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.