I learned a new word: Anatopism. I have heard of anachronisms, but never of anatopisms - Something that's out of its proper place. Last night, I was taken to one.
- You were asking about the Toulouse accent?
I had been asking.
- Here you go. She's from Toulouse. T'es pas Toulousaine? Baptiste asked her in French. He (meaning me) was asking about the difference between the Toulouse accent and the Paris accent.
- Okay. The différence, she started, is... ...say "bread", she instructed Baptiste.
- Pain, said he, using the typical nasal vowel. Paa.
- Pain, she countered, making a sound much closer to the English word "pain."
That cleared that up, although it was a little bit strange to hear a Toulouse accent on a girl in Meschers. Baptiste and I had come down to Meschers from Royan to play guitar and ukulele in an American bar. The bar, called Tina's Café, was hidden in the corner of a beach that was itself hidden among chalk cliffs in the Gironde Estuary, an almost comically idyllic place for a delightfully ramshackle and charming bar/buffet/juke joint. I had seen plenty of places like it in North Florida, but never in France. It took me back, and it made me feel at home in a way that, mercifully, did not exacerbate the homesickness I've been feeling lately. It was, simply, wonderful to see so many things that I had not seen in a long time. It was wonderful and strange to see a Home Depot apron on the waitress with the strong Toulouse accent. It made me think of my father, and how much I hated it when he would drag me through that god-forsaken store. Souvenirs from America were everywhere. The definition of a "Florida Cracker" in the bathroom made me swell with statal pride (I meet the criteria, apparently, though I wouldn't call myself a Florida Cracker), and there was a sticker on the door warning me and others off of treating Texas in any way that could be considered dérangeant.
Baptiste introduced me to Tina in French, and we continued that way. It's always weird to meet a fellow countryperson and speak to him or her in what is a second language for both of you, but I was unwilling to switch to English before she did. As a foreigner in France trying to make your French work for you, you learn to hate it when you speak French to someone and they hear your accent and switch to English. Especially when their English is much poorer than your French.
Having met Tina, Baptiste and I clicked our beer glasses together and planned our set. Moving to an adjacent room in the bar, and sheltered somewhat from the sound of old blues standards pouring from the establishment's speakers, we rehearsed. Briefly. Then Baptiste went to find Wayne, the music guy for Tina's. He told Wayne that we were ready. We had not actually played a song through in its entirety, but such things to tend to work themselves. One way or another, you reach the end of the song.
I don't know why this is... I'm fairly shy, I guess... but I don't really suffer from stage fright. I'm not front-man material, but if I find myself in front of an audience, I don't really get nervous.
When we reached the end of our set, someone shouted for one more song. Wayne arched his eyebrows and shrugged in the way that says "Why the hell not? If you guys want to, it's way more than cool with me". We played "I Will Survive". Started slow, sped up and dropped into a mariachi groove, slowed down. I thought the song was over until Baptiste, who was singing while I played the guitar, waved and clapped me into a bizarre, syncopated coda that would not have been out of place at some kid's Bar Mitzvah. Good fun, a set "sans prétension" as Baptiste described it. I would chalk up the lack of pretension to the improvised nature of the set more than to any artistic or aesthetic choice on our part, but... six of one...
We sat with Molly and Kim, a couple of gals from Nashville and New Orleans, respectively. Molly was, I gather, a session fiddle player who was playing for Kim, who was in the middle of a European tour with her honky tonk band. They complimented Baptiste and I on our set, and I was taken aback when Molly told me that I had kind of a French accent. Later on, when the girls were scheduled to go on stage and play before their band had arrived, I stepped in on guitar - one of the highlights of my evening.
Some of my coworkers had showed up to watch me play, and I went and sat with them. We discussed work politics, and I remembered abruptly that I had a bag of salad in my backpack, which I then produced and dug into, to the amusement of everyone at the table.
Before I left, I played a song with Tina, the eponymous owner of the café. She asked me if I knew this and that song, which I invariably didn't. In the end, she said "We'll just make something up" and announced it to the audience. So, as I strummed the twelve bar blues in an easy swing rhythm, Tina improvised a song about her life. Afterward, she asked me if I was on vacation. I wasn't, I told her.
- I live here, but I'm actually leaving in two weeks or so.
- Oh... well you gotta come down again before you leave. Come by and sit around and have a beer with us... you'll be an honored guest.
I felt honored, and I felt grateful to have found a piece of home in such an unlikely place.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Ten Boobs, Eight Nipples - A Retrospective
Part 1
Finally.
Part 2
He steps, giant steps like he's walking through grass. Waves swirl and water snakes up toward his junk. You do have to wonder why the fuck the water is this cold in mid-summer. I'll assume that it's the two mountain-born rivers that flow into this estuary, assume that they didn't have time to warm up before they ended. So they're still cold; and so he walks outward, seaward, more or less homeward bound in thick astronaut steps, urinating all the while so that the salty searching fingers have to work against the warmth of the urine. Ease into it. It's a basic strategy. He walks outward, narrating it to himself.
Forcing casualness in school cafeterias, walking amongst the rows paying too much attention to his gait praying it comes across as unconcerned about what others think. Or he pretends that he's acting for the camera sometimes and watches while his actions become inexplicably wooden and forced for the benefit of a camera that isn't there. This is kind of like that. Narrating to himself as he walks, because... When people walk outwards into cold oceans, moving homeward but never reaching home, it's a big moment. Aware of himself in a way that probably obviates the big moment - and indeed, nothing much comes. This is no big deal.
I don't walk self-consciously through school cafeterias today. Well, maybe I do, but I don't care about myself. In a good way. I don't care any more than anyone else ever did. There's a guy from Iraq who eats breakfast at the next table over. His English is excellent for having studied three years. When he's teaching, he says "why" as a statement and not as a question.
"What you're eating is not good for you. Why. Because it makes you... the bad gas. But it's also full of vitamins."
He's probably right, I tell him. About it not being good for me.
Part 3
I should've written about it a few months ago. The reunion. The 3M reunion as we're calling it in honor of Matt, Mitch and Mara. Two or so weeks that snaked in somewhere between the months of March and April. A really beautiful time. I didn't write about it then, and now a lot of the viscera has faded, leaving the lasting memories: The walk out to the beach at midnight or thereabouts with beers. We discussed girlfriend stuff and personal insecurities and how we need to fucking do this again. Seriously.
And we do.
...The showing up in Bordeaux with lodging not worked-out. Crashing on the floor of Mitch's former roommate and getting a hotel the next day. The resolution not to sleep on our last night, then the realization that you can't get beer anywhere at this time of night and if we can't not-sleep and stagger around drunk then we might as well go sleep. Three on a bed, laying sideways instead of longways - heads on the bed, feet dangling. Four hours, one REM cycle. Ersatz, the only right way to do anything. The Ferris wheel, and the fair. Rain, and how I don't give a fuck about it as a matter of both personal pride and yes-to-life-ism.
Speaking of which, I forgot about the only thing that I wrote during the whole week - scribbled in my journal in a despondent moment alone in my room. Amidst the dull ache and numbness that comes from rushing around all over Southwestern France to see people and have a fun and lighthearted-but-poignant time... What I wrote. In a moment.
Part 4
I invited my brother and his wife to Seattle. I didn't invite Isaac, but I meant to. Then I thought about all the times I stepped away from my computer and came back to see he had messaged me and since logged off. Wall posts that he and other people wrote to me telling me that they missed me and how I said "I need to write them back" and never did. Fuck man. I'm a shitty friend, but it's not because I don't care. It's because I'm waiting for the right words.
It's also because, and this is a bit weird... I feel kind of despondent. Why. Because I don't want people to miss me, because I don't want those times to be over. I feel somehow paralyzed again, so that everything requires deliberation. Movement comes slowly, like walking eastward into the Atlantic against the incoming tide or doing karate forms in molasses. There's a heaviness in the limbs again, and a numbness in the extremities. There's a conspicuous lack of the impulse to say "yes" to life. I don't want to say "no" to life, but there's a strong desire to say "Hang ON! Jesus I can't hear you when you all talk at once! I just got home, can't I chill for a second!?" to life. This is why I don't answer. And this also explains...
Part 3
...what I wrote in my journal back in March/April, which was this:
"This is a moment I want to grab, smother, suffocate, live in. I can't listen to songs brimful with excitement about the future, songs that say 'Yes' to life or 'Bring it on; I'm ready!' There's a smell of decay like the soft smell of leaves after a rain, and it makes me miss this moment before it's gone. We need to do this every year."
So, I guess what I'm saying while I'm feeling brave enough to write it is that I fucking miss everyone. People from last year, this year. Everyone from my time in France. Other people too, but in the ocean right now, as I turn back having not had my big moment and walk back toward the beach where Lee and Laura and I came last year, I miss people that I met in France and haven't seen in a while. Remembering that first time, and how we saw five women with no tops on, and how one of them was tanned, all over, to the exact color of her nipples so that they were perfectly camouflaged against her body.
And right now, walking into the ocean and not having a big moment is fine with me. I'm feeling nostalgic, but for the first time in my life I don't really want to return to those times. I want new times. I'm happy where I am, and happy about where I'm going. I need to see everyone that I'm missing so much right now, but I don't need the time back. We'll do new shit, and it will be righteous. And I'm looking forward to it.
Part 2
I don't know why I mentioned the ocean. Maybe it's just that walking out into the freezing water reminded me of that time with Lee and Laura, and that memory launched me ping-ponging through dozens of others in minutes. Maybe the memories swirl and pierce in a way exactly like the icy water at the mouth of the Gironde Estuary, and that try as you might to wade through them and move forward, it will be slow going and giant ginger steps. Maybe.
Part 5
We fucking need to do this again. Seriously.
Finally.
Part 2
He steps, giant steps like he's walking through grass. Waves swirl and water snakes up toward his junk. You do have to wonder why the fuck the water is this cold in mid-summer. I'll assume that it's the two mountain-born rivers that flow into this estuary, assume that they didn't have time to warm up before they ended. So they're still cold; and so he walks outward, seaward, more or less homeward bound in thick astronaut steps, urinating all the while so that the salty searching fingers have to work against the warmth of the urine. Ease into it. It's a basic strategy. He walks outward, narrating it to himself.
Forcing casualness in school cafeterias, walking amongst the rows paying too much attention to his gait praying it comes across as unconcerned about what others think. Or he pretends that he's acting for the camera sometimes and watches while his actions become inexplicably wooden and forced for the benefit of a camera that isn't there. This is kind of like that. Narrating to himself as he walks, because... When people walk outwards into cold oceans, moving homeward but never reaching home, it's a big moment. Aware of himself in a way that probably obviates the big moment - and indeed, nothing much comes. This is no big deal.
I don't walk self-consciously through school cafeterias today. Well, maybe I do, but I don't care about myself. In a good way. I don't care any more than anyone else ever did. There's a guy from Iraq who eats breakfast at the next table over. His English is excellent for having studied three years. When he's teaching, he says "why" as a statement and not as a question.
"What you're eating is not good for you. Why. Because it makes you... the bad gas. But it's also full of vitamins."
He's probably right, I tell him. About it not being good for me.
Part 3
I should've written about it a few months ago. The reunion. The 3M reunion as we're calling it in honor of Matt, Mitch and Mara. Two or so weeks that snaked in somewhere between the months of March and April. A really beautiful time. I didn't write about it then, and now a lot of the viscera has faded, leaving the lasting memories: The walk out to the beach at midnight or thereabouts with beers. We discussed girlfriend stuff and personal insecurities and how we need to fucking do this again. Seriously.
And we do.
...The showing up in Bordeaux with lodging not worked-out. Crashing on the floor of Mitch's former roommate and getting a hotel the next day. The resolution not to sleep on our last night, then the realization that you can't get beer anywhere at this time of night and if we can't not-sleep and stagger around drunk then we might as well go sleep. Three on a bed, laying sideways instead of longways - heads on the bed, feet dangling. Four hours, one REM cycle. Ersatz, the only right way to do anything. The Ferris wheel, and the fair. Rain, and how I don't give a fuck about it as a matter of both personal pride and yes-to-life-ism.
Speaking of which, I forgot about the only thing that I wrote during the whole week - scribbled in my journal in a despondent moment alone in my room. Amidst the dull ache and numbness that comes from rushing around all over Southwestern France to see people and have a fun and lighthearted-but-poignant time... What I wrote. In a moment.
Part 4
I invited my brother and his wife to Seattle. I didn't invite Isaac, but I meant to. Then I thought about all the times I stepped away from my computer and came back to see he had messaged me and since logged off. Wall posts that he and other people wrote to me telling me that they missed me and how I said "I need to write them back" and never did. Fuck man. I'm a shitty friend, but it's not because I don't care. It's because I'm waiting for the right words.
It's also because, and this is a bit weird... I feel kind of despondent. Why. Because I don't want people to miss me, because I don't want those times to be over. I feel somehow paralyzed again, so that everything requires deliberation. Movement comes slowly, like walking eastward into the Atlantic against the incoming tide or doing karate forms in molasses. There's a heaviness in the limbs again, and a numbness in the extremities. There's a conspicuous lack of the impulse to say "yes" to life. I don't want to say "no" to life, but there's a strong desire to say "Hang ON! Jesus I can't hear you when you all talk at once! I just got home, can't I chill for a second!?" to life. This is why I don't answer. And this also explains...
Part 3
...what I wrote in my journal back in March/April, which was this:
"This is a moment I want to grab, smother, suffocate, live in. I can't listen to songs brimful with excitement about the future, songs that say 'Yes' to life or 'Bring it on; I'm ready!' There's a smell of decay like the soft smell of leaves after a rain, and it makes me miss this moment before it's gone. We need to do this every year."
So, I guess what I'm saying while I'm feeling brave enough to write it is that I fucking miss everyone. People from last year, this year. Everyone from my time in France. Other people too, but in the ocean right now, as I turn back having not had my big moment and walk back toward the beach where Lee and Laura and I came last year, I miss people that I met in France and haven't seen in a while. Remembering that first time, and how we saw five women with no tops on, and how one of them was tanned, all over, to the exact color of her nipples so that they were perfectly camouflaged against her body.
And right now, walking into the ocean and not having a big moment is fine with me. I'm feeling nostalgic, but for the first time in my life I don't really want to return to those times. I want new times. I'm happy where I am, and happy about where I'm going. I need to see everyone that I'm missing so much right now, but I don't need the time back. We'll do new shit, and it will be righteous. And I'm looking forward to it.
Part 2
I don't know why I mentioned the ocean. Maybe it's just that walking out into the freezing water reminded me of that time with Lee and Laura, and that memory launched me ping-ponging through dozens of others in minutes. Maybe the memories swirl and pierce in a way exactly like the icy water at the mouth of the Gironde Estuary, and that try as you might to wade through them and move forward, it will be slow going and giant ginger steps. Maybe.
Part 5
We fucking need to do this again. Seriously.
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