Ahh, here goes. I have put off blogging about myself despite the encouragement I’ve received from my family and friends because it seems insanely self-worshipping to me. The idea that people, be they family, friends, or especially strangers, would want to read my journal about all the crap in my life and in my head seems mighty presumptuous. And yet, I do love to read the clever blogs of others. Part of my issue is pegging down my target audience...I have stockpiled some journal entries to publish here that I wrote for myself. Obviously I think I am hilarious, but I seriously doubt anyone besides my mother and grandmothers do as well. So is this for myself? For my family? For my friends? What genre is it? Should I make it a self deprecating comedy? No one likes someone who takes themselves too seriously. Should it be a satire? I do enjoy sarcasm. Maybe it’s a rom-com. Or a tragic comedy. Or a drama. I suppose it will be a hodgepodge of all these things. I anticipate it to appear as a pale imitation of Bridget Jones/Eat, Pray, Love/Pride and Prejudice. In the end I have endured much worse (read: undergraduate poetry workshop where my positive criticism amounted to “good title”). So, mama, here are some of my adventures. Don’t judge.
9/10/11
I took a bus from London to Paris. This was very exciting to me considering the fact that I didn’t know how a bus would cross a body of water such as exists between the UK and continental Europe. Turns out it goes in a big metal box and floats across. I’m not sure exactly how since I was in the box when that went down. But the countryside in southern England and Northern France was super cute. In France I felt for a minute like I was in the little provincial town in Beauty and the Beast. There were little chapels in the middle of the town and little French houses all around it. Probably a baker, and a library, and a little inventor’s shop. Just sayin’.
London was pretty cool, but it was expensive. Turns out the American dollar sucks--I felt like I would have been better of with Monopoly money, but whatev. So that’s why I saw a few things I really wanted to see and then peaced out. Westminster Abbey was cool. Poet’s corner was crazy. I teared up a little because I felt so surrounded by brilliant dead guys. It was like a weird and amazing literary pilgrimage. Some of the people buried here are Robert Browning, Chaucer, Dickens, Tennyson, Spencer, Kipling, Thomas Hardy ugh!....they have these superhuman legacies because of their ability to craft words into beautiful, influential works of art. It makes me feel completely insignificant. Like, the best I can do is read someone else’s work and talk about it. Maybe imitate it, but I will never be able to create the way they could. Snaps for JK Rowling, she did a pretty good job. Anyway, It felt sacrilegious to walk on top of their graves! Great men, reduced to dust...So it goes.
Interestingly, in the customs line in Heathrow I met a nice young Canadian girl about my age who lives in Tanzania. She and I had a very interesting conversation about the war in Libya. She is a music teacher/activist in Tanzania, where she researches the role of music in protest. And she was very sympathetic toward Gaddafi. Grad school introduced me to some pretty diverse opinions and philosophies, but having been immersed in Western media’s depiction of Gaddafi and the situation in Libya, it is an eyebrow raiser to converse with a Gaddafi sympathizer. Quite refreshing actually. And according to this girl she is not alone in Tanzania. There are many there who deplore the acts of repression carried out by Gaddafi’s regime, but they also appreciate what he did for the country. France’s chomping at the bit to bomb the daylights out of Libya is not unnoticed by their African neighbors, naturally. Speaking to this girl who exists in a different reality than my own is a healthy dose of perspective and a nice reminder that things are never black and white, there are two sides to every story, and any other cliche you want to add here. Scrutinizing the motives of the powers that be can make for a pretty paranoid conspiracy theorist. But the evidence is hard to ignore, right? The business deals between the rebels and the Western world were rolled out a few days after the no fly zone was passed....hmm...just lettin’ that marinate. Shame on me for being so arrogant as to think about politics. Out of my realm of expertise.
09/12/2011
Today has been a good day. I woke up early after about 3 hours of sleep and went with Sam to the underground where she told me how to go to Notre Dame. The Paris Underground, by the way, is infinitely easier to navigate than the tube. Also, when one asks the information desk how to get somewhere, instead of pointing in a general direction and grunting, they give clear, concise directions on how to get there.
Notre Dame is insanely stunning. I’m in love with it. If I were going to be homeless I would make sure that the moment I ran out of money I would be standing in front of Notre Dame so that I could live the rest of my vagrant life staring at it. It’s 850 years old (I think) and I am extremely curious as to how in tarnation they built the thing. It’s incredibly intricate, and without having any knowledge of architecture to speak of. I would venture to say it is a marvel. It is, at the very least, beautiful. I sat in front of it for about 30 minutes staring at it trying to decide if I think it is masculine or feminine. Depending on what side you look at changes its gender I believe. One side has pointy tower things and a pretty garden--that’s the feminine side. The other side is rather square--that’s the masculine side. Sorry, guys.
Inside they play really creepy music...I felt like a stigmata was going to happen any minute (but definitely not to me). Sam told me that during the Revolution someone climbed up on the outside and cut the heads off the statues, and they were later restored. We can’t for the life of us figure out 1) How they got up there 2) What did they use to cut the heads of off giant stone statues? I’m picturing Wizard’s Chess and a bunch of French Revolutionary hooligans with swords. Anyway.
After Seeing Notre Dame I took a stroll along the Seine. I basically spent the whole time Americanly (new word) gawking at how old everything is. Never ceases to amaze me. Then I went on a quest for Shakespeare and Company.
It is super cute. The Paris literary scene post WWI was, as everyone knows, as good as it gets. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Hemingway, James Joyce, Sylvia Breach, and all their cohorts hung out at the book store that Breach opened right across from Notre Dame. I read that at the time it was one of the only places, if not the only place, to get English books in Paris, so all the writers of the lost generation hung out there, and I’m sure argued about world affairs and literary devices as we English wonks are so inclined to do. So, I went in the bookstore to try to feel some inspiration from literary spirits lingering about. This didn’t really happen because it was super crowded with doggone tourists, however it turns out that Bobbie Ann Mason is going to be there doing a book signing for her new book on September 19th. I may have to return for this little event, since, for those of you who don’t know, Bobbie Ann Mason is a quite successful writer from, of all places, Mayfield, Kentucky--about 20 minutes from the good ole hometown, Paducah. The only thing of hers I have ever read was her short story Shiloh, which I loved. It’s always nice to see a successful woman writer from my parts. I’m pretty sure she won the Booker Prize, and her new novel is about Nazis in Europe--rather a vague description I realize, but I don’t remember really.
So after I hung out at Shakespeare and Company for a bit I bought a second hand copy of Faulkner’s Sanctuary because I do love me some Faulkner and it was only 5 Euros. I started reading it in the park today, and in true Faulkner fashion, God bless him, it’s weird as hell (pardon my French).
I went for some breakfast at Ben and Jerry’s because they have free wifi and plugs. This may not sound like a big deal, but I am one who truly appreciates free wifi and a plug. That is the main criteria on which I base my airport ranking system--the number of readily available outlets. Nashville is awesome, Chicago is not. Anyway, I digress. For whatever reason my debit card didn’t work when I went to pay for my ham and cheese omelette and orange juice (with a spoon in it?), so I had to hoof it across the street to an ATM. Pretty embarrassing. Whoopsie.
After this I began my walking tour of the Latin Quarter which consisted of me just taking off in the direction of it and getting lost. That’s okay, though because I saw some cool stuff. The fountain of San Michel depicting someone slaying a dragon, bunch of shops, la Sorbonne, and the Pantheon. La Sorbonne was cool because I know some people who go to school there and a bunch of famous people have come through there. From what I read it is France’s most prestigious or famous university or something. I had to go to the Pantheon to pay my respects to those crazy revolutionary guys Voltaire, Hugo, and Rousseau. They are entombed there. They had such profound ideas that changed the world and now they’re just some dust in an old box that people pay 8 euros to take a picture of. It made me feel very mortal. So that was pretty cool.
I saw videos of the Pantheon during WWII when there were soldiers marching all over it, which was bizarre. WWII legacies are so real here, which may sound like an incredibly obvious statement, but I feel very much removed from it back home. To stand in spots where it happened brings it home a little bit.
Perhaps the most interesting event of the day happened when I was leaving the Pantheon walking back toward la Sorbonne. It’s pretty obvious that traffic in Paris is just silly, so much so that I saw a man get run over in the street. It scared the daylights out of me. I’m waiting for the light to turn so I can cross the road (I’m way too scared to jay-walk and now I feel completely justified) and a woman turning the corner didn’t see a man crossing the street and she hit him. Just like in Superbad when Seth gets rammed by that weirdo in the liquor store parking lot. I heard her scream, he fell down and rolled a few feet. I was a bit taken aback and said “Oh my God.” Upon hearing English, the people standing next to me who were from Alberta, Canada, struck up a conversation. The guy noted that witnessing this completed the Paris experience. Wow. The poor guy ended up limping away, but it was still unsettling. I felt like Lucy in A Room With A View when she sees the man get murdered in Italy. Except no one has fallen in love with me and I don’t have a Baedeker.
I walked back to Notre Dame and sat in the park reading and people watching for a solid hour. It feels extremely nice to not worry about having to be anywhere.
I decided to head back to Sam’s quarter to meet her at her job. I navigated the RER by myself successfully, and seeing as though I was early I went to a cute little bakery to get myself a treat. I got the most delicious little pastry with chocolate creme in it, which was delish. That is the picture at the top of the page. This continent knows their pastries, man. As I sat on a bench eating the heck out of my pastry I felt like Emily Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love when she eats the spaghetti. I was painfully aware of my muffin top, but not so much so that I actually stopped eating this two tiered chocolate beauty. I mean, I already paid for it.
Au Revoir.
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