have I really been here two months? I cannot be dreaming – I never would have dreamed that I would live in Paris. Period.

And yet I feel as if I am starting to rustle from my blissful sleep. Reality, seldom beautiful, is seeping in at the edges of my reverie.

A few weeks ago in class we read an essay by Julia Kristeva called “Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner,” describing the ways in which we are all foreign, and how we must recognize that fact for xenophobia and its nasty siblings, genocide and racism, to disappear. The essay is an exploration of what it means to be foreign – feeling isolated from one’s mother country, residing in the silent land between two languages, basking in solitude and mutual hatred. When I first read it, I hated it. And in fact, I still hate it. Kristeva has a way of making ridiculous assumptions and using detestably melodramatic comparisons and imagery to get her point across. But – many of her points are very insightful. Maybe it’s finally starting to sink in for me that I’m just not welcome here. I feel eloigned from the United States on many levels – culturally, politically, physically – and yet, I feel little closer to these things in France. I will never be able to speak or understand French as well as the French can, as much as I would like to. And as for English, I use it with friends, but entire days have passed where I have only mumbled it to myself, and any other speaking I have done has been as The Bumbling Foreigner. As for mutual hatred, I’m remarkably ambivalent. I don’t like the word hate. I know I have that emotion, but I try to suppress it. The French certainly don’t try though. Or at least, the average Parisian does not. I remember coming into a restaurant back when I felt self-conscious of that fact that everyone looks at you when coming into restaurants here, and a friend of mine said, “I don’t like feeling hated when I go out to eat.” Me neither. Who does? I don’t like feeling hated on the subway, on the sidewalk, in a store, at the museum…and I can feel a nice hot glowing pinprick of resentment blooming in myself. Paris is spoiled by the Parisians, many say. Baudelaire himself wrote: “Paris, center and radiance of idiocy.” The other day an old man smacked me in the face with his bag as he was sitting down on the train. He didn’t say a word to me. He just looked at me like I had shoved my head at him while he was sitting. A woman practically tripped me as I was leaving the metro. Didn’t say a word. I was crossing the street and paused in the middle so a cyclist could go by. “Attention!” she screamed at me, and then felt it necessary to repeat it and sigh dramatically as she passed. I traded exasperated looks with a man smoking a cigarette, and I have no idea if he was making it at me or the woman. In a store, I gingerly began to pull a sweater off the (apparently) wrong shelf and a clerk quickly and curtly reminded me that the display was over there. What’s wrong with these people? What arrogance inspires them to these ends? A newspaper headline today read: “America: Why they don’t think like us.” Implicit in that title is the sense that the way “we” – the French – think is superior. I won’t argue whether or not America’s way of thinking is superior, but where do the French get the authority to make that claim? They have the Maginot Line, numerous bungled land wars in Asia, two horrendous Empires, and three failed revolutions under their belt. They played a large part in creating the colossal debacle that we call the Twentieth Century.

I’m bordering on nationalist rhetoric here, but I’m sure when it comes to the nitty-gritty I couldn’t say many better things about America. What we have over the French in military and economic conquest they have over us in high art and cooking. Still, it bothers me that these thoughts have come to me because of a headline in a newspaper and a few encounters with some surly Parisians. The sense of my own foreignness is becoming more and more apparent to me. It’s not just about people staring at you when you speak English in a restaurant.

And yet I still love Paris. On one particularly frustrating day, when I had all but given up at the idea of courtesy, I stopped in at my local bakery to buy a baguette. It was still hot in my hands as I left, and with the first bite I could only smile. Yesterday I went to the Viaduc des Arts – a rather phenomenal street where a viaduct was converted into a series of little art galleries and artisan shops. In many of these spaces I saw the artists hard at work themselves, painting or sewing or what have you. On top of the viaduct, an urban garden has been planted, creating a roof level park with an interesting view of the neighborhood around it. Where else could you find this sort of innovation and dedication to beauty and art?

Yesterday evening, though, things were slightly put in perspective for me. The photographer known simply as Reza came to speak at AUP, thanks to my French professor. He is known for photographing scenes of misery and conflict around the world since the late ‘70s. He grew up in Iran under the Shah, and at age 16 he began posting photos around public places showing the Shah’s despotic policies. At 22 he was captured and tortured for five months. Upon his release, he began photographing scenes from the Iran-Iraq War, then exiled himself in Paris. Since then, he has photographed the Russian and American conflicts in Afghanistan, street life in Egypt, social unrest in the Philippines, the genocide in Rwanda and countless other scenes from which the Western world has turned its collective eye. But he has done more than that, for he believes very strongly in the humanitarian cause – he established Afghanistan’s first free press and founded a charity organization to support the rehabilitation of culture in the post-Taliban Kabul. His photographs themselves have led many to action. His message is one of peace, understanding, and humanity. And he has one of the most kind, sparkling smiles of any one I’ve seen. I had to ask myself, looking at this man’s moving pictures, how has he retained his faith in humanity? He has been physically and psychologically tortured, shot at, wounded by shrapnel, and witness to innumerable tragedies. I’m pretty disillusioned, and I’ve never experienced any of these things. His view is a world view, yet one that is simultaneously outside the corrupt system of “humanitarian” aid offered by the West to third world nations. He believes that when one commits wrong against another, it is a wrong against the entire species. He told us stories that could make the most jaded (like myself) believe in some shred of fate. I was inspired, but also ashamed, because I know I am a part of the system that created the atrocities he has captured on film. And so are the French. I guess this is where I wrap things up with some nice little bow implying the world – we’re all human, nationality doesn’t matter, etc. I just don’t know if I can make things that tidy, though. I’ll leave it at this: if a man such as Reza can have hope and charity and kindness, I suppose I can too.

I’ve felt pretty disconnected from the world outside, from responsibility and the future, while I’ve been here in Paris. I just sip my espresso or my fantastic wine, and look at beautiful things and beautiful people. Would someone in Afghanistan believe that people do that? By being American, I was born into an enormous amount of privilege and freedom of all sorts even for the West – and while the lush life of Paris is great, maybe I should start thinking about using some of my privilege and freedom for the benefit of others.

A Sundry Assortment of Thoughts

One of the pleasures of just walking about Paris is musing on the names of the streets. Paris has the very oddest names for its boulevards and streets. Often they are history lessons. Generals, Presidents, dignitaries, scientists, writers, and thinkers of all nations are here – there is Avenue de President Wilson, much bigger and grander than the Boulevard Auguste Blanqui, who was President of the Third Republic. There is my street – Rue Abel Hovelacque, named after an anthropologist. There is the Avenue José Maria de Heredia, an obscure poet. Someday, if not already, Serge Gainsbourg will have his own street. I am sure of it. And then there are dates – the insidious Juin 1940, when Paris fell to the Germans. Aout 1944, when it was liberated. And there are the much more mysterious references – Rue de la Reine Blanche. Avenue des Gobelins. Who or what was the White Queen? What are Gobelins? The answer is obscured, and we stroll on ignorant of their significance, but intrigued nonetheless. Then there are the humorously mundane: Rue de la Boulangerie. Bakery Street. Rue des Moulins de Pres: Street of the Windmills in the Fields? There are no numbered avenues here – the implicit order of the grid required for such nomenclature is lost in the chaos of medieval cow paths and who knows what else the crucible of history has produced to create Paris.

No, I think we Anglo-Saxons could care less about what our streets are named. Fifth Avenue – how bland in sound, yet how grand in actuality! The French knew that a street was going to be grand, so they called it Les Champs Elysées: The Elysian Fields, the closest the ancient Greeks ever got to Heaven. We Anglo-Saxons usually get lazy, and leave the names from whatever the Native Americans had called the area – this does lead to some fantastically strange highways in the South in particular (drive through Alabama, Louisiana and Western Tennessee if you simply must see for yourself), but they mean nothing to us besides an occasional stumble in pronunciation. We do have streets named after famous people, but they are usually generals and conquerors with a nice tint of American nostalgia: Washington Avenue, Columbus Avenue, Lafayette Street. But! God forbid we honor those pesky intellectuals and artists, save the ones that are really, really famous. Walt Whitman has no street in Washington DC, nor does Henry Thoreau, nor does Ambrose Bierce. It’s not wrong or bad that things are this way, just different. We esteem our thinkers in different ways: impoverishing them, not teaching our children about them, putting their works on the discount rack in Barnes and Noble.

If I ever have any sort of power of suggestion in Washington (which means never), I’m giving Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Rollins, and Nathanael Parker Willis their own grand streets right away. And while I’m at it, I’ll throw in an April 1865 and a White Queen, just for fun.

Last night I watched Jean Luc Godard's film "Breathless" (A Bout de Souffle) at a little independent cinema in the Latin Quarter. The film was part of a repertory series called "Smoke Screens" (Les Ecrans de Fumee) - a focus on the role of smoking in cinema and in watching cinema. Imagine how well this series would go in America! The link between classic film and smoking is undeniable, but in the States we just seem to say "Oh, they didn't know back then..." Apparently they still don't know in France, though the cigarette packages all have SMOKING KILLS written on them in huge letters. As for Breathless, I don't think I've ever seen two people smoke more in a movie.

Before seeing the movie, I visited the Ile St. Louis. Notre Dame de Paris is on the Ile de la Cité, and the Ile St. Louis is the slightly less visited island right to it on the Seine. There were still a lot of tourists, but it was somehow quieter, calmer. The five or six streets on the island are all not much wider than alleyways, and ice cream shops, cafés, and art galleries - each of a distinct look - line the ground level from one end of the island to the other. The quays of the island are much less crowded than those along the Right or Left banks, though equally tranquil. And now, the highlight of my story: I bought my first piece of art there! Actually, I bought two pieces of art. Passing by a gallery, I saw the name "Tim Sale" written on the poster on the window. Tim Sale is a comic book artist, known for working on Batman: The Long Halloween, Spiderman Blue, Daredevil: Yellow, and doing the artwork for the show Heroes. Intrigued, I went inside and was privileged to see original panels from the above comics. Then I chanced across a series of 90 prints that Sale had done and signed himself. Each was numbered and everything. Knowing my good friend John is a much bigger fan of the artist than I was, I decided to buy one for him. And then I thought more, and decided it would be neat to have one for myself as well. I think it was meant to be: there were only 2 left. "Vous avez de la chance." the girl working the exhibition told me. Indeed.

I felt like I had really accomplished something as I left the gallery and carried my precious cargo home. I am the owner of a piece of art! By a semi-famous artist! Somehow I feel more complete, more like I have tasted a sublime aspect of life heretofore unattained, all the more because I bought it in Paris.

A quick note about AUP students: I expected, on coming to France, that I would meet a lot of open-minded Americans who wouldn't have the sense of entitlement that I have seen in an upsetting number of NU students. Well, I was wrong. Not 100% wrong, as I have met a few interesting and open-minded individuals, but nonetheless, I have been let down on several occasions. I don't know what causes this - AUP is pretty expensive, so maybe the students who come here are generally born with several spoons in their mouths? Or they like to pretend that they were? Then again, many AUP students are visiting, like myself, and come from less pretentious schools (with the exception of the bundle of NYU students here). And they too can give off this grating sense of entitlement. Since when did professors have to bend to your whims or give you good grades because you are paying money to go here? College is sink or swim, folks, or so I'd always believed.

A few days ago, I was by the Seine and a man rode by me on his bicycle with his child in one of those backpack carriers. As he passed, the child looked at me and said "Connard!" (Asshole!), very sweetly. The man pedalled away and didn't say a word. I stood, awestruck. French people, even children, can be very randomly mean.

Last night I was eating dinner next to an American couple who were arguing, in English of course, over what to name their child. They were drawing names from all over the place, including Shakespeare and classic Hollywood and Greek myth. I'm pretty sure no one else in the restaurant knew what they were talking about. I felt as if I should have reached out to them - "Claire is a pretty name. Or how about Desdemona?" But that would have been ridiculous. And I am relatively sure that, eventually, they knew I was at least English speaking, because I was sitting there reading Henry James' The American. And yet, for a solid hour we went on unacknowledging, both speaking to the waitress in French. It was a singularly bizarre experience; I felt as if I should talk to these people because I could, and yet, I should not have because they were just trying to have a nice dinner together - in a foreign country. I'm not even sure if I can describe how strange that was for me. If the same couple were having a conversation like that in Boston, I would not have thought twice.

I never really wanted to quote Gertrude Stein

Last weekend I visited Pere Lachaise Cemetery - most famous, I believe, for being the resting place of Jim Morrison. But, there are many more people buried there who were more than just burnt out rock stars: Moliere, the famous playwright of Louis XIV's court, for instance. Or Heloise and Abelard, the real life starcrossed lovers of medieval times. Marcel Proust, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Honore de Balzac, one of the greatest writers of the 19th century. Gertrude Stein - the woman I say the woman who was at the center of the Lost Generation. The cemetery's second most famous resident is probably Oscar Wilde, whose grave had a heartbreaking poem on the back. It wasn't far from what is called the Mur des Federes, the wall where many of the insurgents of the Paris Commune of 1871 were lined up and executed by the State. I stood there for a long time, trying to find the pock marks of bullets and thinking about the situation that Paris found itself in during that calamitous period of its history. The Franco-Prussian War had just ended with the months long Seige of Paris, wherein the city's residents were forced to eat the animals in the zoo to stay alive. Directly after the Germans marched through Paris (for the first time) as a ceremonial end to the peace proceedings, the humiliated working class revolted and for a brief time were in control of the city. What followed is known as La Semaine Sanglante - The Bloody Week - wherein the government systemically hunted down and executed about 30,000 people involved in this insurgence. The last stand of the Communards, as they were called, was in and about Pere Lachaise. I can't help but think of how dramatic this story is, and how nowadays people picnic next to this wall and in the Luxembourg Gardens where the rest of the Communards were shot. I can't help but feel, especially in Paris, how gleefully unaware we are of the blood and toil buried beneath all of us. It is not just in cemeteries that we have left our ancestors; it is below our streets, in our floorboards, basements, and cellars; it is in our manicured lawns and perfectly arranged parks. Tread carefully, for you tread on history.

I find it very interesting that The Mur des Federes is juxtaposed with several monuments to the Holocaust and the Resistance. I am constantly comparing the histories of France and America in my head, and this made me think how America had no Resistance, and the Jews living in our country that were victim to the Nazi concentration camps only came to America after World War II, already displaced from their original homes. This is not to say that our history lacks drama and tragedy, for that cannot be said of any nation, but I think in the specific case of America, it lacks the "fear of war" as Gertrude Stein said. We know the fear of war-time, but it has been generations since anyone in America has had to worry about foreign invasion. And despite the rasing of Washington DC in the War of 1812, our country has never known foreign occupation - the fear of that, is the fear of war. Gertrude Stein said this could be why we still think the world is flat - metaphorically speaking, that is.

Harmony

Rilke tried to describe it, in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: the peculiar feeling one gets when loafing about Paris on a beautiful day. It's as if the whole city is some sort of painting, some sort of cohesive whole that harmonizes with itself brilliantly. Of course, the visiter to Paris is not a part of this marvel - he is just relegated to watching and observing. It's beautiful to do so, but it's more beautiful, I imagine, to be part of it all. I've had this feeling many times, especially on Sunday, when this sense is most obvious and acute.

Take, for instance, today: I wandered into the Place des Vosges and had my breath stolen from me by the vibrantly yellow trees surrounding the whole park. Families, teenagers, lovers relaxing on benches and in sunny patches of grass. Fountains gushing. Hardly a cloud in the big blue sky. I crossed through the park, underneath the little arbor in the center, and music came to my ears. Classical music. A 10 or 12 person symphony was performing in the gallery around the plaza. They chose popular, recognizable tunes, all of which seemed to coordinate perfectly with the vision of the park. When I left the plaza into the quaint streets of the Marais, I could only wonder how it was possible for a place to be so inclusively beautiful.