sans toi les émotions d'aujourd'hui ne seraient que la peau morte des émotions d'autrefois

happy hour at deux moulins is always the first of many wonderful mistakes.

one month from now does not exist

Of course, the lesson is that it is better to try to not be annoyed with your friends, despite their faults and your faults and your combined faults as friends, because life is short and so is the rest of your time in France. Blah blah blah.


Helpful Hint: If depressed, reading the Matthew Shephard Wikipedia won't help. Who would have guessed?

Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

j'en ai marre de mon boulot! de mon boulot, des parisiens cruels, de tout! et en plus, emmanuel est fils de pute qui me fait chier. non, en fait c pas de tout vrai- je suis amoureuse de lui completement mais il m'a dit aujourdhui qu'il va bientot demenager a la suisse. QUOI? t'as dit QUOI? je lui ai dit, vas te faire foutre, et puis, reviens-moi, ne me quitte pas. c nulle parce que je sais bien, moi aussi, je partirai en decembre...mais quand-meme..y los colombianos son fuerte! son siembre amable conmigo pero...pero no se decir lo que yo quiero...mais c juste, avec moi, c toujours la joie ou la tristesse mais je prefererai les deux.

so stupid and crappy and I have cramps and I want chocolate and cigarettes and drugs argh!

goddammit, sweetheart

"and if you love somebody, you show it
you learn to open up your arms and let go of it
you don't stay up all night drinking cheap bear
and act like we oughta know it"



This weekend, Jessi forced me into studying for at least eight hours. It was horrible. Let me give you an image of Jessi and me studying. Jessi is sitting on a chair in my room, surrounded by stuff, reading diligently, asking intelligent questions. Taking notes of notes she's already taken. Highlighting. Speaking about Balzac and Baudelaire under her breath.

Then there's me. I'm usually rolling around my bed in a pile of papers which all have doodles covering them from when I was bored in lecture. Or notes to Jessi from when I was bored in lecture. (Examples: "JE SUIS SOO FATIGUEE!" "True/false: I speak better than french people?[false] how do they not get this? Where are we eating? FRENCH = STUPID." "I am going to kill that swedish bitch") One pages features a list of all 50 states which I made when my apartment flooded and I didn't know what else to do other than sit on my bed and try to list all of them...anyway. So I'm laying on my bed, whining to Jessi, pretending to look up useful information, and eating sour patch kids. Every few minutes when she turns away I try to sneak on facebook for a few precious seconds, always keeping a tab with something about Romanticism or whatever open for going back quickly when she looks. You might think I am a horrible student. And I am. But the lame truth about this is that I don't really have to study for my lit final and I know I'm going to do well because I've already done extensive reading on all of the topics we've covered on Wikipedia, in my own time. Or made Emmanuel teach me. Because I'm a loser. Still, I'm really grateful I have her to try and make me work.

The real highlights of the weekend (not studying, actually) were the Sigur Ros concert, to which Ida and I arrived an hour late, the Des Ark concert, to which we arrived two hours early, and all of the beer and Mexican food surrounding both. Des Ark felt like Madison- a shitty warehouse with random pieces of artwork and old furniture sitting around, people smoking pot, the guys at the "bar" selling cans of beer for 1 euro each...everything. It was kind of amazing, actually. And Ida was the perfect companion for both.
I think though, that the best moment of the weekend, musical orgasms aside, was tonight at dinner. Jessi, Siril (who lives above the arctic circle in Norway, just for reference) and I are eating burritos which we miraculously found in Saint-Michel. Siril takes one bite into hers-which has beef in it- makes a disgusted face and goes "But it tastes like reindeer!" I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Ok, maybe you had to be there.

ps- in what entry was one of my labels 'rabies?'

toby is the devil

I am trying to milk the whole Nablopomohohofroyo thing for all it's worth. As in, not doing it because I'm way too goddamned lazy, but when I feel like I'm starting to write in here a little too often I just pretend like I am doing it and it's an accomplishment. Yeah. I know. Ever been inside my head before? It's a weird place.

I read some quote on my iGoogle home page the other day by Rilke about people who think their lives are boring: If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. Ok so he maybe didn't mean boring per se, he meant people who think their lives suck. I am going to interpret this as boredom.


It struck me because once in awhile, despite the fact that I am very happy here, I find myself a bit bored and disappointed with my life. I guess we all do sometimes , right? Here I am in Paris. I should at LEAST be in love with a French man. I should at least be going to crazy parties until the early morning in tiny apartments with attractive people...actually when I picture PARIS how I should be living it, it's something like this: In a Haussmannian apartment, much like my own, in a room with a fireplace and a chandelier. There is a red light in the room. Some sort of sexy music is going on. Ridiculously cool and beautiful people are huddled around doing coke and drinking absinthe and smoking cigarettes. Where on earth did I come up with this image and decided that is how I should be leading my life here? I. have. no. idea. What is my life ACTUALLY like here? I wake up and drink tea. I go to class. I come home and do my homework. Mostly I sit on my bed with Siril and Ida watching The Office, some movie, or weird Norwegian children's shows they have rediscovered on youtube. Am I bored? Sometimes, in the big picture. But what does that even mean? How can you change the big picture? Especially when you live in Paris? I mean really, what else CAN you do?

And the truth of the matter is, that in the little day-to-day moments, I love it. I love that when I am waking up and drinking tea I'm opening up my window and looking out on the best city. I love that when I go to school I have to walk through the winding avenues of the Latin Quarter and among some of the oldest educational institutes, ever. When I come home it's to MY Haussmannian building with a fireplace (no chandelier...yet), and my friends who I love, even though they aren't attractive Frenchmen. Maybe if I weren't so worried with other people's perception of my experience in Paris, I wouldn't think my life were boring. And maybe maybe maybe, there is something to be said for a rather mundane life in Paris. You know? Because it means it's a life, and not a vacation. I like to think my experience here has been somewhat atypical compared to the average study abroad experience (in good and bad ways). I don't go out and drink every night with my crazy international friends, but I do actually feel like I live here and this has become my home. I've had to overcome a lot of obstacles-in the ER within the first week and I've moved 5 times, for example- in order to finally get to this calmer, albeit bored life. Christ, I don't know. I told you my brain was a weird place.

I guess maybe the reason I'm afraid of going back to Madison is because I'm afraid that, like the Rilke quote would suggest, I am the boring one. And when you have a pretty background like Paris, you can at least try to distract yourself with it. What happens when I get back to little city with one main street where I know everybody? If I can't have the crazy Parisien life of my fantasies in Paris, I'm obviously not going to find it in Wisconsin. Maybe that's not my life for a reason, though. If that is the case though, why do I always find myself waiting for something better? Do I learn to be happy with what I have or learn how to make a change? Do I stop writing in my blog at 4 am when I should have been asleep for hours? Hmph.


------------------------------
1. I totally don't condone the use of cocaine.

2. I talk a lot about Haussmannian architecture, because it is probably my favorite (visual) aspect of Paris. This is what I mean by that:

Yeah, my apartment is in a building like that. Yeah, you should be jealous of me. If you want to see more pictures of it (I'm very proud!) you can see them at my flickr, to which I've linked on here.

3. When I mentioned I'd been in the ER within the first week, you maybe thought that that was a lame thing to mention and that you didn't feel bad for me. Well, guess what? It sucked. And the sickness I had is the reason that I am lactose intolerant now. Which MORE than sucks. So you should feel bad for me.

4. The subject line of this blog is completely unrelated to the rest of it, but is an important reference to a deleted scene of the episode "Sexual Harassment" from the Office season 2. Watch it immediately, it will change your life.

jeg vil elske deg til evig tid

Despite the serious fucking pandemonium and confusion that is my brain/inner thoughts, life has been pretty sunshine-y as of late. Tuesday and the following few days were pretty incredible, of course. The feelings of awe towards us Americans at the bar as we watched the results were completely new for me, but it was nice. Friday night was happy hour at my new favorite place, Cafe des 2 Moulins (yes, coincidentally where much of Amelie was filmed.) By "happy hour," I mean us running in seven minutes before 22h and ordering eight beers and two glasses of wine for the three of us there. We drank, ate popcorn, talked about flag-burning and vagina dentata.
Yesterday was sleeping until 2, reading all day, a Norwegian feast, Fargo, beer, the Office. It was the second Saturday in a row we've "accidentally" watched so many episodes that everybody misses the metro and we all fall asleep in a pile on my bed. Not exactly the kind of sleepover I want to be having (Emmanuel, reviens de la Suisse, déja!) but this might be better. Who am I kidding? Not at all but better than sleeping alone and listen to the colombianos do it.

Tomorrow is my petit voyage to Strasbourg (!). I already know I am going to fall in love with that city and be more confused about life. Thanks, Europe. Tuesday is who knows, next weekend is Sigur Ros, November is going too fast and soon I'll be in America. My feelings about that have been mostly of panic and depression. Not for being in Wisconsin, and home exactly...just not being in Europe. Didn't I just get here? I did. What about all of the things I was going to do...sometime? When will I do them? When is the next time I'll come back? I'm worried about how quickly French will slide out of my brain. I'm worried about not being surrounded by people at all time, not being in a city where things happen. Not riding the métro, not pushing through crowds, not seeing the Sacré Coeur when I step out my apartment to go to the boulangerie. Yeah, original I know.
Obama and Fargo are helping me to accept all of this though, I'm pleased to say. Give me some cheddar cheese and I might actually start to get excited. Maybe. not.

i won't ever forget

five in the morning, on the streets of paris, everybody drunk and crying and hugging and running around in the rain, screaming obama obama obama.

i heard your song before my heart had time to hush it

I don't understand how people know what they want or know how to get it.

I can't express myself in any language.