Hello from Paris!
I feel a little like the dog going on with her doggy life while Icarus falls, or however Auden puts it in his Musée des Beaux Arts poem. Because while 150,000 Russian soldiers encircle Ukraine, I buy groceries, revise a book, take my French test.
The big day I woke up with what my mother called a sick headache, and translates into a migraine with nausea and major digestive issues. By the time I got to the testing place, almost an hour away, I was drugged to the gills and had spent all morning in the can.
Hardly worth mentioning if the drama had stopped there, but when we finally were seated at our computers, appropriately masked and distanced of course, my connection kept failing and blurring the screen. This was merely worrying in the first section (reading comprehension), when I’d click on the little multiple choice circle but was never quite sure if my answer was being recorded.
It was a total disaster in the following oral comprehension section because the short recording would play, the computer would blur and freeze so you couldn’t see the answers trapped in a pull-down menu, and by the time the screen was properly visible again ten or fifteen or twenty seconds later, I’d forgotten what the person said on the recording, so it became a test less of comprehension than of memory, and mine is never at its best, especially under stress and during a migraine. This section did not go well. At all.
Oddly, the writing part I had been worried about bothered me least. Maybe because autocorrect was disabled and I couldn’t see all the mistakes I was making. At any rate, my practice on the French keyboard paid off.
And then, there was the conversational part.
It’s hard to tell from my writing, but in person I’m a strange mix of mute and blabbermouth. If I get enthusiastic about something, I can talk somebody’s ear off, even a perfect stranger, even in my French, which is mostly fluent, even if not grammatically correct. (I also know, that for every ten minutes of understandable language there’s suddenly a glitch in my brainpan and I speak total gobbledygook. For the record, this happens occasionally in English, too.) A Parisian friend of mine has remarked on it more than once—not the gobbledygook, but how I just dive in, no superficial stuff. It’s like expecting a mist, but getting drenched by a tidal wave. (Sorry).
However, if you ask me to make small talk, the well is dry. I’m probably good for a couple of polite comments, or if I’m inspired, snarky ones, but pretty soon I’ll shift from foot to foot then run away. In the meantime, I just smile a lot and nod. This is not a matter of language. Following is a nearly verbatim transcript of the conversation I had with a sister over Christmas.
—Hi, it’s Kelly.
—Well, this is a surprise.
—How are you?
—Fine. You?
—Fine. The kids?
—Just fine.
—Great.
—Ummmmmmmmmmm. Get any snow yet?
—A little. You?
—Not this year.
—Ummmmmmmmmmm.
—Ummmmmmmmmmm.
—Ummmmmmmmmmm.
—Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.
I pick through words like a minefield, choosing what won’t create a conflict with my interlocutor, or searching for something, anything that will be understood across the miles and years. I can almost hear them, the dead words that don’t echo when I drop them in that gap between us, the strings that when we pluck them don’t vibrate with joy.
There was so much we couldn’t talk about: the queer-hating, women-squishing church she attends a couple of times a week, the white supremacy of some of her gun-toting kids, vaccinations, the raging pandemic. Then there are my obsessions which would be meaningless to her: language, media, social change, France, women, dykes.
The only moment of true enthusiasm from either of us was a brief exchange about barbecue. Which she was eating later that day.
My side of the test conversation in French was hardly better.
The first topic? Pretend like the test-giver is a good friend and you’re helping her choose between a vacation in the mountains or at the beach. I did my best—which was pathetic, but made even worse because they set it up so that I was the one asking the questions and not answering them. So it was the test-giver who was actually inspired to babble away. Which she did, and was somehow my fault because she chastised me afterwards, saying I had to do better during the next exercise.
In that scenario, I was supposed to call the library and ask about things I might want to know before registering. This wasn’t any worse, at least not until the “librarian” started talking about fees. Because when I asked if they didn’t have any services that were free, she said, “No,” and when I asked if they were a library dedicated to a particular subject, because some of those do charge fees, she said “No” again.
At this point I lost my train of thought, because I realized that my fake librarian had never actually enrolled in a Paris library. Ordinary neighborhood libraries here are all free free free unless you want to check-out dvds or cds. It got worse, after our next exchange, because I realized that not only did she not have a Paris library card, but that it was entirely possible she’d never been inside a library, or wandered around the shelves.
Because when I asked if her library had any special focus at all, she misunderstood me, “I told you this is not a specialty library” and then, because I couldn’t help myself, I told her that a lot of ordinary local libraries had their specialties, with a few shelves of, for instance, the history of their neighborhoods, or crime novels.
Her reply? That their library had some books in foreign languages, “That’s special, right?” And I was forced to tell her, “No, most Paris libraries have at least some, the language depending on who is in the neighborhood. Some might have English. Some Spanish. Some Chinese.” And she looked totally befuddled. “Oh.”
And still trying to manufacture conversation, I asked if they had any programs for children, and she said, “Of course, did I have some?” And I answered, “Ten,” just to amuse myself. “Really?!” “Oh yes.” Do they take points off for frustrated snark? Who knows? Who cares?
When I left, I was depressed, upset, and somewhat humiliated. It was weird taking a French test trying to prove I was worthy to get citizenship, assimilated enough, but the person de facto representing the state didn’t even know how her own libraries worked. Maybe hadn’t read a book in years. It was like meeting a French person who hated wine and cheese or croissants, while for me, the abundance of libraries and bookstores (and bakeries) in Paris were what made me feel at home in the first place.
In pre-Covid times, I was in them almost every day like a huge cross-section of the population. Worshipping language worshipping words. The ordinariness of books. Nevertheless, since I was making more grammatical mistakes than usual in my distracted state, and had almost definitely screwed up the oral section because of the freezing computer screen, I would be declared unfit, unready. Come back again when you learn to chitchat about mountains and beaches and wifi at the library.
Whatever. The pain went away with a huge bowl of ice cream and some (many) potato chips. I’ll get my score in two weeks or so, and if I don’t pass, I can always do it over again in a couple of months if I need to. Though next time, instead of making the mistake of studying French, maybe I’ll do memory exercises and read a book or two on chitchat for shy people. And I’ll take the test on paper.
At any rate, it’s not the end of the world. Nothing at all compared to rockets getting fired at Ukrainian elementary schools, or the reports of a Russian kill list detailing the people they would like to assassinate or intern in camps after an invasion, with a focus on journalists, anti-corruption activists, exiled opponents to Putin and also, ethnic minorities and LGBT activists. Some of whom I probably know from the European Lesbian Conference who actually had their last, big conference in Kiev.
Thoughts for President’s Day
A Long Read on Ukraine
Anne Applebaum’s There Are No Chamberlains in This Story, on how Ukraine’s self-congratulatory “allies” are mostly talking shite.
The American vice-president made a solid, well-received speech: Kamala Harris declared that although “the foundation of European security is under direct threat in Ukraine,” the alliance would push back: “we, the US and Europe, have come together to demonstrate our strength and our unity.” Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, sat beside Antony Blinken, the American secretary of state, and said that “what makes me optimistic in these difficult times is the knowledge of the strength of our transatlantic union and the solidity of our alliances.” Blinken responded in kind: “The single greatest source of strength that we have in dealing with this issue, in dealing with this challenge, is the solidarity that Annalena talked about.”
…
But alongside this agreeable unity was a strong, steady, persistent note of dissonance. It came not from the allies but from the Ukrainians who appeared at the conference in large numbers: government ministers, business leaders, members of parliament from different political parties. The CEO of Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state gas company, told me he believes Russians aren’t worried about U.S. sanctions: They think they will “get around them,” just as they have done in the past. On Saturday, the Ukrainian foreign minister pointedly asked a room full of American senators and European foreign ministers what, exactly, would trigger these massive sanctions. Russian forces had begun shelling towns in eastern Ukraine that very morning. Why didn’t that suffice?
Random Posts from Twitter
Follow the link to an excellent post on psychiatry and women.
My new garden.
The real danger the Vikings posed to the English…
Because we all need a little joy…
That’s it for this week. Drop me a line. Cheer me up.
Disgruntledly yours,