Mode-us Operandi

I would like to preface this post with an acknowledgement that I have no legs to stand on in my commentary. I am far from fashion plate. That being said...

Perhaps it's the extended stay in Mother Europe that warped my born-and-bred Californian perspective, or some kind of deep-rooted desire for structure, but  think it's a bummer that there seem to be no more dress codes. While this is the norm out West ("down with the New Upper Class and their despisal of white after labor day! I will wear sneakers to the office and tattoos will be a prerequisite for employment!"), it surprised me to find that in Paris, things were not so different.

I suppose this in somewhat unfair... In Paris I lived mostly in the lands of the hipster bohemes, who peered over their espressos and cigarettes with a fashion-eye towards London. Their jeans were expertly worn and their vintage clothing was often Hermes and YSL and had real fur and I'm pretty sure they had it all dry-cleaned, but it was calculatedly cool. Very "what, this old thing?". In the other, more western parts of town things remain brand-new Chanel suits and Vuitton bags, sky-high shoes and various thousand-euro takes on the Little Black Dress. So I'm not saying San Francisco and Paris have converged on the plane of vestimental theory. But there are some commonalities to bemoan, and some puzzling discrepancies.

When I first came to France as more than a toddler, on a monthlong visit in the summer of 1995, my father warned me. He looked me up and down and said they dressed... different there. I didn't really get it until I arrived in Nice and, while I slept off my jet lag, my grandmother filtered out and hid the clothing she deemed inappropriate for my international coming-out. Gone were my docs, my overalls and plaid men's shirts and the baggy jeans with the fabric panels sewn down the sides. Mamie was not having any of that California laxness in her house. She then took adolescent me shopping for flowing bright-patterned silk pants, a pinstripe tailored suit and a light classic raincoat, among other things I must have burned when I came back home as I am sad to say I can no longer find them. 

When I moved to France in 2003, things were much the same. Christmas in Toulouse was a flurry of champagne corks and cufflinks, gold jewelry and aprons worn over gorgeous dark floral prints. Mamie whispered in my ear then too, nixing what she termed revealing necklines, but she wasn't the only one. My cousin Stephan, when we went out for (what is apparently traditional) Christmas-eve clubbing told me he wasn't sure I was going to be able to get in. "You know, the first thing they look at is your shoes."

And yet, going to the opera, or the ballet, or the theater seems to do nothing at all to the French. I suppose I should say the Parisians. I once went to a first-run of the Sellars-Viola production of Tristan and Isolde and found myself seated between one couple in black tie and another in jeans. The tourists in the rush seats were in shorts. I was confused. If you don't dress up for the opera, what do you dress up for?

The answer, it seemed, was jogging. I used to go out wearing whatever I could get my hands on, lots of it or very little depending on the season, but nothing that was particularly attractive. I would stop at a traffic light or a moving bridge, red in the face and sweating through my T-shirt and 49ers hat. People waiting with me would politely ignore, and the other occasional jogging Miss in velour sweatsuit or a sports bra that matched her shoes or the collar on her tiny dog would raise her eyebrow at me. "You leave your house in THAT?"

Now, running through Golden Gate Park I have no fear or self-consciousness. There are people just as shabby as me huffing down those paths. There are also people napping half-hidden in hollowed out tree trunks, but that is a different story. As far as clothing goes, there doesn't seem to be much restriction at all. I have been to two weddings in the last couple of years where the entire groom's party wore sneakers, and I must have seem thousands of photos of cowboy boots under white gowns. 

I went out for drinks and dinner with an old friend the other day, steering him away from the upscale fast food place that opened in Mill Valley and towards a tavern with outdoor seating and black-clad waitstaff. On the walk from the car, he mentioned something about hoping he wasn't underdressed. But inside, sitting at a white-tablecloth for two, was a dude in track pants and a woman in a crisp peter-pan collar. I guess the mix makes the mix. Still, maybe I'm lazy, but I would like a little more warning. I wore strappy heels to an art opening, but it was in Olema (farmland/winecountry) and so everyone else was in flip flops. I wore jeans to a comedy show and everyone else was in buttoned shirts and sweet swinging dresses. I might just go the way of a friend back in France, restrict all my wardrobe to the cuts of various black dresses and add the occasional swanky coat or bright tights. LBD LBD.

This is not to say that there are no restrictions and no judgements (I mean, really, this isn't Berlin). My brother often remarks on my Mom jeans. I have nothing to retort, having adopted them directly out of Mom's closet, but it stings a little coming from someone wearing a stocking cap. It is a stylish stocking cap though. That seems to be the underlying rule, regardless of the location: if you are going casual, go stylish casual. In the Bay Area though, you can't look like you're trying. In Paris, you can't look like you're not.

Retirée

It has been a while.

I am not sure if I have been getting used to California again or if I have just become accustomed to the Summer Vacation Lifestyle of staying at my mother’s, in my childhood and adolescent bedroom, watching TV and sitting around the deck. Now with the addition of a bottle of beer.

Maya with electric lines (or whatever)

The view has gotten better. They have cut down the trees in front of the house and now the only thing marring the strangely enticing view of the freeway and the bay is the collection of thick, low-arching electric lines. Electric or telephone, I guess I don’t know, but they are definitely there.

I have been escaping quite a bit, to San Francisco and Oakland, Santa Cruz and Monterey, a fledgling music and cabaret festival on the Russian River. I still have a lot of friends here. Last week I made myself stay home for ten days, telling myself that I had to get down to good old brass tacks, send off thousands of resumés and get moving. Also I spent ten dollars on a promotional ten days of Bikram and Power yoga in order to force the issue. I bought a new yoga mat that my mother laughed at. It’s brown and she says it looks like poop. She is a bit obsessed with poop. She also says my cat, who has an asymmetrical spot on her muzzle, looks like she has been eating poop. I always said Nutella, but mom won’t let it go. 

Dolores Park, on a day without bubbles but with Mime Troupe

The other night I was in San Francisco with my friend Charlotte, we ate take out in Dolores Park between some hippies from Denmark in neon green jumpsuits and multicolored dreadlocks and some homeless guys with an all-terrain skateboard and a dog that tried to eat Charlotte’s falafel. There was a band with a battery-powered amp and someone with a bubble machine. When it got cold and we got tired of posing for a modern-day Maupin novel, we walked to the apartment Charlotte was subletting between circus contracts and she made us tea. We laughed a lot and very hard.

Charlotte and I have a relationship that started when I first moved to France, she was taking time off from a math degree at Berkeley, doing modern dance and sharing an apartment with a French ballerina-type. There was a sheet dividing their rooms if I remember correctly. I had known her ex-boyfriend back in Santa Cruz and we shared many a vegan mush dinner. She returned to Europe after completing her degree, this time to Brussels where she studied handstands 8 hours a day. We’d see each other at least once a year, when she came through on a field trip or a contract, or when I had a visiting friend who wanted to take a train ride out of France, but not so far as Amsterdam. We hung out in Paris right before I came back to California. Last week’s festival- Charlotte was my in- was the first time we had seen each other on this continent.

Charlotte, waffle-ironing.

So yeah, we laughed a lot. The place she was renting had a fake mural on the wall of the kitchen and a fold-out ironing board. I took pictures of Charlotte posing with a waffle iron (we couldn’t find the clothes kind). We talked about our love lives, our work lives, our plans for the future and our lack of plans for now. We talked about things we had done and she reminded me of conversations we had had (somehow I am never the one who remembers). There is something so nice about knowing someone for so long. It was very hard to leave her behind. If I remember correctly, we refilled the teapot six times.

I have been getting this feeling a lot lately, the feeling of sharing life by sharing time. Everyone is becoming an old friend and the bar is getting higher for meeting new people. If I haven’t known you for an approximate decade, you had better be really interesting or attractive, or there is little chance that I will remember your name. I met one girl three times last week. I felt pretty guilty, until I found out she is a twin, then I figured she was probably used to it.

I am definitely going to become crotchety before I hit 35. Maybe the Summer Vacation Lifestyle is really just a glimpse into Retirement.

(While writing this entry, my mother began talking about our genetically high insteps and their relation to loose joints and hip problems. I told her that, as of yet, these are not problems for me. Her words: “Well, you’re a child.” So I guess I’m complaining about nothing. I take it all back.)

Fog

It is very foggy in the Bay Area.

You would think I would remember this, that 8+ years living away would not have wiped my memory of this integral fact, but it seems to have slipped through the cracks. The window that looks out onto the bay from the dining room at my mother's house here in Mill Valley is white with fog, criss-crossed with telephone lines and bordered with leafy green. And red. And greygreenred.

I went jogging today on the bike path that runs under the freeway, to Sausalito and San Francisco, and was almost trampled by a woman with an industrial-sized baby buggy and golden retriever.  They came out of nowhere. Manifested out of the white. I dodged them, barely. Must remember the sporty yuppy factor when in Marin. Not so much a problem back in Paris. In Paris jogging threats were mostly limited to guys overexcited about the idea of a woman with stamina. Or people picnicking on the canal. Or my own incapacity to multitask (unzipping my sweatshirt, changing my music, and keeping my feet going on uneven terrain having ended in bloody knees on more than one occasion). Here it seems the fog can hide all sorts of forgotten threats.

In the strong visibility of of the living room, my cats are having a face-off. Paris trying to gain terrain on California. Shady, so named by one of my college housemates for her ability to sneak around and grab at people's ankles from under beds and tables and couches, is trying to hold her home turf. Her low-pitched threats sound impressive, at least for a cat protected by the slats and legs of the piano chair. Shady is the matriarch. I left her here with my mother in 2003, when I went to Paris "for a year or so" to check things out. Shady has since been joined by Kittyton, the lumbering star of my brother's youtube channel, and now Maya, straight off the plane from France, has come to rattle the delicate balance. Right now Maya is lying on the floor, about five feet away, watching. Every now and then she sneaks closer, bridging the gap, working on reducing the space between them. 

I imagine them outside, in a ring covered in white fog, darting in and out, circling and hissing, until they decide it's not worth it and lie down in a dogpile. Well... catpile.

While the cats try to get used to each other, my brother is lying on the couch, watching baseball. He and my mother are teasing me for my lack of player and stat knowledge. I tell them that it's not that I am not a fan, I just don't particularly care. My mother says it's only a matter of time. That soon enough I'll be sporting orange and black, shouting at the TV and refusing to go to the kitchen to replenish snacks when it's my turn. Maybe so. 

But for now the fog is too much for me.

Le grand bleu

Well, here I am. In a tin can hurtling at 575 miles per hour 35,000 feet in the air. My cat is at my feet, enclosed in a tiny carrying case and swaddled in comforting-smell clothes (though I have a hard time believing that my unwashed T-shirt could be that much of a calming aid). She is doing surprisingly well. When we were delayed in Frankfort I tried to coax her out to share a pretzel and beer with me, but she was uninterested. Perhaps she just doesn't like Germany. Or pilsner.

8.5 years, 3.5 bags.

All my bags were overweight. I managed to look sad enough to get some of the fees ignored, but it still cost me 230 euros to get my two monolith suitcases, the cat, and the computer on the plane. No big surprise. 

les dernières

The night before I left Paris I flipped out. My good friends, coming by to wish me well, found me in a whirlwind of Unprepared. Boxes everywhere. Poorly packed. Hysterical. After preparing me a bowl of pasta and opening bottles of champagne, they proceeded to repack my bags, like my own personal transcontinental elves, whilst I wandered around collecting hugs and jokes and being invited outside for cigarettes. They then kissed me on the cheek and floated off one by one into the night and early morning, laden down with gifts and bags to store, in order almost exactly opposite to my meeting them. How's that for Poetry and Meaning?

When I unpack in California, it's going to be a treasure hunt. I have no idea what made it  in there. Don't tell customs. 

I was able to delay my trip back a week, but it wasn't enough. So many things to do, so many things left undone. Museums and long walks, contracts to break and medical care to take advantage of (why didn't I find time to get new glasses? WHY?). I suppose you are never ready to leave behind a decade of your life. But still, I think I may have truly excelled at underestimating the task at hand. I shudder to think of the boxes I have left behind.

lapinou

small-time treachery

What I was able to do, though, was probably the most important. A great big 12-hour goodbye picnic at La Villette with cheese and wine and badminton and hugs and photos and barefoot grass-walking. Beers with my music kids from the American Cathedral, ending in rounds of bunny-eared singing in the Irish pub down the canal from my apartment. A last board meeting or the Paris Choral Society, where I, the dome of the Invalides clearly visible through the 6th floor window, fell under the influence of fabulous wine, good food, and great company to accept responsibility for a swath of things I probably won't get around to for months. A lunch at Chez Paul entirely composed of escargot and escarole. Another at the Patache, bookended by oysters and tarte tatin. A last-minute recording session with the boys. A tagine dinner and reckless dance party out in the banlieue, pushing furniture around and wiggling into the night. Evenings and picnics with my dear dear friends, on the banks of the Seine, listening to jazz at the Parc Floral, at the Jardin de Reuilly by the sparkling-water fountain, on the edge of the canal trying to out-hipster the hipsters... Oh my Parisiens, I will miss you so.

It's difficult to believe now, now that there's no turning back. Now that I am sandwiched between the curved wall of the 747 and a Buddhist monk who I feel compelled to share my vegetarian meals with, trying to crane my neck to watch John Carter on the screen in the middle of the aircraft, while my feet twist around the cat carrier at my feet. Now that I have no more control even through lack of control (some part of me hoped that I would fail to leave, that the incapacity to let go would make it impossible to do anything but stay in Paris, in Europe, at least a little longer). I guess sometimes you've just got to let go. Especially when the airplane map shows us inching further across the Atlantic, and I left my inflatable raft in a box somewhere in Ile de France. California here I come...

I love you, Paris, I'll see you soon.

En train de...

Right now I am in a train on my (I guess) last excursion outside of town. I took the cheaper non-TGV line to Toulouse, and now have about 3 hours left of Limoges and Brive La Gaillard and other places I have never stopped. But it is nine o’clock in May and the sun is setting and the train moves slowly enough for the towns to be visible in the sunset and it is charming. I have only vague ideas about when trains went out of style in the US (ripped apart by the automotive and oil industries is my favorite story) but in any case it was a truly sad thing for romanticism. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would take a plane within France.

About six years ago I went on an Eastern European trip with a girlfriend and we took a train from Riga to Moscow whose dark exhaust hinted at coal. We were packed in with a hundred Russians who kept getting up and thudding to the back of the train with glass mugs and teabags to access a water tap heated by the engines. I rented a glass that looked something like the brilliant rendering below and tried to follow suit. Julia made a friend in the smoker’s compartment and they bonded over linguistically incompatible conversation. Their absurdist repartee was so pleasingly fluid that the woman dropped by regularly, unlit cigarette in hand, to pick up my friend on her way back to nicotineland and continue their chat. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen on planes.

brilliant rendering of russian tea glasses

On planes I end up trying to sleep folded onto the tray table or wedged up against the wall while some seatmate probes: “gee, it must be so neat to live in PARis”. I stand in line for the restroom and hover above the metallic seat while trying not to wonder where the speeding vortex goes. On this Latvia-Russia train it was obvious. You could see the tracks through the hole in the ground. Mystery solved, thankfully in sensible shoes.

When we got to the border between the two countries, we caused a half hour delay. We were interrogated in two languages we didn’t speak about our luggage (I think). We looked at each other and tried to neither laugh nor cry, waving our red passports and pointing to our tickets while the other passengers watched. Stone-faced does not do their gaze justice. I was especially paranoid, as my friend had insisted on hiding a piece of clandestine hash in a tampon applicator in her toiletries bag. All the ads I’ve ever seen for those movies where people are kept in sketchy prisons for crimes they didn’t commit raced through my head until the customs people just gave up and the train got moving again.

It was awesome.

On the way back from Amsterdam a couple of years ago, a trip taken with a group of my closest friends from Paris and one from California in part to celebrate the defense of my Masters thesis, we spent the entire time in the bar car. It was one of the best parts of the trip. We cleaned them out, and laughed so hard we cleared out the car itself. Although, not completely it would seem the next day when I received a text message from some guy I didn’t remember, asking to hang out with Dre before she went back to the US. Needless to say, it went unanswered.

I remember my first train trip in France, when I was fourteen going with my grandmother from Nice to Toulouse. She knitted, and kept pestering me to stop reading and look out the window. I didn’t want to look out the window. I wanted everyone to think I was refined and European and not with this high-pitched dyed-hair old lady who kept trying to lovingly feed me fabulous egg and salad sandwiches. I was, obviously, totally wrong to not take advantage of the images of cows and sunflower fields rolling past, but what are you going to do. There would be time to catch up on the pastoral eye-candy. Roughly six hours per, if you are counting from Paris to Toulouse.

The last time my mother visited, she and her boyfriend took a train from Paris to Rome. There was some bizarre condition with her US reservation that meant they had to (surprise!) stand in line and confirm their travel before boarding the train. In the end, they arrived, running, just as the train was leaving. I had a heated argument with the guy on the quai and he shrugged his shoulders. “Désolé.” But as we were turning around to go home and drink more wine to forget, he called to me. The train had stopped. Something about a door being jammed open. He helped them onto the train and they made it to Rome, reservations intact and (I’d like to think) souls invigorated by their near-miss.

With planes there are no near-misses. When you have an early flight you have to sleep at the frickin airport. JFK, Athens, Stockholm. I have done it MANY MANY TIMES. AND IT SUCKS. There are no last-minute door delays. You have to sit in the plane for hours on the runway, waiting for them to figure it out. Not drinking water. Not walking around.  Just sitting, waiting so that you can sit some more a thousand more feet up. The plane is not the friend of those of us who sometimes (always) arrive a teensy bit (half hour) late.

sleep-train goody bag

In a few days I will take the night train back to Paris, and slip into my mid-level compartment, complete with blanket-satchel and plastic-wrapped hygienic and surprisingly comfortable pillow, as well as a goody-bag sleep assortment and bottle of water, all provided by the train company. I will arrive back in town probably an hour behind schedule and have the option of paying too much for a café allongé or taking a two euro shower in surprisingly clean facilities provided for the night-trainers. Then I will calmly take the metro to my teaching gig. No ridiculously long trip into town, no waiting forever for the spinny baggage cart to spit out my mangled bag. No annoying standing in line while tourists try to figure out the ticket-into-town system. All hail rail.

I love trains so much that when the SNCF (train people) bought up teaser ad space in the metro I fell for their ruse immediately. “Coming soon, direct tunnel from Paris to New York!” I was gleeful, imagining the ease of slipping into Gare Du Nord 30m before departure, rolly-bag in hand, going through security measures where I wouldn’t have to take off my shoes. I didn’t care about the physics of the 5851 km underwater tunnel. My fantasy was finally coming true. I felt cheated when the follow-up ad told me I was dreaming, it would never happen, but that you can now reserve flights through their website. Jerks.

I am considering wearing a conductor’s hat on my flight back to San Francisco in mourning and silent protest for my dreams of continued rail travel. 

Gare d'Austerlitz at 815 (i took the coffee, thank you)

Voyage, voyage...

Parisians are, famously and incontestably, snobs, and they will tell any adorer of the city of lights that the best part of living in Paris is leaving Paris.

  

If you are an expat, this becomes true after about a year and a half. Though am not convinced that this is any different from living anywhere else. We’re like toddlers testing the world. We wander away from Mommy only to run back to make sure she’s still there before heading further out. It is helpful, of course, when Mommy is somewhere close to other places we want to see.

view from Chrystal Palace Park, Porto, awesome napping spot

I have recently been bingeing on travel. Last week I went to Porto with friends, eleven of us wandering groggily through the sloping, cobblestone streets, eating grilled seafood and drinking vinho verde and Superbock (one of my favorite beer names ever). Created instant parties in empty dance clubs, ate at absurdly long tables, took group naps in parks and crowded photographs in front of supposedly famous buildings...

I had known absolutely nothing about Porto before going, and was surprised at how lovely it is. But even more interesting was the fact that we were there together, two couples and seven singles, before the advent of children and prohibitive financial responsibility, spending five full days of in-between in some random foreign city, together. A shared vacation in blissful limbo.

Pretty places are nice, but I have always been fascinated by those with visible layers of history. Russia, where I was about 6 years ago, is this way. Stalinist apartment buildings rising in front of Orthodox onion-dome churches with Cyrillic-lettered MacDonalds signs in between them. Crazy.

Berliners, lounging between flea market and amphitheater karaoke

Berlin, where I was two weeks before Porto, is the same. Not with the Cyrillic symbols of global capitalism, but with the history, and for some reason I didn’t expect it as much. We went to a flea market on former killing fields and a complex of bars and studios and clubs in what used to be an industrial park, just about everywhere we went seemed to be a converted something else. My friends live next to what up to two years ago was the Tegel airport, and I went jogging on the runways. The overgrown spaces between airplane-sized lanes are now marked off as bird sanctuaries, and people were rollerblading and kite-boarding and lounging and sitting around having tea in a makeshift furniture swap-meet.

There is a feeling in the air of Berlin that I hadn’t experienced before, not just because I went on the first hot weekend of the year in a country that gets COLD, and the entire city descended into the streets to party. I think that there is something to the idea that chaos leads to potential. Thirteen years since the Wall went down, and the graffiti has only gotten better.

It is tempting to make this post interminable with anecdotes from neat adventures. Drinking Guinness to a Celtic jam session with the presiding priest from St Patrick’s Cathedral, who rode to and from the Dublin pub on his bicycle. In Malta, being told during a tour of the capital city that they stopped building opera houses because they were just easy targets for bombings. Getting stuck in Naples on a quiet Christmas eve because the Italians can’t handle snow on their train tracks- the only time I saw the city not vibrating with vespas and language and gestures and clotheslines. I spent one New Year’s swimming in Hyde Park in London, cheered on by old ladies and chased by swans, and another stuffing twelve grapes in my mouth at midnight in Barcelona, laughing in four languages. Memories, doobedoobedoobedoo.

Gellert mineral baths, Budapest

Many of these ventures have been with people who were cruising through Europe, the nice part of the double-edged sword that is living in a desirable destination. I crashed part of Pete’s honeymoon a year or so ago, slept on the floor of the bridal suite and bonded with his wifey in the topless women’s area of the tiled mineral baths in Budapest. For Renzo’s thirtieth birthday, I was invited to the family village near Sorrento. We wandered through town with his brothers and people popped out of windows and doorways, storagerooms and alcoves, to say:  “You’re a Staiano? Ima Staiano! He’s a Staiano, She’s a Staiano.” It was like a Disney movie.

Amalfi Coast, Italy. Or theatrical backdrop. Not sure. 

For me, a lot of Europe seems like a Disney movie. It’s surprising how much things can live up to your expectations, but in a more surround-sound way. It’s A Small World in Virtual Reality. Fondue in Switzerland, herring in Sweden, waffles in Belgium, joints in the Netherlands, and metal bands in Latvia. Can a place be real if it is an exact manifestation of your expectations?

Maybe this is why I so like sticking around in one spot for so long. I feel pulled to the exciting new places, but it’s the living in them that is really interesting. The difference in mundanity. It’s exciting to be alien and yet entirely comfortable, where returning from a trip is still going somewhere kind of new. If the best thing about living in Paris is leaving Paris, the second best is quite possibly coming back.

C'est les petits gestes qui comptent.

I really wanted to say something about gestures, about those little bits of integral communication that go above and beyond phrasal expression. Culturally-specific, non-linguistic communication. This is going to be a little tough, as I can't get my camera phone to take pictures remotely, and I have no idea how to post sound, but I'm going to try.

My good friend Helen told me this story, and I'm stealing it:

"Our hippie Australian colleague came into work the other day and said 'I had heard that Parisians were rude, but i wasn't prepared. I was in the supermarket today looking for baking soda to brush my teeth with, and the cashier just looked at me and did this awful thing. She leaned over and farted in my face! Farted in my Face!' "

Hippie Aussie was talking about a quintessentially French move. One necessary for all would-be fluent speakers (and gesticulators). Correctly done, it signifies "I have no idea", "them's the breaks", or "what you are saying does not interest me enough for actual comment". It should be performed by pursing your lips and shrugging your shoulders, whilst simultaneously expelling air out of your mouth. 

This does make a "fart" noise, but I feel the sound and action is actually very self-explanatory. Try it, you will be that much more French.

Another of my favorites is the "I'm out of here" move. I like this one because it can replace saying "let's blow this pop stand", one of my favorite expressions, and can be used in situations in which you need to be subtle, or just have food in your mouth and can't enunciate properly. It's a two-hander. Extend all the fingers of your right hand out, thumb glued to the palm of your hand, like a plastic-molded doll, or sticking out at a 45 degree angle. Cup your left hand slightly and hold it out in front of you, not too far, and keep it relatively limp and loose. Your flat, plastic-molded hand should be brought up from below to briskly contact the crook where your thumb meets your palm, twice. A soft slapping sound is made when your forefinger hits your inner palm, as if to say "let's go" or "I'm out".

There are others. The finger tap to your temple that instead of saying "think about it", as it would in the US, says "you're/she's/he's/they're nuts". The succession of  sucking tongue clicks that can be used on children, dogs, or peers to signify "don't do that". The series of expressions and micro-expressions that mainly seem to show disdain, but are recognized all over the country, and especially in Paris. I love these. I may not be able to pull off cigarette pants with striped shirts and a scarf (actually a thing), but I can definitely make a farting noise. It makes me feel like one of them. One of us.

Some are more universal. The eye-roll. The eyebrow raise. The "comme si comme ça" or "almost" frontal jazz hand. The "you're taking up too much of my valuable time with your nonsense" purse-and-pucker. These are examples that would seem relevant to most anglophones and francophones, but are actually just as culturally tagged as language itself. Unfortunately, this stuff is rarely taught in classrooms. (I think. I have never taken French as a foreign language, but I've certainly never designed an English class on the "rock on" hand-sign).

I've been told that in Japan shaking your head horizontally means "yes", which must lead to much hilarious misunderstanding in the board room. A student of mine told me recently that in middle-eastern countries a tongue-click and sharp, upward motion of your head from the jaw signifies "hello" and is not aggressive at all, and if in a market in Morocco someone answers your question about the price of mint tea by holding out his forefinger and thumb in a circle while he speaks to someone else, he isn't trying to ignore you or play a punching game, but is asking you to hold on a moment. It's like we're all living in physical code.

One time, on my way to teach a class, I was riding across northern Paris when a giant truck rolled past the pedestrian crossing and stopped, blocking my path on my green light. I tapped his window and he rolled it down. I pointed out that he was in my way, and when he wouldn't move I continued to insist, sweeping my arms with increasing grandeur to indicate the light and my bike. The light changed, and a honking line of cars gathered behind him, but our interaction was important. I was careful to vousvoie him while insulting his driving skills. Mostly, however, I was gesticulating wildly, sharply, implying he was a crazy idiot for continuing to inconvenience me. As he drove away, he called me a "conasse de bourgeoise parisienne". This is not a polite thing to say, "conasse" basically means "stupid bitch", but something about it invigorated me. 

I reknotted the scarf around my neck and thought to myself, that's right, drive on, this is MY town. 

Allons enfants

A few nights ago, after the election of François Hollande, the first socialist president in 17 years, his supporters took the Bastille. I had gone bowling on rue Mouffetard, as I always do on the first Sunday of the month (the Half-Assed Bowling League has garnered quite a following) but this time I abandoned my playmates to their cheersing and smack-talking to head out and see the throngs. And oh, there were throngs.

Gyrating lefties on every available surface, scaling lampposts and signposts and bus stops. Newsstands’ rooftops miraculously withstanding the weight of a dozen full-grown adults. People breaking into song- improvised tunes about getting rid of Sarkozy, and the well-practiced Socialist Party anthems I had heard for years at the concert series the newspaper l’Humanité puts on (hint: always the cheapest beer in Paris). There were children and teenagers and someone’s dog on his shoulder. People apologizing for pushing into each other and strangers striking up conversations.

Now, I’m not the wildest fan of Hollande for a few reasons, and I’m a little wary of what he will be able to do with the economy, but the waves of excitement were truly amazing. Because Paris is THE capital of the country, and because France is small enough for travel to be reasonable, it becomes an obvious rallying point and a real center for culture and movement. Toulouse, Lyon, Lille, all lovely places, but it’s tough for me to understand why people would choose to live away from this city. 

Usually the Bastille is, like most monuments in Paris, just the center for an enormous roundabout. I ride through it all the time on my bike, it’s not as bad as the Arc de Triomphe, but you do have to keep on your toes or you could get clipped by a Smarte car. On foot, when trying to decide which café has the cheapest happy hour (it’s the Indiana), you get stopped regularly by tourists holding out maps, looking for the prison. It was torn down in 1789. You know, after the revolution. I read once that they sold off pieces of it as souvenirs, like the Berlin wall. The more things change… Now the only way to see vestiges of the prison is to go down to the line 5 metro platform. The bit of the wall there used to be covered in beer cans and candy wrappers, but I think they put up some kind of glass barrier recently. Too bad, I kind of liked it as this quiet affirmation: “Yeah, we had a king once, now we have public transportation.”

I was in France when Obama was elected, and that is a scene I regret missing. I still have some telephone messages from friends saved, you can barely hear them above the cheers and music and catcalls from the streets of San Francisco, but they all say “he won! You can come home now!” Seeing the Bastille overrun with people, the column invaded by supporters with signs, with flags from all over the world, it seemed like elections should be triumphant, maddening, rallying. A hope for change, for me at the very least a vote against apathy. Party for politics.

 

And it was really not a bad party. I was on my way out when I stopped to hear a brass band play, and the little French motorcade drove Hollande by, back towards the Bastille to make his address. I followed, along with the band and its audience. I could see him on the screen from my spot between rue de la Roquette and the opera house, but heard nothing over the cries of foghorns, the whistles of fireworks and flares, and the chanting of support slogans. The tall dude to my left kindly read the speech to me from the subtitles (well, maybe it was for his nuzzling sans-culottes girlfriend). People kept excusing themselves for pushing me around in the crowd, and everyone chimed in with the new French president to sing the Marseillaise.

Et voici.

It has been eight and a half years of living in Paris. 9 apartments in 6 arrondissements on 13 metro lines. 5 bands, 1 long relationship and a handful of good friends. In 1 month I’ll travel the 5566 miles (or 8958 km) back to San Francisco, 2/3 reticent and 98% nostalgic.

I moved to Paris with the intention of staying a year or so, getting in touch with my paternal French roots (from the South, spanning from the mountains behind Nice to the Southwest city of Tarbes where my father spent most of his youth), and seeing what the country, and the city, had to offer. I had never been to Paris before moving here in 2003. I really had no idea what I was getting in for.

Paris is a wonderful city. Full of history and architecture and art and berets and baguettes and croissants and people gesturing and whistling and scoffing and loving and snorting. They call it a Museum City, not for the Louvre, but for the slowness to change. "Things have been good since we got rid of the king and worked out that indoor plumbing thing, why shake them up?" This is the stuff of frustration, but also something that holds genuine appeal for a girl from the Far West, where a building gets a plaque for being older than the 1920s.

So, I’ve lived here a while. I’ve eaten a lot of crèpes and snails. I’ve sunburned in the Luxembourg gardens and fantasized about jumping into the Seine to fill my ears and nose and pores with Paris. I’ve jogged the canal and the Tuileries gardens and speed-ridden my bike through the heat, the rain, and the streetlamped night, sometimes fuzzy with wine, sometimes just late to teach a class. I’ve poured beers in jazz bars and sung with Big Bands, fought in public and made out (mostly) in private. I’ve been up the tower and down the catacombs, taken planes from all the airports and trains from almost all the stations (except Bercy, I mean, who ever leaves from Bercy?).

I’ve been transient forever here. Just around the corner from moving home. Now that I am heading back, it seems a shock. I have a few things to say. Here we go.