Pep-talk for Paris

Sometimes I wonder and think what they'd have done in Paris. What they'd have done in any paradise, even if it wasn't paradise, and what I'd do if paradise existed. I should have done my field study in New Orleans. I should have gone down there and been a volunteer, helping rebuild something, somewhere. I should have asked people about jazz. I should have read Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston at night. Is it ridiculous to say that my mother would probably be more nervous about me going to New Orleans than me going to Paris? Not to mention, Caitlin would never forgive me.

It's funny, that I'm less than a month away now, and more than aware that I'm doing the craziest thing I've ever done before, but also aware that this is just a stepping stone for doing things that are crazier in the future. I was watching The Music Man last night with some friends, and I realized how good it was for me that I wasn't born in a small town. The old women talked of the librarian in a way that I realized people would talk about me if the people from where I'm from weren't used to people hauling off and doing crazy things. For most of them, moving to LA from wherever they were from was the crazy thing. So me going off to Paris is surprising, maybe, but not unexpected, if they know me, which many of them do.

My mom says she's afraid I'll never come back.

I'm not afraid of that, though it wouldn't upset me if I found a reason to stay somewhere.

Going over culture shock again I realized what I'm most prone to is holing myself up in whatever apartment I get or wherever I'm living, reading, writing, but never going out because it means I'll have to go out on my own. That's how I am at home. I love getting in the car and driving somewhere, but I always have to have a purpose, and directions. But then again, I am prone to wander. But wandering for me usually comes with the need for comfort--not total comfort, just an understanding that I can control myself, or...something. I haven't figured that one out yet.

I wanted a way to "mitigate"--I hate that word--this issue. I hate the word because it's so impersonal, and it means nothing to me. It's just meaningless. Anyway, I've decided that I'm going to chose one place that I have to visit every day. Not the same place, a new place. Something to get me out of the apartment. When I went to London, and realized I had no idea what I was doing there, and I didn't have alone time, and it was brand new, and I'd never been abroad, I got an email from my father telling me to go to St. Paul's. Honestly, to make him proud, to tell him I had gone, to write back to him about it, was all that got me out that first weekend. And that was all I needed.

I'm not afraid of the romanticism of Paris. I'm afraid that'll all melt away as soon as I'm in that city alone, and part of me wants to just sit on a park bench for two or three days after Kate leaves and force myself to realize that this city will be kind. I think that's why I might need Langston Hughes with me, to keep me company. I may have found something to love. But which love? And in which life? Kate says that God let me listen to the music, enter those speakeasies and listen. I feel I can remember asking, please let me go. Please. And I imagine God rolled his eyes at me. But it makes me wonder if perhaps I've been to these places before, and if I have, then why be nervous?

I remember thinking when I was in Heathrow for the second time, so nervous because it was such a big airport, and that taxi driver had just cheated me out of about £20 and I was angry at him (and will not be speaking for him in the trials of heaven) and I was afraid of never getting home. Getting into JFK airport was like coming home. You could feel America in the soil, coming up through your feet. Everything clean and in straight lines, the shops on the right in the left, rather than circling around you, and I knew I'd get there. On the plane to JFK they gave us these horrible airplane pizzas but on the cover of the pizza box was the Coliseum, the Eiffel tower, and the London Gherkin, all of which I had seen and been to, if not inside of, and it occurred to me that 4 months ago I hadn't at all been to those places, just seen pictures of them. This wonderful sense of accomplishment came over me. The boy sitting next to me laughed at me, and I explained. He said he was going on holiday to Florida with some friends. I thought that a very odd place to decide to go on holiday, but didn't say so. All of this goes back to the point that I said to myself, "If you can get through Heathrow, you can do anything." I honestly believed that, because I was nervous about it, and I was afraid, and it seems a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, if you've done it, but I hadn't. So when I got back home, an occurrence I don't actually remember, Heathrow had been done. And I knew I could do anything.

Why shouldn't that apply now? Why can't I use that as my reason for going to Paris alone on a Field Study? Gosh I'm crazy, but going crazy--so I've been told--can be a fun experience. If I just let it happen. Damn. I've been through Heathrow! What can't I do? Learn and speak a foreign language? Sure! Travel a foreign country on one's lonesome? Done! Live abroad for as long as a tourist visa will let you stay? Not a problem. I mean let's be clear about this: Heathrow is 10 miles in diameter. 5 terminals. Outside of London. It's got really circular design, so its easy to get lost, and there are a trillion people so it's easy to not be certain where you are. It's only when the plane is going to board that they actually tell you where your gate is, so you have to stave off sleep while you wait for the board to update your gate, meanwhile you may be on the other end of the terminal from your gate. That's not nerve-racking at all.  (In another time-continuum, by the way, Jennifer is still sleeping in Heathrow; she missed her plane and just became an illegal immigrant of the UK.) My question is, if I've been through Heathrow, what can't I do? Well, honestly, I'm aware there are plenty of things I can't do. Like speak Romanian. Or French, for that matter. But you know, people have been doing this for centuries. Americans have been doing this for centuries. What really is the problem?

If you haven't figured it out, this is my pep-talk. Because it's easy to tell yourself its all going to be fine when you've got 3 months until you go. But now it's a couple of weeks, and I really have to do myself some convincing.

Language

I first fell in love with French when I was learning the phrase, 'Je suis enchantée de faire votre connaissance.'  I had been back at home in Los Angeles for six months from a study abroad in London and had another two months to go until I returned to Provo.  Learning is all that has ever made me particularly happy, and after six months of not being in school, I was reeling with dissatisfaction.  Perhaps sensing my displeasure with life, and aware I'd be taking French in the Fall, my parents gifted me one of those CD-ROM 'Learn a Language' programs for my birthday to get me started.

I worked about four to six hours every day at a Law Office, and when I came home, I'd practice French for hours, lying across my parents bed repeating words and phrases.  I loved it.  My roommate collects stories I tell her of my prayers with God; her favorite is the story of the week I prayed every night for God to help me get the pronunciation of the French 'r' down.  I can still remember the first time I said 'rouge.'

Fairly quickly, I familiarized myself with most of the disks of the program, and swapped them out depending on whether I wanted to learn phrases, 'Au secours!' (Help!) which is another great direct-translation, or vocabulary, 'souris' (mouse).

It was a phrase day when I found, 'Je suis enchantée de faire votre connaissance.'  I had NO idea what this meant.  I knew it was supposed to mean something about being enchanted, and maybe meeting someone, but I hardly understood the sentence syntax or meaning of the individual words.  I looked it up online.  It means "I'm pleased to meet you," but more literally, "I am enchanted to make your knowledge/acquaintance."  I was smitten.  Someone could tell me I was wrong now, and I'd probably agree with them, but at the time this phrase meant something a lot more than "I'm glad to meet you."  It was saying something more like, "I'm enchanted to know you exist."  What a glorious idea.  Because if Descartes is right, and 'Je pense donc je suis,' that means that I am my knowledge.  I'm only as good as my knowledge, and they're pleased they know about it.

French wasn't about learning another language that day, it was about learning a new way of thinking, a new way of seeing people, and a new way of seeing the world.  How could you ever have a bad day with people being pleased to know you exist and other such grandiose phrases?  Granted, I've now been studying French for almost two years and I don't know that I could make the same argument about this phrase, knowing what I know about the meaning of french words.  But it doesn't really matter that my direct translation was a little off, because I believed it, and it carried me through two years of learning a language that more often than not frustrates me, and makes me feel ridiculously incapable and inept.  I hate it.  I mean, I hate it.  I hate the homework, and I hate that I never know how to say what I want quickly enough.  I hate that I can't understand most people speaking the same language I've been studying for two years, and I hate that I understand concepts I can't put into practice.  I hate getting up in front of people and fumbling with the words and the grammar.  I really hate it.

But then--I'll accidentally forget time.  I'll forget the other homework I've got looming over my head, and I'll get stuck in my grammar book, and I'll marvel over this language that makes no sense some days, and all the sense in the world others.  I'll find a book written in french about the history of jazz, and I'll read seven pages of it before I realize I didn't once look up the definition of a word, or wonder what the hell a series of words in a particular order meant.  I'll forget about what needs doing and realize how long its been since I had to get the direct translation for "I'm glad to meet you," and I'm back lying across my parents' bed, pronouncing rouge for the very first time.