Erin Writes her First Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Bob Heinsler (315) 354-5311 x27

Fire Damage to Blue Ridge Wilderness and Great Camp Sagamore Averted

Raquette Lake, NY July 17, 2007 – A ground fire on the banks of Sagamore Lake was identified and contained by Sagamore Institute staff and interns on Tuesday morning. The cause of the fire remains unclear, but by 11am the larger flames were extinguished and the smoldering duff was under control thanks to the prompt relief efforts directed by Sagamore caretaker Bob Heinsler.

Program Director Penny James first spotted smoke in the Blue Ridge Wilderness about a half mile northeast of the Sagamore Institute’s property at 9:15am. By 9:30am staff and interns were on the scene smothering the flames with lake water and isolating the two affected trees from the surrounding forest. First responders Bob Heinsler and Liam Fox were quickly joined by Dan Duggan, Peggy Lynn, David Swain, Erin Silverstein, Rhiannon Cizon, Asha Kowalewska, Alissa Peterson, Tom Hodgson, Beverly Bridger and Michael Wilson. The local ranger, Peter Evans, arrived as relief efforts were underway. He posited lightning as a cause, though a stray cigarette or campfire is equally plausible.

This is the third fire to hit Sagamore Lake during Heinsler’s tenure as caretaker. Eighteen years ago a fire originating in a similar location spread, ultimately damaging 25 acres.

The programming for this week’s Intergenerational Grands Camp was not disrupted, and the morning’s tour proceeded with only a slight delay.

Lasting damage was limited to the two directly affected trees, and the staff incurred merely minor nicks and scrapes. Musicians Dan Duggan, Peggy Lynn and Tom Hodgson—members of the successful bucket brigade—plan to write a song about the ordeal.

###

Day Off

This moment has been three weeks in the making. Private lake + canoe + iPod = paddling across the lake singing "Just Around the Riverbend," and then "Colors of the Wind," for good measure. If anyone happened to be hiking along the Lakeside Trail I hope they enjoyed the show. This is the first really solitary moment I've had to write, and it's probably one of the most solitary moments of my entire life. The narrow vacant beach stretches on either side of me; we just took the label "BEACH" off the trail maps so guests wouldn't flock here. The roofs of Great Camp Sagamore barely peak out of the trees on the far side of the lake. I have no idea how long it took me to paddle here. I didn't think to check my watch.

My morning was relatively productive. A quick 20-minute yoga workout followed by 8am breakfast as usual. 9am staff meeting in the conference room. I made sure to remind everyone about tonight's margarita party (thanks to a generous $400 tip left for us last week.) John, the chef, and I have yet to work out how to pull off frozen margarita's without a blender. Ideas thus far: motor boat rotor; weedwacker; mix-master; hammer. A bike-operated blender plan may be in the works, but won't be ready by this evening. We might have to resign ourselves to 'ritas on the rocks. Such are the sacrifices one must make in the wilderness.

10-12 gardening duty. 5 straight days of rain had taken care of things for awile, but today's high of 90 should leave some thirsty plants in its wake. The dandelions spelling out 'SAGAMORE' require particular attention. One of those letters dies and my negligence will be broadcast to all who can read.

After lunch I finally got around to composing a sensistively worded e-mail:

Re: Intern Educator position offer

Dear Monica,

Yes! I am eager to accept the position of Intern Educator. However, could you give me some more specific information about the training and start date? My current director here at the Sagamore Institute is anxious about my leaving before the end of the busy tourist season. Regardless, I am definitely accepting the position at the BMA, but I just want to ensure that I can make the transition from one mission-oriented cultural institution to another as smoothly as possible without compromising the missions of either. The earlier I know the specifics of this position the more readily my current director can prepare for my eventual departure.

Sincerely,
Erin Silverstein

A good 5 hours of intense pondering and advice-seeking went into that e-mail: 3.5 hours with my incredibly understanding boss, 0.5 hours each with my dad and two co-workers. Of course I'm thrilled I got the job. I really thought it was a long shot without any formal background in art history or museum studies. Now that I had the offer, I could only accept knowing I was abandoning my current gig 2 months early, leaving the lake, Pocohontas sing-a-longs and Sagamore's mission behind. 3 months ago I chose Sagamore over a Critical Language Scholarship; now I had to choose the Brooklyn Museum over Sagamore (not to mention my winter travel plans--Egypt, Turkey, Armenia--all that will have to wait...) Enviable choices to have to make no doubt, but choices none the less.

A butterfly just joined me on the beach. I wonder if she's escaping the rigors of butterfly-life for a moment. I wonder if she's contemplating her butterfly future.

The beach floor is the softest my feet have ever had the luxury of stepping on. The lake water is clear as day, and viewed from this angle by my eyes alone. To think that 2 months ago my bliss was le Parc des Buttes Chaumont, now it's this empty lake, and in 2 months...Prospect Park? I suppose I could sit here on this stump pondering the meaning of it all forever, or I could jump back in the lake and live the present choice rather than smothering it with the future.

Saying Goodbye

Dammit, I should have given them my e-mail address. I should have said goodbye somehow, wowed them with a parting lesson, indelibly impressed on them what it means to me to be an American. They all gasped in shock when I confessed I had never watched Prison Break or bought a hamburger at MacDonald's. I tried to build on that momentum, annoucing Congress's recent vote to end the Iraq War by 2008 and the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of regulating carbon emissions. "Do you think this will really change anything?" I asked. They shrugged. This was one of my favorite classes, with the best attendance and the most participation. How could it end like this with shrugs?

I should have brought in food. They were still bitter over the fact that the other half of their class (on week A) had gotten Nutella and toast right before Christmas. At the very least I should have taken a picture. Now all I have is a list of names on a ledger followed by rows of checks and X's, here's and absences, mostly checks in this exceptional case. I can match each name to a face: Aurelien, the class clown, wore a "F*** ME I'M FAMOUS" shirt, and his pal Alexandre always found a way to bring up how prudish he found Americans. Timothé was loquacious, socially awkward and the constant butt of his classmates' jokes. Romain and Gael, the studious silent types, always sat next to Timothé yet never defended him. Adil sat in the back finishing his math homework (I could never bring myself to give him shit for it because I remember doing the same thing in my French classes not so long ago). Alizée and Sandrine mostly observed but ocassionally interjected a note of frankness in to the conversation. Alizée had voted for Bayrou, the centrist, in the first round of the French presidential election. Adeline, the spirited girl-next-door, listened attentively to my every word and answered every question with a sparkle in her eye. Stephen has an American father and had no need for my English class. I like to think he came only because he had a slight crush on me. Finally, Virginie and Julie, the unpretentious blondes, dutifully helped Adil with his math homework in the back.

Perhaps one day one of them will plan a trip to the States and think to look up their old English Assistant from lycée. Perhaps they'll never think of me again, or worse, think back on what a waste of time I was. On average I had less than 10 minutes a week per student. How was I supposed to make that worth their while? They already watch far more than 10 minutes of American movies and TV a week, and listen to more than 10 minutes of American music. Do they really need more contact with my culture? Not only is America a daily presence in their afterschool lives; now we've invaded the classroom too. I can only hope my being there in the flesh--a living, breathing, not obese, non-Republican American--added a shade of grey to their caricature of the super-power across the pond.

* * *

To the students of Lycée Ionesco,

Since October I have struggled to figure out how to make my time with you worthwhile. Some of you I saw every week, some every other week (many even less than that). On average each of you had the chance to speak with me for less than 10 minutes a week. It seemed almost pointless. But I had the chance to speak to all of you collectively for 12 hours a week, and that, I assure you, was not pointless. Over the course of those hours I saw what America looks like through your eyes: the land of Prison Break, Desperate Housewives and Big Macs. And I saw what France looks like through your eyes too--Sarko, Ségo and Bac Philo.

I hope you learned something from our time together. Mostly, I hope you understand that just as the French are now debating the quesiton, "What does it mean to be French?" so too are we Americans debating what it means to be American. With your help I now feel better able to answer both of those questions.

Thank you and best of luck in the future.

Sincerely,
Erin

On Moving (this probably sounds way too precocious but whatever)

It seems cruel doesn't it to continually uproot ourselves? To create home after home only to knowingly abandon the people and places that have come to mean so much to us? Of course the majority of those people and places would have never had the chance to mean anything to us had we just stayed put and established roots and nurtured them till our dying day. All the same, is a transient life full of short-term acquintances and broad but shallow roots necessarily a richer one? If our ancestors spent decades perfecting the rituals of daily life are we now permanent amateurs? We are gifted with the ability to eclectically stitch the seams of our lives together as we choose, we can recount tales of one life to friends in another, and insightfully remark on the striking similarities and dissimilarities between this place and that. This surely renders us more interesting and more alone. What are the odds that anyone else has led the same mix-and-match life as you? At a certain point most of us make a pact with someone else to stick together. Finally your life is not yours alone. Yet aside from this travelling partner (and 50% of the time your lives will turn out to diverge after all...) constancy is elusive and fleeting. As I prepare to yet again tear myself out of one life, briefly catch up with the scattered pieces of previous lives and then begin yet another life anew I cannot compain. However I can easily marvel at the unremarked violence of each transition, the plans left unrealized, the familiarities abandoned, the pictures torn from being hung and rehung on so many walls.

The Dead Center

DISCLAIMER: As I am about to embark on my April vacation (the fourth of four generous two week breaks) I feel I should finally get around to posting how I spent the last break back in February. This is long, and it is still a work in progress. Critical comments would be much appreciated.

The Dead Center
Erin R. Silverstein

Saul must be back in Paris by now, re-inhabiting his 9m2 flat in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a far cry from this circus wagon (except the size). I was supposed be back in Paris by now. My rent’s due Thursday, I had plans to visit the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Yet here I am, at the circus, in the dead center of France. And is the center ever dead. The nearest population hub is a village comprising perhaps 15 houses about 5 miles down the road. Farm animals outnumber people. French cows still “moo,” French sheep still “baa.” Rachel and I verified this on our walk into “town” earlier today. Any slight difference of accent was lost on our human ears. Just past town we happened upon a small brook. “It’s been too long since I’ve heard the sound of babbling,” Rach said.
We both paused at the side of the road and soaked in the babble. I stepped over the muddy tire tracks and found a dry spot on which to perch for a moment…

* * *

The previous Tuesday Saul and I had missed our train to Tours. We had been doing yoga at my flat and lost track of time, which I guess is sort of the point of yoga, but in this case it caused more stress than zen. We effectively sprinted from my flat to the gare, forgoing any attempt to not look like tourists, but got there just as the train was pulling out of the station. We caught the next train two hours later. Then we missed our connecting train in Tours.
Eight hours after we had left my flat in the 15eme we finally made it to Loches, a sleepy town 35 kilometers southeast of Tours. More than ever I craved a week without timetables.

Saul’s grandmother picked us up at the bus station. If I were to draw a cartoon of a grandmother it would closely resemble Marie-Madeleine—clear plastic protecting her off-white granny-fro from the drizzle, well-worn wool cardigan on top, grey and beige on the bottom, and barely 5 feet in stature. At the time I knew only that she was Saul’s mother’s mother and that her rates for a week at Chez Granny were in line with my shoestring budget. By the end of the week I knew all about her childhood during World War II, her life in Algeria during the 60s, the raising of her four children—Christine, Bruno, Elizabeth (a.k.a. Babette,) and Fabienne—and her opinion of what has become of them since they left her watchful eye. All of this was accompanied by album upon album of pictures, dating from the turn of the century up to this past summer.

Marie-Madeleine was not about to divulge her past without asking a few questions of her own. In fact, she was quite the conversationalist, exuding both the confidence of age and the eager verging on naïve curiosity of youth.
Once over a casual dinner the conversation drifted towards matters of faith. “So tell me Céline,” Marie-Madeleine ventured (she could never remember my tongue-twister of an Irish-American name). “What do they call a communion in Judaism?”
“Well, we don’t exactly have a communion,” I replied.
She chuckled incredulously, “You mean you don’t believe Jesus Christ died?”
I looked down at my plate of beets, searching for an appropriate response to such a sensitive question. Then I looked up and met her wide, grinning eyes. Her frankness was infectious. “No, we believe he died,” I countered. “We just don’t believe he was the Son of God.”

Between chats Saul and I took advantage of the two old but functional bikes in the garage to explore the countryside. We biked past field upon field, charting a grand loop away from town and then back. We biked to the château where Joan of Arc talked Charles V into reclaiming the French throne from the English. We biked to the local bar and split a litre of Affligem. We biked to the Croix Rouge, where Saul’s aunt Babette volunteers while she looks for more gainful employment. “It passes the time, keeps me busy,” she said, embodying the plight of France’s large unemployed population.

One morning we sat on the porch in the sunlight and enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt sweetened with homemade strawberry preserves and local honey. It was incredibly simple and preposterously good. We knew if grandma returned from the market and caught us leaving the porch doors open she’d begin her predictable rant:
“I don’t know how it is in New York, but here, in my house, we keep the doors shut so the heat stays inside.”
“Yes grandma,” we’d obediently reply.
“Are the shutters in your rooms closed?” This question was asked at least three times per day. She suspected we took advantage of her every absence to flout the strict closed-shutter policy. The thick wooden shutters not only saved on heating bills but also blocked every possible speck of light from entering our bedrooms. Every morning I would wake up in pitch black. Was it 5am or 11? I neither knew nor cared.

Our last morning in Loches I woke up and found a note on the dining room table: “Saul, I went to the market. Please set the table. Grandma.”
I looked around at the photographs lining the dining room walls, documenting every life Marie-Madeleine had nurtured into being. A week ago these lives had been only names, if that. Now I could rattle off where each one was born, how far they had made it in school, when they had married, why they had divorced. I remembered weddings I had never been to. I missed people I had never known.
Back in my bedroom I packed my bags and donned a pair of new silver shoes I had bought at the Red Cross.
I opened the forbidden shutters and breathed in the backyard one last time. I smiled again at the incongruous presence of solar-powered garden lights, a gift from Christine, Saul’s Oregon granola mom.

I returned to the dining room for lunch. On my plate had been placed a hexagonal box of Lindt chocolates, a parting gift from grandma. After lunch she drove us to the bus station, kissed us on both cheeks, and waved as the bus pulled away.

* * *

Elise, the daughter of one of Christine’s best friends picked us up at the Chateauroux station. She had babysitted Saul as a child during his family’s summer trips to France. We stopped at her parents’ house where she lent me a pair of old boots to better navigate the country mud.
“Better than those white shoes, eh?” she remarked. “They’re silver,” I thought to myself, but conceded the point. I decided to save the silver for Paris.
Along the drive to La Châtre Elise volunteered her take on the geographic and social history of the area. “This land is really at a crossroads in many ways. The Parisian basin ends here and the foothills of the Massif Central begin. Also this is where the old linguistic division between the Lange d’Oc of the south and the Langue d’Oil of the north was. You can still occasionally hear older people speaking in a patois, but honestly you’re more likely to hear people chatting in Dutch.” Why Dutch? we asked. “Foreigners have been moving in in droves from Holland, Germany, England, Northern Europe in general. They like that the property is relatively cheap and the lifestyle is more laidback, more rural. Locals have been almost completely priced out of the real estate market. It was really difficult when I was looking for a house a few years ago.

“I met an English guy at a campsite a few years back. He was sick of his life in London; all work, no spirit. He had seen something on TV about this part of France being unspoiled and rugged so he hopped on a train and then walked for four days from the train station to the campsite. When he met me he asked which streams he could drink fresh water from. I laughed and offered him some wine. You know, I had traveled all the way to French Guyana to live off of the jungle and here this guy was coming here to France looking for the same kind of lifestyle. He still lives here. He moved in with this Dutch woman. She and I don’t really get along unfortunately. We don’t see eye-to-eye you know? She’s in real estate. She sells property exclusively to foreigners. She doesn’t get the value of a tree you know? She complains about how locals will spend hours, weeks even debating whether certain trees can be felled. For her it’s just a matter of business. For the locals each tree is important. They made the land what it is today and they resent all these foreigners coming in and changing it. I think in the next election a lot of people from this area might lean towards LePen, not because of anti-Arab sentiment like in Paris, but to vote against the influx of all these Northern Europeans.”

Elise had the stature and long braided pigtails of a 12-year-old offset by a deep throaty voice and softy rounded facial features. She reminded me of Grandmother Willow who counseled Disney’s Pocahontas to, “Paint with all the colors of the wind.” She paused her monologue to navigate an intersection and perhaps commune with the gnarled trees lining the highway.

Gradually the fields gave way to the narrow cobble stone streets of La Châtre. We pulled up to 41 rue Venose, the childhood home of Luigi, one of Saul’s other family-friends who was having a party that night. Elise left us with an intriguing proposition, “Listen, tomorrow I’ll be at the circus with François and Fidji. If you wanna come by give my mom a call. I’m sure you could stay as long as you’re willing to help out with the farm a bit. Anyways, have fun and give my love to everyone.”

* * *

I tried really hard to get into party mode but I just couldn’t. The shift from grandma-land to techno-rave had been too abrupt, too jarring. I drank a beer or two, smoked a few joints. All the chemicals just seemed to aggravate a giant knot growing in my chest, a hole, an emptiness, a lack. I missed the false nostalgia I had inhabited for the past week. I had allowed myself to become far too attached, to Saul, to Grandma, to the house, the town. I had pretended that I possessed some enduring bond with all these lives and places. In retrospect, the poverty of this claim was now all too evident.
Of course I had known this would happen. I had almost refused Saul’s invitation because I knew. I knew I was too permeable to other people’s stories. I soaked them up and could recite them as if they were my own. Whenever I allowed myself too big a taste of another life I would write myself into it. I had been so deluded as to say to Babette before we left, “I’m sure I’ll be back soon.”
I wandered into a small courtyard off the back of the house and breathed in the rain-soaked air. I felt the fictions inside me imploding. My heartbeat raced, propelled by some sort of psychosomatic anxiety attack. Frightened, I decided to neatly extricate myself from the socializing at hand and try to sleep it off.

A couple hours later Rachel, who had come down from Paris for the weekend, appeared at my bedside. “Hey man, you alright? You gonna come out with us? We’re leaving in a little bit.”
I grunted an unconvincing “yes,” still unsure whether I was capable of enjoying anything. However, I was determined to snap out of it, whatever “it” was, so in spite of my persistent melancholic stupor I pulled myself out of bed and into Benoit’s car. Practically speaking, I might as well have stayed in bed. About 40km into the unexpectedly long 80km schlep to the party hall Benoit’s car got a flat tire, and not one of the five passengers, myself included, had brought their cell phones. Our friends in the car we had been following merely left a few concerned and futile voicemail messages, never thinking to come back to look for us. We spent hours driving around the French countryside in the dark searching for a party we knew we had the slimmest chance of stumbling upon. All of the sudden out of the dark emerged a field full of parked cars, Eureka! This must be the place! We pulled up closer, squinting through the rain at the rows of decrepit cars. Either this party had been going on for decades, or this was a junkyard… I leaned my head against the cold glass window, closed my eyes and imagined I was still sleeping in grandma’s guest bedroom in the pitch black with the shutters closed tight.

We finally gave up the search and returned to Luigi’s around 4am. I tried to lose myself for a bit in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and eventually fell into a restless sleep, waking every few hours until I relented at 10am and waited for the rest of the house to awake.

By 1pm everyone was up and milling about the house. Exasperated cries of “I left you a message!” “I didn’t have my phone!” were briefly batted back and forth but quickly dropped as entirely moot points. Rachel and I, co-passengers of the ill-fated car, recounted the mirage of the junkyard rave. Saul, who had made it to the party, complained about the persistent drum and bass echoing in his head. He then turned to more pressing matters. “Elise’s mom will be by in about an hour if we still want to go to the circus.”
“The circus? What circus?” Rachel eagerly inquired.
“Oh, you know Elise? She sort of lives at this circus with her sort of boyfriend Fidji and she invited us to visit if you’re interested.” Saul explained.
Rachel’s jaw dropped just a little. “No shit, seriously? That is my dream, man. You guys going? You’re going, right? Can I really come?”
Thus it was quickly decided that we would leave behind sour memories of a failed Saturday night and join the circus.

* * *

The Cirque Bidon was founded in the early 1970s by François Rauline, a native Parisian who grew disillusioned with the city after the ‘68 riots. In founding the Cirque Bidon, an old-fashioned horse drawn circus caravan, he envisioned and realized a more down-to-earth, self-sustaining life for himself and his family. The circus initially set out for Romania but stopped in northern Italy on the way and was so successful it never left. After touring the Italian countryside for two decades, François has since returned to establish a more sedentary life in his native France, where his grown son, Fidji, has joined him. Together the two run a small farm and are preparing for a revival of the Cirque Bidon this summer in the local French countryside.

It was raining when we drove up to Les Brandes Mouligoux, the property occupied by François, Fidji and their circus. We scraped the mud off our boots and entered a cozy stone building with a curvilinear wooden loft suspended above. Elise greeted us and introduced us to Fidji, in whose house we were apparently standing, and Alex, a friend, who when asked where she was from replied, “I can’t answer that. I’m a nomad.”
Elise told us to take our shoes off and announced that it was time for “games.” This morning’s “game” was a series of exercises Elise had learned at her somatopsychic therapy course in Paris. We swayed from left to right, coordinating the motion of our feet, knees, legs and arms, centering ourselves over a spot midway between the navel and pubis, which Elise referred to in a breathy voice as the “ha.”
Game time quickly flowed into work time. Three chickens were caught, slaughtered and plucked. Then a small feast was prepared out of both store-bought and farm grown ingredients, the latter mostly root vegetables: onions, carrots, and potatoes. We cooked and dined in François’ house, a larger facing Fidji’s. Rita, an old retired circus monkey watched us with rancorous eyes from her assigned seat, chained to an imposing stone fireplace.
After dinner Rach, Saul and I were given a tour of our lodgings for the night, the largest of the circus wagons—the kitchen/bathroom wagon—, which could fit the three of us on a mattress on the floor as long as we assumed the fetal position. We smoked the last of Rachel’s weed by candlelight and waxed poetic on the whimsical paths our lives had taken to converge in a circus wagon in middle-of-nowhere France. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world right now,” Rachel gushed.
“I bet that at any given moment there aren’t too many people who can honestly say that,” I ventured.
“No, I don’t think there are,” she agreed.

The following day was occupied mostly by the painting of red signs with the banner “PROCHAIN SPECTACLE,” which will announce the circus performance times to the public this summer.
“This might be the most productive thing we’ve done since we came to France,” I joked to Rachel, only half-kidding.
“I don’t want to go back to Paris this afternoon,” she began, “This place is amazing…I can’t leave this place.”
I thought about the stories François and Fidji could tell us, and I thought about how soothing it could be to live on a farm for a few days before returning to Paris. Mostly I couldn’t think of a good reason not to stay. After all, this is why I was spending a year doing basically nothing in Paris; so I could pick-up and join the circus on a whim. To leave would be to violate the spirit of my aloofness.
“If they invite us to stay, I’ll stay too,” I said.
Thus we commenced our self-imposed exile, helping to cook and clean, and periodically painting more signs in exchange for our wagon and board.

Fidji’s rustic lodge, which he had completely renovated himself (it used to be a garage), was full of bottles of various sizes with ageing labels identifying a year and perhaps the contents. He called them elixirs, and one might call him an amateur botanist/herbologist/aromatherapist. Lining a long shelf above the kitchen counter were jars and jars of herbs and spices, both store-bought and from the garden. One night, as Rachel and I cooked up a simple pasta dinner for ourselves (Fidji was at a play rehearsal, an anti-corporate update of Molière) we played “Name that Scent.” The lack of legible or English labels on the bulk of the jars—most had been recycled from other purposes—vastly facilitated the mystery of the game. Often there was no way to ever check if we were right, for though Fidji could rattle off each plant’s French and often Latin names plus their various medicinal properties, without Wikipedia we were incapable of translating most of it into practical English usage. We tentatively identified fennel, coriander, chamomile, and what I concluded must be the secret ingredient that makes all fish food smell like fish food.
When Fidji returned from his rehearsal the first words out of his mouth were, “Ahhshgurrpburlguhmda!” Either he was drunk, or I had sniffed one too many unnamed substances. I smiled back, but my eyes must have betrayed my absolute perplexity. He grinned sheepishly, “That’s American no? I saw Brokeback Mountain; that’s how the cowboys talk.”

On the whole François and Fidji weren’t big talkers. Most meals progressed in relative silence. It was often so quiet you could hear Rachel and I trying to formulate sophisticated-sounding conversation starters in our heads. (What in the hell is the formal imperfect form of “to juggle?”…) Finally I decided the future regret of having let these meals pass by in silence was more than I could bear.
“So, François, were you raised on a farm?”
“No, in Paris.”

“Ah, Paris, so then how did you learn how to run this farm?”
“Oh, just here and there as I traveled with the circus.”

“Do you miss Paris?”
“No.”

Here I was hoping he would expand profoundly on the ennui of urban life and the yearning he felt for the countryside. Perhaps he would even launch into a scathing critique of consumer capitalism and the disastrous effects it had wrought on the human spirit. He would say all of this with such honestly and charisma that I would remember it all my life and quote him for years to come as a primary source: Rauline, François. 2007. Personal Communication.

I am neither proud nor ashamed of the fact that I perceive most everything and everyone around me as potential material for the canon of books, op-ed pieces and guest lectures that will one day form my intellectual legacy. However, if I can’t get a clown to tell me why he loves the circus I might have to tone down my visions of academic glory.

The following dinner conversation was somewhat more fruitful:
“So where in Italy did you take the circus?” I asked.
“Only in the North really,” Fidji replied.
“We went to the South a bit just as tourists,” François clarified, “but not with the circus. The South and the North are completely different. We were extremely successful in the North so we stayed there.” He shrugged, indicating the obviousness of this plan.
Fidji chimed in, “I couldn’t tell you about the South at all, but the North we know by heart. I couldn’t tell you the name of every town, but the moment I go back I’d know I’d been there before. It would be like recovering a little piece of my soul.” Fidji had a habit of speaking frankly and unexpectedly about things like his soul.
“Did you go to cities, or just rural areas?” I asked.
“Mostly small towns,” Fidji replied. “Italy’s not settled the same way France is. The population is almost the same but the land area is much less and there are mountains in the middle. That means the countryside is much more densely settled than it is here. We could travel a dozen kilometers and hit a town of a few thousand people where we could perform for maybe a week or two at a time. A huge proportion of the Italian population lives in mid-sized towns like that. In France it’s either urban or rural. You have a few large cities and the rest is extremely spread out. This year we’ll have to move a lot more or count on people coming in from further distances to see us.”
“Hopefully after this summer word will spread and we’ll get more permanent financial support.” added François.
“And if not you’ll go back to Italy?” I asked. I think I only added this note of pessimism into the conversation because it was easy to say quickly in French, and I was eager to keep things rolling.
“If not,” Fidji paused. “If not then no, I dunno exactly what we’ll do. I don’t want to repeat what we’ve done already. Maybe I’d go study botany or something like that more seriously. Ideally, if I could do anything I think I’d want to be an actor. But I don’t think I’m particularly good. I keep with it because I think it’s one of the most difficult and rewarding pursuits. You need to truly know yourself to set that aside and take on another persona. Especially as a clown, to be a really good clown you have to know yourself so completely in order to create an alternate personality and continue shaping it over the course of your career. A truly great clown can make children laugh, but he can make also make adults cry. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that, but that would be my ideal.”

By Thursday I was beginning to tire of the circus. Straight rain for over 24 hours had limited our range of movement to a circus wagon and two large rooms separated by an increasing quantity of mud. The “bathroom” was equally muddy. It became a constant renal and intestinal effort to go outside to relieve oneself as infrequently as possible. Bodily functions aside, I felt more and more like I was trespassing on François and Fidji’s lives and furthermore, that I had my own life elsewhere that it was time to take up again. I suppose that’s the sign of a successful vacation.

Rachel, on the other hand, was ready to give up her life in Paris and move to the circus full-time. The farm life reminded her of her grandmother’s farm back in Louisiana. She had plucked her chicken better and faster than either Saul or I. She had chicken-plucking experience. The rain reminded her of storms back in Texas. She craved real lightning and thunder painted across an inky blue sky. The notion that the wagon we were living in had been pulled by horses across northern Italy sparked simultaneously her wanderlust and her yearning for the slower pace of rural life. Once Fidji asked if there were gypsies in America. “No,” she had replied. “But I always wanted to be a gypsy.” The only thing Rachel lacked at the Cirque Bidon was weed. I began to fear I might have to trick her into leaving by scattering a Hansel and Gretel trail of nugs all the way back to Paris.

Friday was far livelier and action-packed than the preceding lazy rainy days. A cement floor was being poured in a room adjoining François’ house, destined to be a training and rehearsal space. Elise was back, as was her stepfather Philippe. Elise’s birth-father, Michel, was also on site to lend a hand. Five months ago I would have been shocked to see birthdad and stepdad working side by side, especially with mom nowhere in sight. However, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I’ve come to surmise that the French take divorce rather lightly.

So Elise and her two chummy dads were present as was a family from down the road. The final helping hand was Thierry, a 30-year-old long-haired elementary school teacher and amateur wood sculptor who talks much more than either François or Fidji. Incidentally, he’s been to Iceland. That is just plain cool. In all there were twelve hands on deck for the big cement pour. More importantly, we need to cook lunch for twelve. Somewhere along the way three lunch menus were proposed and I suppose no one had the heart to choose, so lunch multiplied by three consisted of six home-made pizzas, a gigot d’agneau, and a massive pot of Rachel’s Texan chili. Thankfully, desert was a simple and singular matter of fromage blanc with honey. “Honey with a high wax content,” offered Fidji knowingly, “It’s good for the intestinal tract.” This was welcome news, as my intestines were feeling quite sore after three days of furtive quick-it-stopped-pouring dashes to the bushes.

Later that evening Rach and I sat sprawled on the floor of Fidji’s place, putting a second coat of white paint on the signs. Meanwhile Fidji was weaving a basket in the corner by the fireplace. The work progressed in relative silence, broken only by periodic changes of CD—first classical piano, then African drumming, followed by jazz guitar and Indian chants.
Suddenly Fidji asked what my birthday was. I told him and he grabbed a thin paperback, opening it to a well-worn page. He squinted, rotating the book in front of him as if driving a car. “Aha,” he exclaimed finally. “You are a poplar tree.”
“It’s a sort of Celtic astrology,” explained Elise, “except with trees. I’ve only met one person who didn’t like her tree, and honestly, I think if she could come to terms with her true self, she would embrace her tree.”
Fidji then rose from his seated basket-weaving position and walked over to the windows. “Do you know the sun salutation?” he asked, extending his arms above his head and then folding over to touch his toes.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “We were actually just doing yoga before we left Paris.” I like to think this response raised his estimation of us just a bit, perhaps up from philosophically bankrupt Americans to merely philosophically poor.

“Have you traveled much?” I asked him once.
He grinned bashfully, “No, I’ve barely traveled at all. I don’t even know Paris that well.” This struck me at first, the same way I am consistently struck when I meet Americans who have never been to New York. Then again, life here in rural France reminded me more of rural India or New Mexico than Paris. And Paris reminded me more of New York than of here. Difference seemed to be a matter of lifestyle rather than nationality, and one might just as well find kindred spirits across the world as strangers next door.

I awoke Saturday morning to the unfamiliar warmth of sunlight on my face. For a moment I stared at the sky in disbelief, marveling at the difference between a blue sky and a grey one. For the first time all week I eagerly threw on my muddy boots and headed out for my morning pee. Salsa, Thierry’s adorable dog with age-defying puppy looks (she is in fact five years old and twice a mother) greeted me outside and decided to come along for a stroll. We followed muddy tractor tracks down to an abandoned stone building, its roof having long ago collapsed in on itself. Nearby a rusty old curvaceous car frame had been largely engulfed by a bramble bush. I had hurriedly noticed these ruins earlier in the week through a curtain of rain. Now I scrambled to the top of the precarious crumbling walls and surveyed the surrounding countryside. The endless green grass, saturated with days of rain, looked and smelled like spring, yet the naked trees still evoked winter.

I turned to face the farm and the circus, and the matching father and son dwellings. Surrounded by the vastness of nature behind me and the products of François’ and Fidji’s handiwork in front, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to create something—to paint, to build, to write. To reclaim that basic human ability and desire to put something new into the world—to master the art of living by living in and through art.

* * *

It is common to find kids such as Saul, Rachel and myself drawn to a Cirque Bidonesque lifestyle, which embodies the “Think Globally/Act Locally” mantra. It is rarer to find Elise’s and Fidji’s who maintain that spirit into their early adulthood. It is extraordinary to find adults such as François, or Saul’s mother Christine, who have lived out their dreams of self-creation to the best of their ability. This is not at all meant to diminish the lives of those who have not chosen such an unconventional path. It is easy to glorify the lives of others from a distance and devalue those closest to you because they are marred by unappealing intimate details. It is possible to drown in the lives of others, to lose one’s sense of self in the pursuit of external validation. It is equally possible to dismiss the lives of others as foreign, meaningless or even worse, irrational.

As I sit here in this circus wagon, surrounded by warm knotty wood and feathers tucked in between the joints here and there by some past resident, I know that the only thing that makes me truly unique in this world is the particular array of lives that have intersected with mine over the past 22 years. And the only thing that will make me truly successful in this world is to take stock of the myriad facets of all the lives I have had the gift of knowing and cull from them a best self, best equipped to the tasks of personal, social, and metaphysical survival. I can only end with a quotation I return to on a daily basis:

We begin with the capacity to live a thousand kinds of life, but end in the end having lived only one.
–Clifford Geertz

Belated Post- French Kids Say the Darndest Things...

No point in excuses; let's just say I was busy being idle.

BUT, I have been collecting more amusing French kid quotations:

While playing two truths and a lie:
Kid- "I want to sleep...I want to play football...This desk is not comfortable."

Kid- "Last weekend I saw a travesty in MacDonald's."
Me- "A travesty? What happened?"
Kid- "You know, a travesty. A man wearing women's clothes."

While showing kids pictures from college:
A Man Shot:
Me- "Why do you think this girl is putting lime juice into her eye?"
Kid- "She thinks she is an oyster?"

A Boat Race:
Kid- "Is that soup?"

Me- "Nations with no official religion are called secular."
Kid- "Secular? Oh, like cellular!"

While playing Taboo:
Kid- "When you have a girlfriend you do this to her."
Other Kid- "Smack!"

The Deluge

My aunt Sue and uncle Pat visited Paris this weekend along with their friend Heike from Munich. Wednesday was spent perusing the Champs-Elysees, where we happened upon a free Zazie concert and the French premiere of Letters from Iwo Jima (almost saw Clint Eastwood!). Thursday we enjoyed the perfect view from the top of the Tour Montparnasse (the only thing missing from the view is the ugly Tour Montparnasse itself), and savoured a 10 bite-sized course meal at none other than L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon (apparently he's a big deal).

Friday Pat contracted Napoleon's revenge and was forced to pass the day running between my bedroom and my bathroom, meanwhile Sue and I checked out designer furniture after finding the Musée d'Orsay closed indefinitely due to a strike.

Saturday Pat was back to life and I had planned out a full day of sightseeing to make up for the lost day. First, the Louvre, then lunch in Saint Michel, followed by Notre Dame, the Centre Pompidou, and a classic ending at Sacre Coeur overlooking all of Paris at night. After Notre Dame Sue caught a cab back because, "I can't believe how many stairs there are here. I feel like I've been to the gym three days in a row!" NOTE: Sue insists she lost weight over her 5 days here, and people wonder why Parisians are slim.

Pat, Heike and I wished Sue off and continued sightseeing. About half an hour later my phone rings, it's Sue:
"Erin, you've gotta come back, there's this massive flood in your apartment."
"What? What do you mean there's a flood?"
"There's water spraying everywhere out of the kitchen; I can't even get in to see where it's coming from it's coming so fast. You gotta call your super."
"I don't think I have a super. My landlord doesn't even live in Paris."
"Well call a plumber or someone cuz this is out of control."

I convey the preposterous news to Pat and Heike, then fish my landlord's number out of my wallet and begin to contemplate how to articulate something of this magnitude in French. I definitely don't know the French word for "leak," but I know "water," and I remember "flow" from a Apollinaire poem I had to memorize in high school. "There is water flowing in the kitchen" should get the point across. In any case, my landlord proves to be useless; she doesn't know of a plumber or of anyone else in the building to contact.

We finally get back to my building and are greeted with water slowly trickling down the stairwell and down the elevator shaft. Holy fuck. We push through the crowd of neighbors occupying the stairwell and make it to the 3rd floor, ground zero. Sue informs us that some handy neighbor with long hair and glasses has turned off the building's water, and thus stopped the flooding, but in order to turn the water back on I need to call a plumber asap. Just then there is a knock on the door; it's long hair and glasses; he has called a plumber, god bless him. He wants to speak with my landlord. I get her on the phone and give it to him. They do not seem to get along. He hands me the phone back after a bit and scowls, "She's not very nice, is she?" I get back on the phone with my landlord, who whines, "He's not nice at all, is he?" I choose to politely agree with both of them. I haven't used the formal "vous" form this much in my entire time in Paris.

The plumber arrives, a short young mustachioed dude with a shaved head. He acts as if spending his Saturday night fixing my leak is not a bummer at all. He assures me I did nothing wrong; the coupling on the tank was simply old and calcified. It's supposed to be replaced every 3 years or so, but this one looks like it's 8 to 10 years old.

Meanwhile neighbors keep poking their heads in to find out why their water has been shut off, or for a few lucky winners, why their flat is soaking wet. At this point my aunt is bundled up on the futon trying to warm up after being soaked in the initial blast. My uncle and Heike are drinking wine and occasionally interacting with spectators while I continue to juggle between the plumber, long hair and glasses, and my landlord on the phone.

Finally the plumber finishes his temporary fixit and turns the building's water back on. He'll have to come back Monday to replace the tank and until then my flat will be without hot water. He takes me aside and asks if I have renter's insurance.
"Uhh, no, I don't have any insurance. I never even signed a lease. I just live here with this guy who's a friend of the owner's family. Nothing's official; I can't even prove that I live here."
"OK, well Monday morning you should go with your roommate first thing to get insurance. I'll date my report later in the week so it'll be covered."
"Won't the insurance company figure that out?"
"Nah, that's how we do in France."
"But why should my insurance be the issue here. Aren't things like plumbing the responsibility of the owner, not the tenant? Doesn't she have insurance?"
"She says she's not sure, and in any case you're supposed to be insured so you gotta take care of that on Monday."
"She's not sure? How can she not be sure?"

My roommate Antoine, who is conveniently home for the weekend calls:
"What's going on? Corine (the landlord) called me, she asked if I had insurance. I don't have insurance. We are totally screwed. My dad is gonna kill me."
"Antoine, I'll call you back."

The landlord calls:
"Erin, I need you to pay the plumber and I'll pay you back when I come into Paris on Monday."
"OK, and what's the deal with the insurance?"
"You need to get insurance as soon as possible."
"Why didn't you tell me I needed this insurance when I moved in?"
"I should have; just get it on Monday and I think everything will be OK."

The plumber almost sits on what appears to be a pile of blankets but is really my shivering aunt. She pokes a hand out from her cocoon and waves "Hi" just in time. He chooses to remain standing and adds up the bill:
"The total including tonight and Monday will be 1283 euros. I need 600 of that tonight and the rest on Monday."
"I don't know if I have 600 euros to give you."
"Well if not you can write me a check for the whole thing and I promise I won't cash it as long as I get a check from your landlord on Monday."

ACCOUNT BALANCE: 554 euro. I am less than thrilled about the prospect of writing a check for more than twice the money I have in my French bank account.

Thankfully, just then, Amory shows up. This is good news both because he is a friend of mine and my landlord's son. Incidentally, he lives downstairs in a freshly watered apartment. Poor guy. He says he'll write the check on behalf of his mother. I am saved.

The plumber wishes us all a good evening. Long hair and glasses and the other neighbors return to their respective flats. I catch Amory before he leaves.
"So what's the deal with this whole thing? Am I gonna have to pay for all this? This wasn't my fault. Shouldn't your mom's insurance pay for this? I can't pay for this. I can't even prove that I live here."
"No no, I mean, I don't think you'll have to pay. My mom will have to figure this out. All the arrangements are really hazy I know (the word he used was "flou" meaning blurry, ethereal, unclear). It's the same downstairs with me and my cousin, who owns the flat. Don't worry about it; it'll be alright."

48 hours later I think he was largely right. I have a brand spanking new water heating, and the damage to my flat is minimal, the microwave might be fried, but otherwise all that was ruined was some tea and a cookbook. The water shot out of the leak so quickly that it didn't have time to stick around chez moi. Downstairs, chez Amory, however is another story. There the water trickled down through the ceiling and into the walls. The paint is cracked and bits of drywall have begun to crumble off. The electricity has been shut off for fear of starting a fire. Even on the first floor water is dripping from the light fixtures in the ceiling. I'm not sure who's paying for this but I'm pretty sure it's not me. Antoine rigged something up with an insurance company, and they said they'd backdate coverage for our flat to before "the incident." The landlord stopped by today and in so many words thanked me for dealing with everything.

Yesterday morning, right before my aunt and uncle caught their flight back to New York, we all enjoyed a pleasant brunch and rehashed the events of the night prior. The four of us were quickly hysterically laughing recounting the look on the plumber's face when he almost sat on my aunt, or the look on a neighbor's face when my uncle mustered up what little French he could remember to ask "Do you speak French?" We decided the whole incident could make a great sitcom episode starring John Leguizamo as the plumber, Hilary Swank as me, and Lily Tomlin and Jon Favreau as my aunt and uncle. Long hair and glasses would have a cameo as himself.

French Kids Say the Darndest Things...

During a lesson about American high-school curricula:

Me: What do you think "Social Studies" is?
Kid: Euuhhh, Segolène Royale? (French leftist presidential candidate)
Me: Hah no, nice try, but it's not "Socialist Studies."

French Kids Say the Darndest Things...

Kid: But how do American universities decide who to accept if there is no standard exam?
Me: Well, you submit a dossier including all of your activities, sports, clubs, jobs, summer trips, career plans, and anything else they ask for.
Kid: That sounds like prison!

Vendredi soir

Stage 1: Perusing Near Eastern antiquities at the Louvre with Saul and Keith (free youth night). I tried really hard to offer what little knowledge I have of the archaeology of Iran, Iraq etc. without coming off as a know-it-all. I might have gone a bit far when I started quizzing Saul on my explanation of the origins of cuneiform. Incidentally, he did not pass.

Stage 2: Pasta and tequila chez moi. In a blind taste test all three of us preferred presumably crappy 10 euro tequila to presumably superior 50 dollar tequila (the latter a generous gift from a friend who had visited). I find this incredibly perplexing and shameful. Though it's nice to know my 10 euro tequila is palatable, it's distressing to find my palate is not nearly as discerning as I'd hoped. We controlled for a variety of factors--salt, lime, sipping versus shooting--the results were consisted across the board. If nothing else, the rigorous nature of this test did produce sufficient inebriation.
Quote of the night:
Keith- "Hey, are your roommate and his friend gay?"
Me- "No. What makes you think they're gay?"
Keith- "Hm, I guess it's mostly the way they were dressed. Come to think of it, I don't know if I'd be able to distinguish a gay French guy from a straight one."

Stage 3: Party at cité universitaire, the campus for international students in southern Paris. Each country essentially has a dorm, it's sort of like a bizarre combination of Epcot center and the Greek row at your average American university. As we wandered around looking for the party the conversation went something like:
Me- "Where the hell is this party?"
Saul- "The text message I got says it's at the American dorm."
Keith- "Well that's Canada and that's Germany. I think America is somewhere over here."
Me- "Man, it's a small world after all."

OK fine, I didn't actually think to say that at the time, but I wish I had...

Stage 4: The long trek home. The party ended abruptly and inconveniently at 4am. The Paris metro is closed from 12:30-5:30am so it really would have been nice if the party had lasted a measly hour and a half longer. Cité universitaire isn't all that far from where I live, but I had to hop on a night bus that went up to central Paris in order to catch another night bus that went down to my neighborhood in the 15th. I fell asleep on the second bus and woke up in time to find myself in Boulogne, sufficiently past where I was supposed to have gotten off. To add insult to injury it was raining. By this point it was almost 5:30 so I decided to take the metro home, which required three line changes. I finally got home at 6am drenched, exhausted, and my belly still full of an odd mix of high and low quality tequilas.

Passage Brady is Bonk

One of my favorite areas of Paris is the few blocks between La Chapelle and Gare du Nord. The reason is simple; this is the "Little India" of Paris. The streets are lined with shops where I can buy all the essentials: mango pulp, tamarind pump, turmeric, cardamom, chai masala, kheer mix, hot peppers, brinjal, and more. Piles of 10 kilo sacks of rice spill out onto the sidewalks next to stalls selling the latest ripped bollywood DVDs and soundtracks. Sari-clad women crowd into sari shops. In my mind the streets smell of coriander, but that might be more fantasy than truth. The signs are mostly in Tamil with spatterings of Hindi, Bangla and Urdu. There are restaurants and then there are more restaurants, most advertising Sri Lankan specialities. My favorite, Ganesha, offers idli for 4 euro, curry for 2 euro, thali for 6 euro, and poori for 1 euro. These are as close to Indian prices as one will see in Paris. At least once per meal a man will appear at the table hawking jasmine garlands or roses. I am the only person I have ever seen buy one of their roses. Tall lanky trees rise from the sidewalks and overhang the streets creating a rugged canopy that gives the place an aura unlike anywhere else in Paris. On the whole it feels like a chilled out, sanitized version of India; India without the honking rickshaws, the beggars or the urine.

I was taken to La Chappelle months ago and have coveted it every since. Passage Brady I only heard about much later. A colleague mentioned the "Indian" area of Paris, and when I said "Oh right, La Chapelle," he said "No no, but it's near there. Passage Brady. It's lined with Indian shops; you'd love it." Being as I already loved La Chappelle I was pretty psyched; But wait! There's more!

Passage Brady is one of Paris's many quaint covered alleyways, and it is indeed lined with Indian shops of the same general profile as line the streets of La Chapelle. However, there is no room to breath in Passage Brady, no vantage point from which to enjoy the sights and sounds. The alley is so narrow the shops and outdoor restaurant tables encroach on both sides leaving room for barely two people to pass by shoulder to shoulder. The shops and restaurants are largely empty--never a good sign--particularly in contrast to the busy main streets on either end of the passage. A man stands outside each restaurant, intentionally blocking the way of passersby, entreating them to come in and enjoy an aperitif on the house before their meal. They act and sound desperate, and given the obvious lack of customers it's easy to see why. The passage truly feels deserted, abandoned, a film set in between takes, but the restaurant hawkers didn't hear the director yell "Cut!" There are elements of this Little India that ring true, particularly the shameless begging, but mostly it feels shallow, hollow, empty, especially in contrast to the canopied enclave a few blocks north.

If I ever get around to doing my ever-theorized never-realized research project on South Asian Paris I'll let you know what accounts for the difference. For now I'm pretty sure I'll go back to Ganesha and by me another rose.

French Kids Say the Darndest Things

Playing Taboo:

The word is "George W. Bush"

Kid: "Who iz ze master of ze world?"

The Supernatural Industry

Saul and I were walking through the Cimitière Montparnasse the other day (resting place of Sarte and Durkheim among others) when a colorful looking dude stepped into our path: "I couldn't help but notice that you're speaking English." We couldn't help but concur. He asked us if we knew where the entrance to the infamous Parisian catacombs was. We didn't BUT we had been discussing the very same catacombs the night before...creepy... As I pulled out my map to see if I could be of some help the dude started chatting us up. Turn out he's from Salem, Mass. "Ah cool," I said, "I heard that's a great place to be on Halloween."
"Yeah," he replied, "actually, I work in the supernatural industry." I noticed he was wearing a button-down shirt covered in skulls...creepy...
"So that's why you came to Paris then? To see all the cemeteries and the catacombs?" Saul asks.
"Nah," said the dude, "I just needed to get away from some stuff going on back home so I hopped on a plane to Paris. Never take Iceland Air by the way." Alrighty then, duly noted. "Hey, being as you guys seem to know the area pretty well, do you have any recommendation for other things I should check out while I'm here?" We started rattling off some classic tourist destinations as he copied them into a small notebook.
"What was that last one you said?" he asked.
"Le Marais," I repeated, "M-A-R-A-I-S."
"And what was the first word?"
"The first word? Oh, um, 'le,' L-E."
"Cool thanks, thanks a lot. Have a great day guys"
"Yeah you too, good luck with everything."
Saul and I went one way and he went the other, searching for the catacombs, and whatever else he was hoping Paris could offer him.

P.S.- Sartre's tomb was pretty plain, especially in contrast to that skull-checked shirt.

Ambition

According to the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, most college freshmen in 1970 said their primary goal was to develop a meaningful life philosophy. In 2005, by contrast, most freshmen said their primary goal was to be comfortably rich.
-Jim Holt, "You Are What You Expect," The New York Times Magazine, 21 Jan. 2007.

Do you find this as troubling as I?

SAT LSE GRE KFC

I am surrounded by other people's acronymic aspirations. I've been helping this kid Jinhong prepare for his SSAT for admission to American private school. Then he asked me to edit his application essays. Then his sister, Doyen, a senior in high school, asked if I'd read over her Penn application. Now Jinhong is done with his SSATs but Doyeun is taking her just-one-S-ATs again so I'm back at the Kim's place three times a week demystifying multiple guess questions.

Antoine took the TOEFL three weeks ago, an exam which is shockingly difficult. My attempts to help him a bit with that mostly ended in embarassment when I, a native English speaker and American college graduate, got a couple questions wrong. In fact, I have spent a decent amount of time recently apologizing for shitty American test questions. For example, Following a lengthy and dull passage on microscopes, "The compound microscope is used most often ____" We narrowed it down to two plausible answers: A) for bacteriology, or D) by teachers. After pouring over the passage for far longer than the alloted time I eventually guessed (D). The TOEFL answer guide claims this phrase CLEARLY must be followed by the word "for," therefore, (A) is the right answer regardless of the contents of the passage. I emphatically object. I find nothing grammatically wrong with the statement "The compound microscope is used most often by teachers." You may disagree. In any case, I find this distinction so petty I can't believe they're testing foreigners on it.

Just when the TOEFL was over and done with Antoine realized he has to take the GMAT in about a month. So, we sat down to tackle some practice GMAT questions. Poor Antoine is unfamiliar with English mathematical jargon so I tried to help him by explaining things like "integer" and "prime number," admittedly no feat of genius, but still concepts I haven't thought about in oh, 5 years. Suffice it to say the GMAT writing section was arguably more petty than the TOEFL.

Then my friend Margot asks if I'll help her friend Anne with her application for the London School of Economics. Sure, why not. The following evening Anne shows up bearing the preposterous news that she speaks little to no English and thus would like me to translate her entire personal statement from French into English. In retrospect I should have refused outright being as this amounts to blatant lying and potentially injuring the chances of honest applicants. For some reason (I guess I liked the idea of being useful) I agreed to aid and abet her bullshit. I think I figured her chances of getting in were pretty nil anyways so why not be a nice guy. I gave her my name and email and asked her to send me the essay. The following day there was no essay in my inbox. I inquired as to the essay's whereabouts; she insisted she sent it. A brief investigation into her sent-mail revealed that Anne is not the sharpest tool in the shed. I had written my name and email on a scrap of paper like so:

ERIN- erin.silverstein@gmail.com.

She had sent the email to "erin-erin.silverstein@gmail.com." Seriously... She also managed to misread my cell number, (which she had written in her own handwriting,) lie on the app. about several things aside from her English ability, almost forget to pay the application fee, and so on. I am embarassed to have participated in such ineptitude.

The following evening I helped Antoine fill out a Bank of America summer internship app., all the while I have barely looked into what I'll be doing with myself this summer or next year...and forget about the GREs...

Mmm, I could go for some KFC.

Sylvester in Deutschland

As far as 14-hour periods of time go the overnight bus trip was entirely innocuous. Most of the time I felt I could have just as easily been on a bus from New York to Philly. Once in awhile I peeked out my upper-deck window to estimate how far we had traveled based on the ratio of French to German shop signs. My plan to teach myself German did not materialize, but I slept a decent amount, which is all one can really ask of an overnight bus trip I think.

I arrived on the outskirts of Berlin at precisely 9h30 as planned. I hopped on the S-bahn, Berlin’s above ground express-style metro network, and headed to Alexanderplatz station to meet Yvonne. I was immediately struck by the open space around me. In Paris narrow rues lined with immeubles anciens enclose you in a 19th century film set; wide open spaces appear periodically as a generous gift of Haussmann via one of his grand boulevards. Berlin sprawls, and monuments and parks seem to dominate an otherwise unassuming expanse of low-lying residential buildings.

Yvonne, her friend Ise and I spent the bulk of the day lazing around her chic former East Berlin apartment. I speak French to Yvonne and English to Ise; they speak German to each other. Conversations amongst all three of us proceed via periodic summaries to the linguistic odd-man-out of the moment.

Twice we watched an eccentric British comedy sketch called “Dinner for One,” which has somehow become a German New Years tradition. As such, it airs repeatedly on German TV. Further research is required to uncover how this has come to be…

Our evening plans started off at a flat in former West Berlin full of Yvonne’s university friends. My reflex in Paris has been to pronounce my name French-style and quite frankly, I prefer it that way (comparable to pronouncing Target ‘Tarjay’.) This proved immediately confusing for the Germans: “Ah, so you’re French? American? You just flew in from New York? Oh, from Paris, you visited Paris first. Ah, you’re living in Paris, I see.”

Admittedly it is unfair and unscientific to compare 3 months of living in Paris with one day in Berlin, or for that matter to generalize a roomful of people to the national character. Allow me to be unfair and unscientific for a moment. The Germans I met seemed actually much more like Americans than the French, not in the sense that they were more Americanized at all, but in the sense that they looked like “real people” rather than skinny, meticulously groomed and dressed aspiring runway models (that would be the French). The Germans also seemed less immediately interested in or impressed by my New York origins. Not that they should be, but I had gotten used to a moment of mild awe after introducing myself to most French people; the Germans were much more excited to here that Ise was from near their hometown. The French kiss, the Germans hug. There was no cheese.

Yvonne and her friends all study music at university, so there was an appropriately trendy collection of old American LPs playing on a turntable all night. My German sure wasn’t up to par for the evening, but I could belt out “Hang on Sloopy” and “If I Had a Hammer” with the best of ‘em. Johnny Cash and the Ronnettes filled up the last hour before midnight. Then, as amateur fireworks lit up the street outside we counted down. I managed to join in for about every other number: “…neun…seben…funf, fier…zwei, ein!” We made our obligatory rounds of the room, wishing each and every person “Frohes Neues!” and sealing it with a hug.

We continued the party at a nearby club. “Nearby” in Berlin is much further away than “nearby” in Paris, but I was in no position to complain. The club was free and incidentally continued the Anglophone musical repertoire of the evening. It was quite an excellent eclectic mix—The Chili Peppers, The Roots, The Jackson Five, The Beatles—and all English all the time. As much as I personally enjoyed rocking out to some sweet tunes, I found it simultaneously kind of sad for two complimentary reasons. 1) Because German kids don’t have enough native pop music and must rely largely on English imports. 2) Because American kids have so much native pop music we’re largely unfamiliar with imports. I suppose I see some ideal balance between native and foreign cultural production, and the balance seems skewed towards the native in the US and towards the foreign in Europe. One day I’ll flesh this theory out in a more nuanced and arguable form; ‘till then you can take it or leave it.

In any case, we danced our asses off at the club and finally dragged our exhausted selves home by around 5am. I think I fell asleep during every leg of the trip, waking up just long enough to transfer U-bahn lines. As far as New Years go this definitely beat playing Halo at Marc’s house, to say the least…