Le fabuleux destin de la petite Kili

So, people say I don’t update enough, and they’re right. I guess the truth is I didn’t know what to say. One day, it was like I woke up and my stories were gone and all I was left with was myself. And I just can’t put myself out there like that. I’m jealous of people who can, who do just say what they’re thinking out loud and have the courage to write their journal in a public forum. People without secrets. My life is all secrets, it’s the glue that holds me together. Almost to the point where I don’t even know how to be completely honest anymore cause what would I be left with if I told people everything.

I spent a couple of days with a good friend who’s subletting an apartment for the summer. The actual owner had left all of her decorations, including a floating portrait of Jesus, and some belongings, mostly books. But in her bookshelf I found a collection of notebooks – her journal. Yes, I read some of it. Not all, because there was like ten volumes, but I drifted in and out. And I came to a conclusion: maybe journals actually weren’t meant to be read. At the risk of totally exposing myself here, part of the reason I read this girl’s journal was cause I felt like we shared something. At the very least, a profound disrespect for paper conservation. Because I have as many notebooks as she. And I won’t feign modesty and say I haven’t kept them all, with idea that after I die they will be read and cherished as the great works of literature they are. Yes, I am that vain and I don’t think most people know this about me. So reading this girl’s journals left me with one reoccurring thought: this is dull; and one even more horrifying possibility: what if mine are just as uninteresting?

My best friend from high school kept a journal exclusively when she felt emotional. Where I wrote about my bellybutton lint on a daily basis, this girl only wrote when angry, guilt-ridden, or hopelessly in love. She wrote about the terrible national tragedy that was September 11th; I wrote about the darkroom technique I perfected and the prints I made in photo tech class while the news of the crash blared over the radio. Her journals are a highlight reel: “Havlicek stole the ball! It’s all over! It’s all over!” where are mine are a PBS documentary: “behold the mighty sloth as it twitches it’s right toenail . . .”. Three years after she has filled a notebook, my friend rips out all the pages and burns them; the past will never haunt her. I line my journals up on the bookshelf, next to Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Morrison (Toni, not Jim). She was the passion, I was the logic. So you can see why I never wanted to put anything but stories on the internet. Who wants to read about logic?

Current Mood: honest
Current Music: You had time -Ani

***Our hero, no longer so brave nor so bloodthirsty, sits huddled on the couch, a pillow clutched to her chest, trying to keep from whimpering out loud . . .***

I had officially caught my second mouse in two days, and my third overall. Each death was becoming progressively more gruesome and it was getting to be more than I could take.

The first mouse was caught Thanksgiving morning. My friend and eternal sidekick, Claudia, was in France for the holiday and she’d innocently asked if I had a toaster when the plastic trap snapped closed, the sound muffled by the cabinet it was in. Yes, these mice hung out in my lower cabinets, the ones that held all my cleaning materials. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it was.

I disposed of the mouse easily enough. My mom had sent wonderfully American traps that made mouse disposal easy and free of contact with the casualty. Plus, this mouse was on the larger side and the trap had snapped his neck in a quick, efficient manner. I couldn’t help but feel more than a little French as I ceremoniously dumped my first “guillotine” victim into the trash can across the street.

I’d almost crowed about this early victory. It was all ‘ding dong the mouse is dead’ and fresh bottles of champagne. My war was practically won! When I told Mme. S, who had encouraged the use of Have-a-Heart traps, about the capture at a group dinner weeks later, she didn’t exactly share my sentiments.

“You cruel girl!” she said with a snarl, taking a large, predatory bite out of the cooked lamb on her plate. I pushed the vegetables around on my vegetarian entrée and enjoyed the irony of it all.

But now, months later, I was starting to feel like I had inadvertently started the Reign of Terror. Two mice in just as many days. Both had been small and much more innocent looking than the first to stumble across the trap. This size not only upped the emotional value of each death, but also made the trap less effective. My second mouse was caught by the closing jaws halfway down his back, which looked a little less cut and dry than the first. The third, this morning’s surprise had been, by far, the worse. First of all, I had smelled it before I had seen it. When I checked the trap, all that was caught in the jaws was a tiny, broken, bleeding leg. The mouse had died slowly and painfully, smashed inside the trap instead of a quick, instant demise. I swallowed hard. Not wasting time on ceremony, I quickly dropped the mouse into a blue plastic bag already containing a banana peel from the morning’s breakfast. The body twitched when it hit the inside of the bag and I ran it down the stairs and out the door as fast as possible, trying not to think about what I was carrying. I dropped it into the trash can and noticed, for the first time, the confused stares of the French natives who had just had a frightened looking American in boxers and flip-flops appear amongst them. So much for trying to blend in with the locals.

It all hit me when I got back upstairs and saw the little puddle of blood in the cabinet and the trap which was completely licked clean. That mouse had been alive for a long time. I lay down on the couch, unable to clean up, my mind swimming with thoughts about the injustice and cruelty of life. Was it really right that I got to “play God” and take away the life of such a tiny little creature who was just trying to find food and survive, just like me?

I got up and stared out the window into the trashcan across the street, where the blue plastic bag peeked out from the somber grey cylinder which had unwittingly become a tomb. I thought of the twitching mouse and wondered if, at that moment, as I looked down on him, he was struggling valiantly with three legs, trying to overcome the plastic bag and loss of blood in order to crawl out of his prison and escape to safety. In my mind, I saw him making the long journey home, trailing a lame leg, escaping hungry pigeons and prowling cats, to be reunited with his loved ones like the Steadfast Tin Soldier. Perhaps he too would be swallowed by a fish and travel through the sewers of Aix on a paper boat. Then, I remembered that said loved ones lived here, in my apartment. Well that would never do. I wrinkled my nose, hoping the hero of my imaginary tale was simply suffocated by the banana peel.

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: Both Hands -Ani

We had just watched the brilliant masterpiece that is Secretary, and armed with two cups of tea, a fresh baguette, and the view from my apartment, had all the makings of a good conversation.

“It’s so sad that some people feel the need to do things like that. I can’t imagine feeling the need to purposefully hurt myself,” I thought out loud, referring to the female protagonist’s masochistic habits. “I mean, what can it do for you?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Claudia looked into her mug. “I can see how you might like the pain.” I stared hard at her, trying to gage if she was being serious. Was my friend a secret cutter and I’d never known? “I mean, I like to run till it flat-out hurts,” she continued. “Until my lungs burn and my legs can’t take another step. I enjoy that pain. And I love the feeling of waking up the next morning and aching as you crawl out of bed. It makes you feel like you’ve done something. But it’s still pain, and I like to feel it.”

I looked into my own teacup, as if I could actually read the leaves. I couldn’t deny that she had a point. And I couldn’t pretend I didn’t love the soreness of a good workout. If I didn’t, I would have given up on the gym years ago. I thought of all my other “painful” habits. Do they make me a masochist? Did this socially unacceptable label have an application in everyday life? Just because my brand of masochism might not include razor blades, handcuffs, or a dominatrix outfit, did that make it any less real?

The first really good looking guy I ever dated was also my first long distance relationship. My life has a funny kind of irony that way. In most cases, having to see my boyfriend every day seemed almost inconvenient as it necessitated effort when getting dressed. It figured that the first face I was dying to see as often as possible was a good two and a half hours away by car.

We had a whirlwind-esque romance and I was head-over-heels in no time. Which, apparently, was enough time for him to realize that the long-distance thing wasn’t exactly his thing. And he told me that, which should have earned him points (at least two, for honesty). But I wouldn’t let it go, and my first long-distance relationship quickly devolved into the first time I made a fool out of myself while chasing a guy.

Carrying the attitude of “I shall win him back” like a coat of arms, I prepared to fight for what I wanted. And fight I did, there’s no denying that. But as hard as I worked, as much as I did, as far as I drove, nothing ever changed. I never became a real girlfriend again, just a tortured “friend with benefits.” Considering I wanted to cop something more than a feel, it wasn’t me getting the full benefits. But I kept going back. Even though it hurt.

When I tried to extract sympathy from my friend Meg, after he had canceled on me for a girl in his neighborhood, she just looked at me.
“Why do you keep doing this?” she asked, “Do you like getting hurt or something?”

Haven’t we all stayed in a relationship or a situation that isn’t, and will never be, healthy? Like obsessing over that guy who said he would call, and never did. Chasing an ex. Staying with the guy who takes you for granted. Holding out for Brad Pitt. Is it really because we “just can’t bear to let go,” or think “we can change it,” or know “it will be different next time?” Or is it because, somewhere deep inside, we like the pain?

My friend Rachel’s mother wants her daughter to experience heartbreak. She believes you need to have your heart broken to be alive, that this douleur exquisite ties us together as humans. (And an incomplete tally of the friends I’ve made through sharing break-up stories leads me to believe she might be right.) Maybe that’s why we put ourselves in the way of pain; allow, sometimes even help, others to break our hearts. Maybe we’re just trying to feel alive.

“I like hunger pains,” I admit, “that twisting in your stomach, especially at night.” It was Claudia’s turn to give me the worried look. “I like it cause it means I have control,” I tried to explain, “that I have a say in my body. And it means my diet’s working.”

“Don’t be a masochist,” she said with a slight smile, “I think most guys would find it kind of freaky.” I threw a sugar cube at her, making her wince as it bounced off her shoulder.

“You know you like it.”

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: #1 Crush -Garbage

It really all started at Community Dinner. I was sitting in the corner, with the Asian girls, as always. I'm still in the midst of a study to decide whether or not we do this to ourselves, or they do it to us, as part of some inborn, natural racism. And when I say 'in the midst of a study' I mean I'm thinking about it on my own, occasionally. I'm not Asian. And I'm not pointing that out because of some inborn, natural racism, it's simply to explain my ignorance later on.

At this dinner, Crystal started talking about her ex-boyfriend and paper stars. Specifically, she was explaining how she had made so many paper stars that summer, the one before they broke up, because they kept her hands busy while she waited for him to give her some sort of a sign. Or at least return her calls.
"I think it made me feel like I was doing something," she explained.

"Man, I never make those things," Rachel shook her head, "I think it worries my mom. It shows that I'll never get married or something." I looked from one to the other in confusion. Was I the only one who didn't see the connection between paper stars, whatever they may be (I was totally thinking cut-outs) and marriage?

"No, you see they're these little stars folded from paper," Crystal explained, "kind of like origami." At this point I was totally picturing Sadako and her thousand paper cranes. Crystal quickly decided this wasn't getting through to me and ripped a long thin strip of paper from her notebook, wrapped it around itself over and over again, producing, as if by magic, a tiny folded star the size of a thumbnail. "You make a whole bunch of them, like hundreds, and you give them to your husband."

It was that last part that really struck me. "But why?" I asked, fingering her tiny creation, "what do they symbolize? Commitment? Happiness? Wishes for the future? Please don't tell me it's one for each future child." I shuddered. "And when do you give them to him? When you think he's the one? When he proposes? On the wedding day? I mean, what if you give them to some guy who turns out to be a jerk? Then what, you've just wasted an entire jar of paper stars?" I looked at them, more confused, if that was possible, than I had been to begin with.

"Don't look at me," Rachel said, "I don't make them."

I was absolutely amazed it was possible to believe a jar full of hand-folded paper stars represented proof of true love and a lifetime together. Then again, people also think that about a diamond ring, and that's not even hand made. I guess, when it comes down to it, people believe all sorts of silly things about love and it's manifestations. Look at how much faith we place in a phone call, a birthday card, an offering of dead plants on February 14th.

"My ex-boyfriend and I got in our biggest fight ever on Valentine's Day of last year," another friend, Jane, told me once. "I started crying in the middle of Copley Square because he hadn't bought me roses. The funny part his, he actually HAD bought me roses, they were just waiting for me in our hotel room. He got really upset that day and said something about how nothing he did was ever enough for me."

"Apparently, he didn't know how high maintenance you are," I said.

"I am NOT high maintenance! Am I?" Jane was big into proof of love and devotion, making her one of the most high maintenance girls I've ever met.

"Well, yeah, I guess I used to make him go out at all hours of the night to get me Ben & Jerry's ice cream, just to see if he'd do that for me," she admits, "And I used to make him drive all the way to my school to sit my dorm room and study with me, just to see if he would. Well, I had to know how much he cared, didn't I?" Don't let her fool you - she had him jumping through flaming hoops.

"And then there were the bears . . ." Jane's boyfriend at the time was a high ranking member of his fraternity, and an upperclassman, which gave him his own room in the house. At the point when things were getting very serious, Jan had almost moved in there with him, and had brought the "children" along for the ride. You see, aside from midnight runs to the 7-Eleven, Jane also made her guy take her to the mall, and to the Build-a-Bear store in particular. There they would build and outfit a teddy bear together, who was named, and added to Jane's new collection of "bear children." These odd offspring had their own bed in the guy's frat-house room and their own hangers in his frat-house closet.

"Every night I used to make him change the bears from their daytime clothes into pajamas and tuck them into bed," Jane explained, "just to see if he cared enough to do that for me. You know, it's good to know that sort of thing before you're talking about real children." I, as usual, was hung up on a previous detail:

"You made him do that in a FRAT?! Wasn't he ridiculed?" Jane shrugs. It is evident the possibility of this ritual having been embarrassing has never occurred to her before I mentioned it.

I guess there are all sorts of different ways of proving your love, showing you care. Some people have stuffed animal families, others get tattoos, still others compose poems or art. The commercial sector would have us believe that nothing says "I love you" quite like a Lexus or giant diamond ring. And classic music would like to remind us that it's "in his kiss."

"I think you give him the stars to show you thought about him," Crystal finally offers, "to show you knew you would meet him, before you'd even seen him." A jar full of pretty paper stars has no practical purpose. You can't show it off to your friends or resell it after you break up. But you can look into it, appreciate the fine finger-work, and know that someone took the time to fold all of those, individually, for you.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Lucky Star -Madonna

As the world’s largest producer and exporter of films, one would imagine the United States would have a very rich culture surrounding the cinema. And we do – if you call overbuttered popcorn and overpriced soda a culture. The American movie experience is all about the extras – the previews beforehand, telling you what to see next, the snacks you either sneak in under your coat or pay a king’s ransom for, the hand you’re going to hold once the lights dim a sufficient amount. The movie is more of an excuse, and becomes a kind of accessory once you actually enter the theatre. Think about it, how many times have we all been watching a movie, only to have the people behind you talk, or loudly make out, throughout the entire show? Americans go to the movies for the atmosphere, the experience – the sticky floors, uncomfortable seats, and lack of lighting. They go to the movies to go.

In France, people go to the movies for the movie. Cinema is an art, and is approached with a great seriousness of purpose. The first thing you notice is how organized their ticket system is. There are different lines for different movies, so when you arrive, you know right away how many people you will be sitting with, and whether or not you will have a seat at all. Once you buy the ticket, the next big difference is the lack of a snack bar. There are vending machines, selling maybe 4 types of candy and espresso. You’ll be lucky if they work. I believe these machines are for effect, because I have yet to see one used. French people simply do not eat during the movie. To them, that would be like eating in an art gallery – disrespectful and simply not done. One could argue that it just wouldn’t feel like going to the movies without popcorn, but in some ways, one can’t deny the fact that is feels better. For example, the floors are not only completely devoid of stickiness, but carpeted (why not? No food means no spills). The chairs are not only stain-free, but are the most comfortable seats I’ve ever seen in a public building. These are not the rickety, narrow movie theatre perches we all know and love. These are luxury armchairs, the kind you find in most American living rooms, with generous width (ironic as the French are the thinner population), a place to rest your head, and real armrests that easily accommodate two arms (no more fighting with your neighbor). There is even, I kid you not, leg room – even enough for legs longer than those attached to my 5’4” frame. And the way they tilt the floor means that even if the couple in front of you are sucking face (which would be quite the feat over the impassive armrest), you don’t have to see it. The cinema I went to in Paris even had the restrooms on the inside of each individual theatre, so one missed very little of the movie when answering nature’s call. Plus the unspoken no-food rule means no annoying kids pelting you with Skittles during the romantic scenes. It’s like suddenly stepping into the Lexus of movie theatres, except here that kind of luxury is as common as a Ford.

There is a very prevalent feeling that all this comfort is provided to make the viewing experience that much better. And they might have a point. I, for one, did find it much easier to concentrate on the film when I didn’t have to shift in my seat every fifteen minutes when my butt fell asleep again. It’s amazing how much more watching gets done when you’re not fighting with your brother for popcorn or searching for your friend who stole your soda. In short, the French moviegoer is concentrating on the movie. And this concentration lasts until the bitter end. Where most Americans are on their feet before the last scene has even faded to black, I got some very odd looks for standing halfway through the credits. In France, it’s not over till it’s over, even the credits. It’s kind of touching that they seem to feel that everyone, even the intern who fetched the assistant director’s assistant’s coffee, has the right to have their name read. It’s not only respect for the art, but respect for the artist, every last one of them.

The French, like every other group of people, definitely don’t do everything perfectly. For example – they’re less than visionary when it comes to apple pie a la mode, as ironic as that sounds. I don’t know why they find the concept of heating the pie before adding the ice cream is so complex, but they can’t seem to understand it. And the little-tiny-lapdog-that-goes-everywhere culture becomes really tired after the tenth time you inadvertently step in the crap covering the sidewalks. But, when it comes to the movies, there’s no question in my mind - I have to give the French two thumbs up.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Samba dans mon coeur qui bat -Coralie Clement

Like most girls born in the country, I spent most of my time there complaining about it. For eighteen years I scratched my head and wondered why on earth my parents had chosen to settle in such a rural area. I mean, what did they have against stores and movie theatres and sidewalks? Country-living was something I couldn’t wait to be rid of. And August 20, 2004 I quit cold turkey – boarded a plane to Paris, France and never looked back. For the past two and a half months I have learned what it is like to be a city mouse. Important lessons like it’s not a good idea to smile at strangers on the street, and an even worse idea to smile at strangers in the subway, wearing shorts (even while running) is an invitation for commentary, and don’t respond when people say hello, they only want money. Yeah, it took some getting used to. By the time I moved from Paris to Aix-en-Provence, I had perfected the cold vacant stare and the mute walk-by. I actually imagined Aix would be a little more rural than Paris, but not so. If anything, Paris was greener - with more trees and bigger parks. In my streetside apartment, the constant sound of running water from the fountain below is the closest I get to nature, and the mouse in my apartment is the closest I get to wildlife.

Until this past weekend. As a part of our abroad experience, my college program sponsors several group excursions to different cultural locales throughout the year. November 6, we boarded a bus headed for the very heart of the region of Provence. The first stop in the tour was the village of Roussillon, with its Ochre quarries. As we got closer and closer to this primary destination, the four-lane highway condensed into two and finally into a winding country road that technically allowed two way traffic, but was honestly built for one. The road curved and dipped through varied terrain and natural foliage with corners that would’ve made Route 123 cringe. I couldn’t help but think how much the ride reminded me home.

Once in Roussillon, we made our way to the park that protects the famous quarries and walked down the red dirt path into the woods. Entering the forest conjured up feelings that were impossible to place, like the mysterious itch you can’t seem to locate with enough precision to scratch. At first I thought it was the magnificent scenery by which I suddenly found myself surrounded. The Ochre quarries in Rousillon are one of the most beautiful places on earth. It is like stepping into the paint box of southern France, as you find yourself surrounded by giant cliffs in brilliant colors, ranging from a deep tomato red to a clear beige, that neither words nor photographs can do justice to. The powdery sand from these forests are spread throughout the southern half of this country in the form of paint and tiles and dyes for fabrics. It is the cradle for the hues that define Provençial culture. Here is where they make the sunflower yellow of my table cloth, the burgundy red of my floor.

It took a moment or two before the real answer to my newfound tranquility came to me. The beauty was just a piece of it; it was also the silence, and the calm, the space that surrounded me - and the feeling of comfort that atmosphere carried with it. When the wind blew here, it rustled leaves. When I raised my head, I saw trees, and mountains, and sky. It felt like listening to the radio while driving and suddenly hitting that spot where reception becomes perfect. The static, that constant murmur in my head and the constant buzzing of the outside world, had suddenly, wonderfully, disappeared and my own thoughts were coming in loud and clear. I could breathe again, and it felt like the tension was physically rising off my body.

There, with the red dirt of Rousillon sticking to my shoes and the pitch from the blue-green pine trees collecting on my hands, I finally understood why my parents had chosen to live in the country. And why, no matter how hard I try to escape it, returning to the countryside will always feel like going home.

On the way out, I passed an older couple entering the park and smiled. They responded with a cheerful “bonjour,” and didn’t even ask for money.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Welcome to my life -Simple Plan

She has sad eyes that make you feel hollow. Looking at her, you want to constantly touch her, in an effort to keep her there with you through physical contact. But you can’t help but fear that she will be cold, like exposed hands on a bitter, windy winter night. And you wonder who could’ve done this to her.

“The timing was always wrong with us,” she explains, “when I was 15, I was too young, and when I was 18, I was leaving.” And now that she’s 21, and gone, she doesn’t even have the bad timing to blame. They met as adolescents who were practically children. Their relationship was almost a secret, as they were too shy to talk in person and were only able to be friends over the phone, and later the internet. It was a bit of foreshadowing, as when she moved across the country, and things finally came together, that was all they had.

“It took three different people, at three different times, telling him I liked him before he finally took a chance,” she remembers with the shadow of frustration, “I asked him to prom and he still didn’t get it. He just wasn’t willing to make himself vulnerable.”

Tied by telephone wires at 3,000 miles, they became more than friends and less than something else.
“He was such a girl,” she laughs, “he made me care packages, wrote me songs, sent me real letters and long emails all the time. When it was all ending, he said he never felt like I tried, that he did so much more for us. He didn’t believe that I cared as much as he did. He couldn’t understand that I did, I just didn’t know how to show it back then. I was too young.” And she looks it at that moment – very young , yet very wise. But it is evident that this wisdom has come at a price.

“I really did try at the end,” she says, almost desperate to tell someone, because she can’t tell him. “But I think it came out wrong. I think, at that point, he was just annoyed by it all. I didn’t give him the space he needed then.” Her eyes look through you, the walls, the streets of France and into the past – the summer of unanswered emails, unreturned phone calls, and hurtful words passes before her eyes.

“I printed out a bunch of my journal entries,” she reveals, the movie in her mind pausing in late July, “ and sent them to him because I thought he needed to know. That was my big gesture. I was vulnerable.” The memories recommence, though all that’s really left to see is the silence. The departure for Europe, the birthday, the “let’s be friends, I want to be there for you,” that he ignored.

He haunts her, like a mouse living inside walls of a small apartment. She never sees him, but his very presence is tangible. The memories, like the noise of tiny fingernails tapping and scratching against the tile floor, come and go as she lies in bed at night, wondering.

And she longs for a way to escape, to break free, to feel some semblance of control over the events in her life. But how do you escape something you can’t find? Something that has left traces everywhere, as if to let you know it has no limits. How do you escape something that haunts and terrorizes without ever showing its face?

They, in all their infinite wisdom, say to face your fears – look them in the eye and never blink. Is that the answer here? And how do you face someone so far away? In letters he never returned? In questions he never answers? And where do you go from there – standing in front of your fears, then what? Nobody ever helps you with that part. They stop before, as if just standing there, stoic and unblinking, is enough. As if anything were that easy.

They also say you should just let go and move on. But how do you move on from your own life? How do you let go of something that has become as much a part of you as your ear or your eyebrow? Nobody tells you to let go of your knee when it starts to hurt when you run, so why should you let go of something equally fundamental, maybe not to your physical body, but to your soul? Experiences with him, when he was a friend, not a memory, made her into who she is now. Can you really just let that go and move on? Is anything that easy?

“There’s nothing I can do now,” she says, indicating the thought she has given the subject. “It’s got to be him who starts something. I’m waiting for him to make a big gesture.”

“Do you think those really exist?” she asks suddenly. “I grew up thinking that guys were like princes in fairy tales and they would climb the tower, fight the dragon for you. Do you think they really do that? Or maybe I just watch too many movies.” You shrug helplessly. Maybe, somewhere along the lines, wires got crossed and messages mixed and guys are waiting for girls to climb towers for them. Maybe we’re all waiting for that big gesture.

“You know,” she says, “he went to India once. That trip meant so much to him. He bought a chess set while he was there and he was telling me about it last year. I was so confused as to why he kept talking about this chess set.” She pauses, as if she has to remember the story that is her life. “He gave it to me for Christmas. I still have it, it’s in my closet, on the very top shelf. I’ve never even used it, because I wanted to play the first game with him. I don’t know what to do with it now.” It’s like all of her confusion, and worry, and powerlessness is sitting in her closet, on the very top shelf, in a chess set she can’t play, and can’t get rid of, and can’t give back. You wish you could help her, to take the pain and confusion away, as if it would simultaneously heal you too.

“I mean, what do you do with something like that?” You have nothing to say, because you don’t know either. So you both fall silent.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: When it doesn't matter -Angela Ammons

Continued from 11/5
**In our last episode, the plot had thickened and our brave hero was being terrorized by her enemy within her own house. Following the counsel of her advisor, she has reloaded the trap and is simply awaiting reinforcements by post . . .**

The cage I received from my program director is round and made of wires with a hole cut in the middle. The idea is that the mouse climbs to the top of the cage, falls in through the hole, and is then stuck, because this “humane” trap has wire prongs of doom all along the inside edge of the entrance. Kind of like the iron maiden, for our furry friends. I was initially skeptical, to say the least, but have been recently convinced that the invention is completely useless. It is becoming more and more evident that a cat might be the only way to go in this country.

This afternoon, as I returned from the blustery walk home from class, I entered my abode and caught sight of the latest development. I take it all back. I am not living with a mouse, but the rodent equivalent of Albert Einstein. It is simply brilliant. Unbeknownst to my mother, I just didn’t have the heart to fork over the equivalent of $8 to buy a tiny jar of peanut butter to catch a mouse with, so real peanuts would have to do. They all smell the same anyways, right? So the cage, which now sits in my living room, had previously had peanuts all along the inside edge, to entice the mouse INTO to device. Last night, the trap was shuffled and moved so that all the food rolled into the center. The bite marks on the old, dusty cheese (hah! They DO eat cheese!), indicate that the mouse is now able to stand on top of the cage and eat the contents inside, without falling in himself. The mouse, through thinking outside the box, has effectively solved his own problem, in a peaceful, logical manner that even keeps himself out of danger. This shows more brainpower than over half the voting population of the United States.

Unfortunately, it also plays right into my most recent suspicion that my mouse is way too, shall we say, large for my trap. In this case, it appears Einstein probably has a nickname: Fat Albert.

I shook the food from the center with a mixture of horror and admiration, and wondered if overdeveloped intelligence is a regional trait in mice. None of the New Hampshire rodents in recent memory had every pulled a stunt like this. Maybe they were simply country oafs, as opposed to my savvy city slicker, as no matter how many cousins they lost, they kept running into the steel jaws of no return. With resignation, I tried to remind myself that an effective trap should be arriving in the mail within a few days time. Then I stared at the cage and remembered all the personal situations in which I’ve stubbornly continued to go through something that could have easily been skirted through a little ingenuity. I hope there’s no law against killing something smarter than yourself.

**It appears our hero is facing a worthy adversary! Will she emerge victorious? Will help arrive in time? Will this be the end of our favorite American in France? Stay tuned . . .**

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Superhero Girl -Eve 6

It hit me, as these things do, at the worst possible time. About 7/8 of the way through the date, as I should have been concentrating on driving through the rain coming down in impenetrable sheets and just making it home alive. He was talking about his job, not that I heard a word of it. I remember wondering why he was even talking at all. The weather was atrocious and visibility was next to none; I have never gripped a steering wheel as tightly as I did that night, and concentrating over his stream of never-ending chatter was not easy. I guess, in retrospect, I should have just pulled over and made out with him or something, as the windows were already fogged up, but, at the time, I just wanted him to shut up and let me drive. And that’s when it hit me, a realization that drowned out the words, the music on the radio, and the rain: he hadn’t made me laugh, I mean really laugh, all night.

I fell in love with him in the seventh grade. It was that hopeless, unrequited love that defines the angst that is junior high. No, he wasn’t the captain of the basketball team, or the “cool boy,” or the class flirt, or anything superficial like that. I’m not sure he was any middle school superlative at all, except possibly Most Likely to Succeed. That’s right, I was the girl who, during the most awkward insecure period of anyone’s life, was brave enough to like the nerd, as they were called back then. Because he wasn’t one, not really; ridiculously smart – yes, a nerd - no. He was . . . out there. In one adjective: zany. And I couldn’t get enough of it. I woke up each morning, itching to talk to him and hear what he had to say. In the eight years since, no one has been able to make me laugh so hard. And I’m not sure anyone has ever shown me such kindness. I know everyone was gawky in middle school, but suffice to say, I broke the mold. Looking back on pictures I realize I wouldn’t even have been friends with myself back then, but he was. I’m not sure anyone ever forgets the first person who looks beyond the braces, baby fat, and bad hair to see someone worthwhile.

He said he knew me right away, the first time we saw each other again – that August Tuesday of the last week before I left for freshman year of college – after spending the lifetime that is your high school years separated by his decision to attend private school. I guess it shows that no matter how much personal reinventing you do, you can never really hide from your inner seventh grader.

We ran into each other again that Thanksgiving break, at the party of a mutual friend.
“You know,” my friend Meg reflected as we got into the car to go home that night, “I could totally see you and Dave getting together.”
“You could?” I feigned innocence.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding seriously, “I mean, you were both such nerds in middle school, but now it looks like you’ve both gotten over your awkward phases. It’s cute.” She flipped down the mirror in the visor and studied her reflection as I put the car in gear and wondered just how much honesty was really necessary to make a friendship work.

I guess I kind of imagined we could pick up right where we left off - as great friends - and go from there. I knew we had both, inevitably, changed, but I optimistically imagined that we had enough . . . something, to make it work. I thought I would be in love with him again in a matter of minutes. And I was, in some ways. Until the following August, when I realized that I, like Christina Ricci in my favorite mid-nineties movie, had fallen in love with a ghost.

Our first date, the following summer, was wonderful, my middle school dream come true. Getting ready, it felt like I had been transported back to 1997, about to go on my first date ever – I was that excited and that nervous. I think I saw the problems initially – the faltering connection, the forced conversation - but blamed it on first-date anxiety and pushed it into the back of my mind. When he took me in his arms at the end of the night and kissed me goodbye, I stopped worrying, and wondering, and simply let the seventh grade version of myself savor the realization of her dreams. The nerd had finally gotten the guy.

But we wouldn’t live happily ever after, as things only declined from there, and before I knew it I was driving home wondering why he couldn’t make me laugh anymore. And thinking about how it used to be a challenge NOT to listen to him and actually pay attention in Geometry class, and here I was, wishing the noise would just stop; and realizing that he just wasn’t the same person, no matter how much I wanted him to be. Somewhere along the lines, he had stopped being that boy with the sparkling eyes and incredible sense of humor and had grown into someone different. Someone who could have been, and actually was, a very nice person in and of himself, but someone who simply wasn’t the guy I had known and loved. I wished he had never gotten over his awkward stage.

It’s so hard to watch people change. I know it’s very Holden Caulfield of me (which indicates a whole host of additional problems) but wouldn’t it honestly be kind of nice if people really were like exhibits at the Natural History Museum and you could keep everyone exactly how you liked them? You would never have to watch your parents grow old, your friends become too cool for you, your siblings change into the people you’d always told them not to be.

I walked him to his front steps that night, to collect myself before driving the final miles home. When he opened the door, the outdoor lights shone in, illuminating his seventh grade class photo, which sat, framed, on a table in the hall. It was like seeing a picture of a friend who has died. Breath, words, everything simply caught in my throat and I turned and ran through the rain to the safety of my car, where I sat staring at the steering wheel, and into the past, for what felt like years, before slowly making my way home.

In some ways, I still can’t forgive him, his private high school, his preppy college, his pressuring family, for taking Dave away from me. I want to know how they let this happen and why they didn’t fight to stop it. Then I realize that there is probably someone out there who thinks the exact same thing about me. Someone who looks at what I am today and quietly, sadly, says to themselves, ‘that girl used to be so awesome, so out there, what happened?’ Someone who wishes I never got over my awkward stage. I wish I could find that person, to give them a hug, to tell them I’m so very sorry. But also to tell them not to worry, because I’m so happy, as who I am today.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: What You Wish For -Guster

Continued from 10/18:
**Armed with a trap that has sat, empty and ignored for two weeks, our hero begins to drop her guard. Attempting to capitalize on creative vibes, she finds herself wide awake and typing late one Thursday night, iBook on her lap and a cup of tea by her side. Suddenly, with lightening speed and a supersonic squeal, the mouse rears its ugly head . . .**

Jesus H. Christ. It’s two in the morning, every light in my apartment is on and I am sitting, RIGHT THERE, on the couch, yet the mouse is walking around like he owns the place. He’s very convincing, I’m beginning to think he does. I guess, in all fairness, he was there first. But this is not the time for that kind of logic, this is the time to focus on what is really important, namely the fact that I am here now. He catches sight of me and freezes. We stare each other down over the screen of my laptop, as if we were at the OK-Corral, as opposed to an apartment in southern France. He wiggles his nose cheekily at me, inspiring me into action – I leap (sort of) to my feet. What I was actually planning to do remains a mystery, even to me. I certainly wasn’t about to take the only two actions I was properly equipped for – throwing the iBook at him or running after him with hopes of scooping him up with my bare hands – but maybe I faked it well. The mouse took off, towards me, ironically, and disappeared into one of the many gaps between my undulating tomato-red floor and the walls.

Disgusted, I went and fetched the mousetrap, empty except for a bit of cheese, that had been sitting in the bedroom for weeks, and placed it in the living room.

The mouse was back within two minutes of my return to the couch. The guy had balls, I had to give him that. He skipped around the trap and started to climb the bookcase. Not cool. For lack of a better idea, I hit ‘play’ on my iTunes and Linkin Park’s “Crawling” blasted from the speakers at top volume. It was all very faux-ghetto of me, and I haven’t been able to meet my neighbor’s eyes since, but, at the time, it produced the desired effect. The mouse jumped about a foot in the air and hurried back down the nearest hole. Satisfied, I turned down the volume slightly, but kept the music on.

The mouse was back before long, as if he had found earplugs, and was scaling my bookcase again in no time. What was this? Was he tripping on something? I considered switching the mood-music to something by Ani Difranco, as many consider her far scarier than Linkin Park.

“Hey!” I shouted, always the mature one, “get in the trap!” The mouse blinked at me and did what appeared to be a little dance on my notebook. Wise ass.

“Don’t you smell the cheese?” I couldn’t believe I was talking to a mouse. Remembering where I was, I switched to French, hoping to overcome the language barrier, “get into the trap! I promise to take you to a nice park . . . or something.” The mouse and I looked at each other, then glanced at the trap, then back again.

“Yeah,” I conceded with a sigh. “I wouldn’t crawl into that thing either.” The trap was definitely lacking subtlety.

**Stumped, but determined not to be foiled by this new development, our hero races to her super-phone to seek advice from the kindly wise woman who raised her since birth and has dealt with many such worth adversaries . . .**

“Don’t you know anything?” she said when I explained my dilemma minutes later, perched on my chair with my feet on the desk as the mouse scurried around on the floor below. It was bigger than I remembered, which is probably a lesson in the fact that you shouldn’t judge size when, contact lens-less, your vision is approaching legally blind. Apparently Mom, I don’t, I wanted to say but bit my tongue.

“Cheese only works in cartoons,” she explained, making me feel, if possible, even younger and less competent, “we only use peanut butter at home. You know that.” Great, peanut butter was a foreign food here, I was going to be spending an arm and a leg for mouse bait.

“Well, okay, I’ll get some tomorrow,” I said, “but Mom it’s running around beneath my feet while I’m sitting in a lighted room, talking to you! What do I do about it now?” I’m not ashamed to say, I was far too creeped out to go to bed at that point. Who knew what it would do once it had chased me from the room – illegally download music on my computer, perhaps?

“Hmmm . . .” she thought, “shine a flashlight in it’s eyes.” Given the chance to advise, this woman could win the war on terror in about two minutes. And at the moment, she was my best consultant when being terrorized by a mouse.

“And for heaven’s sakes, pick up a REAL trap at the store!” she was referring to the inadequacy of the have-a-heart variety my program had provided for me. I never said my mother would end the war peacefully. “Do you need me to send you one?”

As I watched it scuttle onto my bookcase once again, I couldn’t help but wonder where I could adopt a cat.

**The fearsome enemy, having infiltrated our hero's headquarters, has our hero with her back against the wall! How will she escape the terrifying place that her own home has become? Stay tuned . . .**

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Crawling -Linkin Park

I sat there in shock, wondering if this was somebody's idea of a practical joke. It reminded me of the ancient Greeks and their belief that deities got pleasure out of descending to earth and meddling in the lives of us poor mortals. The more trouble they could cause, the better. I felt like a puppet on a string, being jerked around, and tears welled up in my eyes.

At that moment, when I had lost all hope, when I really felt broken, I was sitting on the TGV, one of the nicest trains in France, and the only train I'd successfully caught all day.

"Mi dispiace," began the man in the seat next to me, and I almost winced at the beautiful Italian language. I'd missed my most important train - from Milan, Italy, to Nice, France - while still in the land that possesses a true appreciation for pasta and pronounced vowels, and had had to re-book my trip and, essentially, save my own life with my beginner's grasp of Italian.

The man continued, as far as I could make out around his suffocating accent, to explain that he had been in the luggage compartment when I'd discovered my suitcase had been stolen at the Torino stop, and he was really sorry I had lost my things. Hearing the words pronounced out loud, after I hadn't even said them to myself during the entirety of my train-wide search, made the dire situation all the more real and I started to cry in every sense of the word.

"Do you want a coffee?" He asked me, while my shoulders shook and the whites of my eyes turned red. I couldn't help but wonder why he thought a coffee would help at this point. Did he think I wanted to be more awake in this kind of situation? And coffee in Italy, where they call it espresso, doesn't even have that warm-soothing drink appeal. My recommended dose of cough syrup is larger than what they serve as "coffee" on these trains.

"At this point," I responded in Italian that was even less recognizable than his, "I think I'd be better off with a beer." It was my sad attempt at a joke - my standby answer to every quasi-uncomfortable situation. Seeing as this was more uncomfortable than all my previous quasis combined, I felt it was appropriate. He smiled at me in a way that made me think he didn't get it.

"Okay, I'll buy you a beer." It was one of those few situations where it is okay to be desperate - and when he offered, I was desperate for kindness.

Minutes later, I was sitting beside him in the restaurant car, clutching the sweating can with my sweating palm and trying to stop myself from thinking, as it was making me unsocial. Not that he noticed. My mind drifted in and out of the conversation he was having with himself and my own spiraling thoughts. I couldn't tell if it was his unintelligible accent, the circumstances, or the beer that was making my head pound. The tickets in my purse were useless now and I was now headed to Chambery, not that I knew where that was. I didn't know how far the illegible Italian and official-looking stamp on my voided tickets would get me in frog-country. At this point, I didn't even know if the post-it note schedule I was clutching in my hand would really lead me to Aix-en-Provence like she had said.

"I work in Paris. That's where I am going now," he continued a thread I hadn't been listening to. I nodded vaguely, trying not to be rude but wondering why he felt the desire to talk so much to someone who couldn't understand him. With my suitcase gone and probably en route to some Italian black market, I started to mentally make a list of anything precious I could have lost. In truth, I pitied the poor desperate robber, but definitely less than I hated his guts. He was depriving me of clothes and personal items I valued, to sell them for nothing on the street. And he wasn't even going to make a profit. I cared about the things in that bag, but no one else would. Who would want the pants I'd owned since sophomore year in high school? I wasn't sure I did anymore. We're talking cerca fall 1999 - too old to be cool and too young to be retro. I'd bought them for a song back then, they couldn't fetch much now. Or my palm tree T-shirt my friend once referred to as the "gayest shirt ever" and I thought of as the "only piece of brown clothing I could wear without looking like a turd." Was someone really going to buy that on some sidewalk in Torino? I'd even questioned my judgment in TJ Maxx. At least there I'd known it was clean, if not cool. What about the bottle of perfume my high school best friend had bought for me the summer before we'd left for college? It didn't matter that we had since had a falling out - that was still my signature scent and every morning I would dab on "Nantucket Rose" and be transported back to that last carefree summer, when we had been blood sisters who had laughed till we cried and cried when we'd said good-bye. In the world's smallest bottle, it was the perfume equivalent to food coloring - one drop went a long way - and already partially emptied. I wondered if it would simply be thrown in the trash with my worn toothbrush, or sold to someone who wouldn't know they were holding a bottle of my memories.

"Yes, I work very hard, and I never see women. I have not been in love in thirty years." I nodded again, hollowly. The history of every item in that suitcase was flashing before my eyes. It was like watching a bus full of old friends crash and burn. My eyes were widening by the minute. It was definitely not a Bambi effect, unless Bambi was about to be hit by a Mac truck.

"How old are you?" I came to and drank more beer.
"20."
"Oh, that's funny. You look 18." My autopilot kicked in again and I nodded. My breath shortened - the shirt had been in that bag. The shirt he had given me. How was I going to explain that it had simply vanished into the Italian night? My head drooped as if it had become too heavy for my neck. I rested the cold aluminum can on my temple as I shook my head, to clear the internal fog, just in time to honestly answer his question: "have you ever been to Egypt?" Hoping for a distraction, I looked up. Why were we talking about Egypt?

"Where I am from, in Egypt," (ah hah) "the men don't dress like the French." Nice to know capris were out. "We wear long white gowns, down to here," he pointed to his ankle. Unable to think of an appropriate response to a man who had just confessed to wearing a dress, I nodded in a way that I hoped expressed the fact that I didn't find this in the least bit sexy, but was willing to be accepting of cultural differences. A dress . . . I had lost my cute black skirt, and the only pair of heels I had brought to France! Not that I ever really wore either item, but I was feeling materialistic at the time and the tears started building again.

I suddenly became aware of an expectant silence and looked up. Yeah, he was definitely waiting for an answer.

"Mi scusi," I mumbled and he repeated.
"Are you married?"
"Um, no." I thought he said I looked 18? Wasn't that a little young?

"Boyfriend?" I nodded, following the cardinal rule that you should always say yes to that sort of question. "How many?" Excuse me?
"One." Hi, do I look Mormon to you?

"You are very beautiful." Oh shit. You see, the truth is I am NOT a beautiful crier. I always thought it would be nice to cry delicately and elegantly like they do in movies, but that is not the case with me. Encouraged by my uncomfortable "grazie," he started repeating "bella, bella." Perhaps he thought we were on a street in Rome, where that kind of thing is socially acceptable. I averted my eyes, squelching the urge to scream 'what the fuck! Can you stop!?'

"Can I have your phone number?" I wrote down the first ten digits that popped into my head and wondered who would be lucky enough to receive that call.

"Will you come to Paris to visit me?" Uh, sure. His next request made no sense.

"Cosa?"
"Can I kiss you?" he repeated. And he made a face to go with it. No, I didn't know people really made kissy-faces anymore either. At that point, all my sad, stressed, beer-induced haze completely disappeared.
"NO."
"Just on the cheek?"
"No."
"How about on the hand?"
"No."
"Why not?" The tone was nastier. He was insulted.

"Because," I paused, and had a revelation. I was not a puppet, I did have a say, my fate was still my own. "Because I said so."

I stood up, threw my can in the trash, and walked away. I didn't look back to see he was following me, the truth was, I was afraid to turn around. My stop was called as I reached the nearest doorway and I stayed put, trying, and failing, to keep from showing how excruciatingly uncomfortable it was for me to stand there with him behind me. Another man, this one a true Italian who had helped me search high and low earlier, cut between us, a simple gesture for which I will be forever grateful. I was visibly shaking at this point, but he simply stood there. I think I love him for not touching me at that moment; he seemed to know that I needed to stand on my own.

He followed me to the schedules at the next station and waited until I turned around to address me.

"Are you going to be okay?" He asked me, and I wanted to look into those eyes forever. To say he was beautiful is putting it mildly. I took a deep breath, the kind that shakes in your chest after a good cry, and exhaled.

"Yes," I said, finally believing it myself.
"Do you need any money, cause I can give you some," he said earnestly. Again with those eyes.
"No, grazie," I smiled this time, becoming calmer with every word, "I have money."

"I know you lost your jacket," he tried again, "would you like mine?" I was touched. Money was one thing, but the shirt off his back? I tilted my head and looked up at him, wondering for a split second if I should take the jacket, and maybe hope for a phone number. I looked down at the sweater in my hands and realized that I didn't need it. The fact that he had offered was enough.

"I think I'll be fine," I said, no longer a broken girl, a puppet on a string.
"Mille grazie," I added as we went our separate ways, knowing that a thousand thank-yous really wasn't sufficient repayment for just how much he had helped me.

"Traveling light?" the woman with a kind smile asked me in French, a language I understood perfectly, as I stepped onto the next train, carrying only my purse and my sweater. I grinned ruefully, my spirit returning.
"I am now."

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: Last Train Home -Lostprophets

My dad, a basketball coach, both in profession and everyday life, always said that losing is a habit, and one that must never be started. I think that he meant it kind of snuck up on you and before you knew it, you were not only accepting the just-shys and second places, but almost congratulating yourself for them. The attitude became something like “well, at least we scored 50 points” instead of “we couldn’t keep the other team below 50.” In the mind of someone as competitive as my father, that’s not just missing the forest for the trees, that’s missing the whole goddamn planet because you were watching the moss grow between your toes.

Paradoxically, my father never told me not to settle, which just might be as equally poisonous and habit forming as losing. This doesn’t mean he wanted me to take anything less than the best, but he just didn’t see it the same way. He always thought that hard workers, which he had raised me to be, got what they deserved in the end. Very utopian of him, but you have to remember he came from the Larry Bird era, where if a white man couldn’t jump, he could certainly learn to shoot. It is still fascinating to me that my dad thought losing a game was a choice, but other decisions, like jobs, houses, and life partners, were made for us.

They say to pick your battles, only fight for what’s really important and compromise, or settle, on the rest. But when does that line become blurry? When, after years of taking the “almost perfect” house and the job that “pays the bills” and the car that’s “practically new,” do we start making a habit of accepting the second tier? Does it become a tendency to settle for less than what you want, and, more importantly, will it carry over into fields that “really matter?” How long before you’re saying “I do” to the “almost perfect” husband – Prince Kind-of-Charming.

At twenty, a year older than the age of my grandmother when she married her husband, I dated Mr. Perfect-on-Paper. He was older than me, probably smarter than me, and definitely more driven than me. He was photogenic, if not exactly good looking, amusing, if not exactly witty, and well-intentioned, if not exactly smooth. He was about to receive his masters degree from a well-know technical school and already had a very nice, well-paying job, which he’d chosen from among many attractive choices, lined up for the day after graduation. He was a sweet guy who took me out, paid for everything, and treated me right. We had a really good time together, but something just didn’t click. I think it probably came down to the fact that it is almost against my religion to date someone so practical. At an age where I still didn’t trust my parents to decide on a curfew, it seemed a little odd to be dating someone I could see them hand-selecting from a lineup.

I am a fan of the useless major, the blinding passion to do exactly what you want without looking over your shoulder to see what the rest of the world expects you to accomplish. He was lacking that enthusiasm; sometimes I thought he was lucky to have a pulse. “I like chemistry,” he used to say with an apathetic shrug. He didn’t understand why I thought one should feel the same way about their major and their career that he felt about his vintage hockey jersey.

When we called things off, I saved his contact information; unconsciously filing him away in the “maybe later” file. Who knew? A day might come, in ten or fifteen years, when I was ready to be practical too.

“I don’t know,” Meghan, the girl who has known me since I was crushing on the kid who sat next to me in seventh grade Geometry, advised after hearing the story. She picked at her cuticles while she said this, unable to really look me in the eye, a sure sign she was about to say something she almost didn’t want me to hear. “Maybe you should go back and try and work things out with him. I mean, he’s a real keeper, hun, someone who’s going somewhere. He’s the type you marry.” I wondered vaguely if she had heard a single word I had just said – the list of things that just weren’t right. Did she really think it was that hopeless, that I was going to have to settle? At 20?

When does “he’s a really nice guy” become more important than “he makes my heart pound, my teeth chatter, and my stomach tie itself in knots?” When do we stop chasing the butterflies and kissing the guys who make us feel ready to throw up (in the very best way possible)? Is it an attitude we acquire after going to the college our parents picked out for us (even though we hated it), majoring in something “useful” (even though it was boring), and buying the first car we can afford (even though it smells)? You can settle for some things, but not your soul mate. The tricky part is, knowing enough to keep the two categories separate.

“You know, James and I are talking about marriage already,” Meg began, taking my pensive silence as a signal that she could steer the conversation back to herself. I choked on my peppermint tea, which, after that statement, seemed inappropriately nonalcoholic, and realized I was having a thirty-something’s conversation ten years too early. She went on to say he was a nice guy, from a good wealthy family, who could make her happy. It was apparent she had almost convinced herself, but I was never an easy sell. I could still remember the first conversation we’d ever had about him – when she’d admitted to a lack of initial attraction. As I dabbed at the spots on my shirt, I asked myself what she was settling for.

I went home that day and erased his number from my cell phone once and for all. In ten or fifteen years, maybe I would be single, maybe I would be poor, maybe I would even be lonely, but I knew I would still not be ready to settle.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Fixing Her Hair -Ani DiFranco

**When we first find our hero, she is well on her way, thanks to her enhanced powers of adaptation, to adjusting to life in southern France. On this particular Wednesday, she faces an early wake up call and the looming prospect of stepping on a scale during her first visit to the French doctor. But, as she sleepily stumbles for the bathroom, little does she know what bigger challenges await, just around the corner . . .**

I was cut off on the way to the bathroom. Unbelievable. I don’t even have a roommate, and someone is still beating me to the shower. Except . . . it seems that someone has a tail. I resisted shrieking, but still jumped in the air as the mouse ran by, it’s tail brushing against my big toe. Ug. That wouldn’t be a happy occurrence at two in the afternoon on a normal day, much less 6:30 in the morning the day I have to be weighed. It could have had the decency to wait until I’d at least put in my contacts. Actually, maybe it was more humane this way. At least it removed my desire to eat breakfast and add water weight to what was sure to be a daunting number.

I am a hearty New Hampshire girl who has co-habitated with mice for as long as she can remember, however, I have also always associated the existence of mice with the presence of traps and, faced with the former in a foreign country, didn’t even know where to begin to get the latter. So, en route to the doctor’s that same morning, I approached my program director, one Mme Germain, with hopes of ascertaining the whereabouts of a mouse trap. I was secretly terrified such things didn’t exist in France. After all, they all had little dogs and cats to do their mouse-trapping for them, right?

Me: I have a mouse in my apartment.
Mme Germain: Really? (as if this were a curiosity) A little one?
I guess size does matter (why, I’m still not sure). Maybe she thinks I might not actually know what a mouse is. I could be living with a pack of wolves, thinking they‘re about the same size as the mice I see at Disneyland. Actually, when I saw the mouse this morning, I was thinking about how small it is. Compared to the mice in my NH home, this was quite the pipsqueak. Then I thought to myself – “you’re in the city now hun, the big ones are called rats.”

Mme Germain: Have you seen it?
Why is she asking me that? Does she often have students coming to her with imaginary mouse problems? Does she think I need attention that badly?

Mme Germain: They really are cute aren’t they?
Well, I guess. Maybe it would be cute in someone else’s house, but running across my feet at 6:30 this morning made it lose all it’s cute potential. And I think she’s missing the point – it’s a problem, not a pet.

Mme Germain: But I suppose you don’t want a whole family of them.
No, actually I don’t even want to think about the damage I fear one might be doing to my things, let alone the possibility of it breeding. If I have to have a mouse in my house, I want it to be single. Misery loves company and all. At this point in the conversation, I’m wondering if she’s ever going to offer a solution, or if my fears were correct and she’s just going to tell me to go pick up a stray cat.

Mme Germain: (sighs) I think we’ll have to kill it.
Now she’s speaking my language!

Mme Germain: The sell poison for this sort of thing.
For a second I misunderstood her and thought she said poisson (French for fish) instead of poison, and was sitting there thinking “what good is a fish going to do? I was expecting a cat, but what can I do with a fish!?” But it didn’t take long for things to clear up and apparently someone will come to my house and put down poison. Now I’m left wondering what is worse – live mice running about, or finding little dead mouse bodies all over the place each morning (or maybe NOT finding them . . .). My apartment could become a real pet cemetery.

Mme Germain: Now you have to be careful, you can’t eat it. The poison I mean.
Does that mean the dead mice are in the clear? Can I eat them? This is, once again, begging the question – what kind of person does she think I am? Who eats rat poison?

**Always tenacious, our hero follows up her bus-ride conversation with a phone call to a higher power to confirm the appointment with the exterminator . . .**

Mme Sparrow: Oh no dear, Mme Germain is a very cruel woman, we’re not going to poison your poor little mouse! I will get you a trap, a little cage, that the mouse can crawl into and you can set it free. Won’t that be better? Don’t you worry, we’ll have it for you by Monday!
And with that, she sent Mme Germain out on a mission to comb the city of Aix for have-a-heart mousetrap, which they presented to me in two days time.

Mme Germain: Now, just put a bit of cheese in the bottom and the mouse should crawl right in and not be able to escape. Then you can go let it out in your garden!
She smiles at this lovely little scene in her head, apparently forgetting that I don’t, despite what has apparently become popular belief, have a garden.

**Armed with her new secret weapon, will our hero easily vanquish this enemy and move on to the next challenge? Or is there more to this mouse than meets the eye? Stay tuned . . .**

Current Mood: Heroic
Current Music: French radio

Now that they've let us in the country and placed us in their university, the French government has decided to make sure none of us Americans have brought over any nasty diseases. With a backwards system like this, it's really no surprise that the cattle in this country are a little crazy.

So off we went, herded onto a bus and carted to Marseille, the nearby "big city" where doctors would obviously be better prepared to handle things like a group of twenty American women. And that they were. The clinic we went to apparently specializes in this kind of thing - foreigners, I mean, not necessarily groups of twenty women - as our chaperoning teacher was the only French person in the waiting room. Yeah, I felt bad for her too, can you imagine having to sit there while 20 people go through a physical? Luckily for her, this facility had an assembly-line approach to health care. It was kind of like waiting in line at the deli - each of us had a number and we were off. First, into the little room for the world's fastest eye-test. No messing around here, two letters per eye, straight to the top row. Very do-or-die. I was a little concerned I'd mess up the name of the letter - say it in Spanish or something - and be pronounced blind. Then I'd have to go through the whole nasty process of explaining that "no, I'm not blind, just stupid . . ." to a nurse whose face indicated that my very existence had already ruined her day. Height and weight were next, neither making the least bit of sense to any of us because of this newfangled system they call metric. I don't think it's so bad, I can now walk around pretending I weigh 60 pounds, as no one actually ever told me the units.

From this stop, it was back to the waiting room with us, where we, once again, listened for our number. When they finally reached 16, I was beckoned through a neon green door with an ominous radiation sign on the front. In what is, essentially, a mudroom, the male nurse told me to lock the door and take off my shirt. Um, excuse me? He went into the main room and I having no real choice, nor better option, did as I was told. And after all, a bra's not such a big deal. A handcrafted sign scotch-taped to the door showed a crude drawing of a female chest with the words "torse nue." I stood there pondering whether this meant the bra would have to go too, or if this was some kind of child pornography (as in, drawn by one). Hey, I was at the doctor's in France, after all. If I was reading visual cues correctly, this was going to be a topless procedure, but the man had expressly said "remove your shirt and jewelry" with no reference to underwear. Hmmm . . . it was quite the toss-up. I mean, how embarrassing would it be to have completely stripped down without being asked? It would be like, he opens the door and . . . surprise!

Instead, he opened the door and . . . I was still mid-internal debate. "Take off your bra," he said in broken English, as if I was purposefully being difficult. Maybe in French culture, the command 'take off your shirt' includes the removal of the bra. Or maybe I just haven't had enough sex to associate the two yet. He was very polite about the whole nudity thing, probably the first French man who has made a show of not checking me out. I guess, when you see as many tits as this guy does everyday, another set just isn't a big deal (and dude, he must think he found the best job on the market). I got a chest x-ray without any further problems, trying not to think about the fact that he was probably rating me on a scale of one to ten and comparing me with all the other racks he'd seen that day. The day my program comes to the office must be like his second Christmas.

Once I was dressed again, I went through a speed-visit with a real doctor.
"Any medications, any diseases in the family, x-rays look good, okay take off your shirt." Not again! I complied and reached my hand around to my bra clasp - I was learning.

"Oh no," she stopped me, "you can keep that on." They need to do some serious work on standardization in this office.

All in all, it was a very successful trip to the doctor's. It is the first time I've left a medical office feeling calm in almost two years. You have to understand that every time I visit Health Services at my college, they always give me two possible explanations for my problem - one is always life threatening, and the other always requires two advil and an extra hour of sleep. The first time, I limped out there on a foot that couldn't bear weight and was told I'd have to come back because one couldn't be sick or injured outside of the office hours, from 8-4 on weekdays. When I returned, the examination yielded two possibilities:
"Well," she announced, "you've either pulled a muscle in your foot, or have broken the bone in two or three places." That narrowed the field a bit, but they couldn't be bothered to get more specific.

The next time I showed up with a two-month old cough and was given equally vague options:
"Well, you either have post nasal drip, a common side effect to a runny nose, or tuberculosis."

Compared with those kind of diagnoses, chest x-rays and kilogram scales were a walk in the park.

By the time all twenty of us had shown our chests to the world, in more ways than one, the length of the visit had surpassed three hours and I wouldn't be able to make it back in time for my class, which was a real shame. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm thinking we should make these topless field trips a weekly event - for the sake of our health, of course. That, and the fact that the x-ray technician was pretty cute.

Current Mood: embarrassed

It’s funny how we see things the way we want to. How our interpretations of events and occurrences are almost entirely dependent on our emotional involvement. They weren’t kidding when they coined the idea of rose-colored glasses, add a little pink and everything takes on a greater, more optimistic, meaning.

How many times have you heard, or maybe even said, that something was a “sign?” That because your horoscope said today was auspicious, or he was wearing a blue shirt, or the sun was shining, it was a sure indication that things were on the up and up and that the relationship was meant to be. Maybe it’s the constant presence of some lingering insecurity that makes us continue to seek that seal of approval from another source – a friend, a relative, a higher power.

Did anyone ever notice how these “signs” only pop in and out of existence around people you’re interested in? That creepy guy with the nose drops was wearing a blue shirt this morning on the bus too, and you’re not scurrying off to tell your girlfriends all about the deeper significance of that. Maybe it’s because we’re paying attention that we only see the signs with certain people. Or maybe these signs don’t exists at all, unless we want to see them, unless we put on the rose-colored glasses.

I received an email this morning from a ghost from my past, in more ways than one. Raphael, aside from being the name of my all-time favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a fact I once saw as a very good sign, was a one-date-wonder from spring semester of sophomore year, doomed to be remember as the boy for whom I stained my favorite pink sneakers. It isn’t really important how we met, but the initial attraction was the fact that he spoke French better than he spoke English, which worked out perfectly for me. Raphael was, at the time, a grad student at Harvard, working towards his masters in Math. He is the type who will never truly leave school – the incomprehensible academic who will follow his passion for the third and fourth dimension to the ends of the Earth. And he’s already got a great start; German born and raised, Raphael chose to go to college at the Université de Provence in southern France before coming to Harvard for his graduate studies. After a week and a half of exchanging long French emails, he told me he thought I could be a writer. I softened, and agreed to meet him for coffee on a rainy Sunday afternoon. It had been a bad weekend and I’d worn my cute pink sneakers to cheer myself up and bring good luck, like putting rose-colored glasses on my feet. But, of course, it rained – a slow, grey Boston drizzle – and the fabric has never been the same since.

The minute I saw him coming through the crowds at Harvard Square, I knew it would never work out. At moments like that, I always reflect on my misfortune at having been raised too well, because I can never bring myself to capitalize on those last few uncertain seconds and flee, or at least pretend I have no idea who he's talking about. I think part of my problem is that I always hope I’m wrong, and it will work out. Deep down, I have a great fear of running away from my handsome prince simply because he looks like a beast.

After two hours at Finale, over a chocolate cake that really wasn’t worth it, I knew my intuition wasn’t mistaken. Really, it all came down to the pants. As he got up to go to the bathroom before we left, I was faced with the universal truth I had seen from the very beginning: sure he was nice, but I simply couldn’t date a man who wore tighter pants than I. It may sound shallow, but you have to draw a line somewhere, or before you know it you’re dating a man in capris and that’s just plain awkward.

I looked down at my pink sneakers, wet and dirty beneath the damp cuffs of my jeans. It was funny because they had worked, in a way. Raphael had seen them and commented about how cool they were – and the look in his eyes told me he was in danger of falling in love with someone wild enough to wear pink shoes on a first date. The sneakers simply didn’t look the same to me – they looked ordinary, even ugly with the watermarks and splashes of mud. I saw them as a sign that it was over.

At first I tried to cool things off between us – write less often and less substantially – but when he asked me out again I knew I was in trouble. So I let him down gently, with a kind “oh, so sorry, I’m busy . . .” and then with emails that slowly trickled to a halt. I thought he had eventually gotten the hint.

Until today, when I received a short note that brought everything back. As Raphael was an alum of the university I now attend, we had talked a great deal about Aix, the town and the school, the semester I was deciding to come to France. After being one of the many happy testimonials that made up the backbone of my decision to come to here, it seems Raphael has now joined the thongs of former Aixois who have found their way back to this city. The reason he had emailed me was to say that he had acquired a teaching position at Aix-Marseille and we were now in the same town again.

If it had been anyone else, anyone for whom I felt the slightest affinity, or any fragment of that heart-stopping flutteriness that makes you always think “maybe . . .” I would have viewed this turn of events as a sign from God, or whichever higher power in whom I was currently placing my faith. How could it not be? Not only did Raphael and I end up studying together in the greater Boston area, we now found ourselves in the same region of France only one year later.

If it had been Chris, the beautiful basketball player I’d never stopped crushing on, a situation like this would’ve sent me reeling. Considering that I took the fact that he was thinking of playing professional basketball in Italy this year (hey, same continent, right?) as divine intervention, if he ever told me he was living/working in Aix, I’d be picking out china and names for the children.

But this is Raphael, German and awkward, forever associated with tight jeans and ruined sneakers, and so it is merely a geographical coincidence in my mind, not a sign of things meant to be, that we are thrown together here, half a world away from the first place we met.

Maybe such “signs” don’t even exist at all. Maybe they are simply creations of the imagination, figments of hope. Looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. In this case, it seems the rosiness of my spectacles has washed away in the brown New England rain. I can’t create my own “signs” anymore. Or maybe I simply wouldn’t know one if it appeared in my inbox.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Clumsy - Our Lady Peace

“The town is beautiful, the apartments are beautiful, the university . . . well, it’s a little ‘ghetto.’”

I scoffed at that description the first time I heard it, sitting in the French House, listening to alumnae recount their experiences while studying abroad with the program in Aix-en-Provence. How typical of a private liberal arts college, immediately classifying the large, public institution that is the University of Provence: Aix-Marseille, as “ghetto” just because it didn’t have the same polish we enjoyed at school here in the states. I mentally dropped the girls into the “spoiled private-school girl” box in my head and assumed the University couldn’t be that bad. After all, I had gone to a public high school, I could do “ghetto.”

I was still feeling confident the next year, en route to my first visit to la fac (abbreviation for la Faculte des Lettres, the French term for college). The path there was a twisting sidewalk lined with cars, but it’s not like a parking crunch was a new concept to me. The fact that some had chosen to deal with the insufficient space by parking ON the sidewalk was, but I was willing to accept it with an open mind.

I started to assume I was getting close to higher education when the amount of graffiti along the side of the road started to increase exponentially. It isn’t pretty graffiti, the kind that doubles as art, but the bare bones “this is what I have to say” kind that seems to whine at you from its black-on-concrete existence. There is no flair to this kind of message. The interesting thing about this particular graffiti is it’s international flavor – there are messages in all different languages, not just French. I was struck by the amount of Spanish in particular, and could almost hear my father’s voice saying it “figured.” My father would also think it was the work of the Mexicans, despite the fact that I was in Europe. Even what was written in French was all slang, so it might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense it made to me.

“I just don’t get it,” mused Sharon, as we stared at one wall that contained the giant bubble letters S, A, L, and T, “why would they write ‘salt’ on the wall?”
“Well, I think that blue thing is actually a dash between the L and the T,” I hypothesized, “so I think might actually say ‘sal-t.’” Sharon just looked at me.
“yeah,” she said, “cause that makes SO much more sense!”

One piece I could understand read “USA= Etats Stupides d’Amerique!” (Stupid States of America). I wanted to leave the writer a little flower-shaped post-it note next to his art, in a gentle reminder that “etats” didn’t start with U.

But the graffiti was just the tip of the ghetto iceberg. As I went along, I was soon surrounded by peeling posters advertising everything from a Hoobastank concert in Marseille to “Merde!” (the French word for “shit”) written with a giant, yellow McDonald’s M. I had to admit, that was something I had never seen before at my public high school. All the posters formed a six-inch ring around the giant stone pillars that seemed to have been erected for this purpose, rather than an attempt at artsy decoration. In the areas where the top poster had been ripped away, the inner layers were exposed like the rotting insides of a dying tree – leafy grey layers of decomposing paper.

The coup de resistance is the underground tunnel that takes you under the train tracks and onto the university grounds – it is wallpapered with posters and decorated with graffiti on top of that. It looks like a room in some tacky house that hasn’t made it past 1979 and the age of all-too-stimulating wallpaper and never recovered from an encounter with five-year old artists who had managed to find the crayons. It reminded me of the underpass to the Marches aux Puces (flea markets) in Paris, and I instinctively put a hand on my bag, expecting men to materialize from the walls, asking me to buy cheap jewelry and key chains in the shape of the Eiffel Tower.

After all of that, one would think the inside of the university would be anticlimactic, but no, it lives up to expectations in grand form. First of all, it’s filthy. It’s not the dirt of everyday use, but the dirt that has accumulated over years and found it’s way into the foundation of the structure so that cleaning at this point could threaten to bring the whole building to the ground. The table tops are black with grime from millions of fingers. I spilled water on one, cause I’m smooth like that, and when I wiped it up, a new color shone through. All it took was a little water. In a city of a thousand fountains, one would think they could spare a few gallons to rinse the tables.

There are bars on the ground-floor windows and a metal safety net is suspended above them. At first I didn’t know what this was for, but when I saw that students had not only thrown trash - like coke cans and discarded paper – into this net, but entire metal desks and chairs, I understood the necessity. I was struck with the morbidly comical thought that someone had to have been squashed by a falling chair before the net was put up.

The graffiti, predictably, is not limited to the streets, and the walls, tables, chairs, doors and everything else within the university is marked in some fashion. The dirt and destruction gets steadily worse as you climb to upper levels, giving the school the impression that it has been cleaned by a midget who could not reach high enough.

I felt like a “spoiled private school girl” myself the first time I sat down at a table, horrified and afraid to touch the stained surface covered with so many messages by so many generations. I hadn’t seen writing on a table in years. That sort of thing did not happen at my college. We had bought that table, why would we write on it?

I didn’t expect great things from the bathrooms, I wasn’t that naïve. But a little toilet paper, maybe even a toilet seat, would have been nice.

I realize that part of the cleanliness problem stems from the larger issue that 22,000 students are currently attending this school in a building constructed for 8,000. The University of Provence is that pot-bellied, middle aged man, straining, tugging, and holding his breath while trying to squeeze into his college jeans. Even when he “succeeds” and the fly is buttoned closed, we all know it’s just the illusion of a fit and we’re all waiting for it to pop. As the new, foreign student taking a seat in overcrowded classes, I feel like that one extra cheese doodle that threatens to offset the entire delicate balance.

Climbing down the stairs at the end of my first day of classes, I passed a fellow student, casually smoking his cigarette while leaning against a “Defense de fumer” (no smoking) sign. Apparently, literacy is not a criteria for graduating from high school. Thinking back on the measures taken to keep kids from smoking in my high school’s bathrooms, which were equally well-labeled, I realized that the French didn’t have the monopoly on this problem.

“So how is the school?” my mother asked over the phone after my first day.
“Well,” I said, still feeling shell-shocked. “It’s a little ghetto.”

Current Mood: shocked
Current Music: Welcome to the Jungle

There are many different ways to experience a new place, but one of the best is running. When you run in a new location, you cease to be a tourist, or a newcomer, or a resident, you are simply one with the road, the air, the things you pass along the way. There is a kind of exchange that takes place when you run somewhere new – you show her your pain, your sweat, and your soul, and she, in turn, shows you hers.

I went running through Aix-en-Provence today and saw a different side of her. After I ducked across le Cours Mirabeau, dodging the tourists and students and throngs of people out to shop, eat, or stroll, I continued down some less populated streets to Le Parc Jourdan, finding the true heart of the city when I left the geographical one behind. I opened the small metal gate and let myself into the park. As I jogged down the main path, my eye was caught by the scene to my left. There, in the courts constructed for this purpose, were between twenty and thirty older men playing Boules, also called Bocci in the United States and Italy. The strong southern sunlight filtered through the trees to catch the silver highlights in their hair and create the illusion of dust rising off of their faded shirts and pants, creating an effect every cinematographer dreams of. They looked like they had just stepped out of an old photograph and were still shaking the sepia tone off their clothing. They were intent on their game, leaning on tall chairs, trees, and each other’s shoulders, watching with unbroken concentration as one man rolled the balls towards one another. I could hear the whisper of idle conversation and bets being placed, and feel the tension of competition. These men met and played often. This was a game for pride, the most coveted prize of all. I’d always heard that Boules was a game of southern France, but never knew it until that moment.

I passed the Boules courts and into the next area of the park, where a giant fountain squirted twenty-foot jets of water into the air. The wind was blowing in one direction, so puddles had begun spreading on that side, outside of the pool of water. I chose a wide loop, avoiding the puddles and the worst of the spray. An old French man cackled at me and asked why I was avoiding the water, while I smiled indulgently. Giving runners a hard time is a universal tradition. It’s a custom that transcends cultural boundaries. No matter where we run, people have to make fun of us, because they can.

After the fountain, I found the main area of the park, which was smaller than I’d expected or would’ve liked so I attempted to amuse myself by circling the same green space as many different ways as possible. The people in the park read, kissed fervently (which reminded me of Paris), or watched the world go by. I was the only one who ran. Not being with Karen, I felt no need to break landspeed records nor complete a marathon, so I chose a leisurely pace which allowed me to look around and observe the people I was passing (over and over and over again). It seemed to suit the region of Provence, where no one ever seems to be in a hurry to do anything.

One of my loops took me outside the fenced-in green space and I got a little turned around when attempting to find my way back in. Completely unfazed, I was about to head back the way I came in when a woman driving by rolled down her window, unprompted, and stopped to give me the directions to the park that I hadn’t even asked for. I was embarrassed about having appeared so lost, when I wasn’t, and amazed that she hadn’t needed to be asked to want to help me out.

When I found the entrance she had directed me to, I fell in step behind a class of first-graders, possibly being walked home from school. I ran through the crowd and they all immediately, to the dismay of their chaperone, began to run after me - in their school-dresses, nearly empty backpacks, and Mary Janes. I was the Pied Piper, leading the children out of Hamlin, the army of giggling, joyful kids close at my heels. They raced me to the end of the stretch, where I continued straight ahead and they resumed their original path to the left. It was the best kind of company for thirty seconds because running with them, I couldn’t help but smile.

On the way home I passed another runner (the first I’d seen all day) heading in the opposite direction, presumably to the park I had just left. He nodded in passing, a runner’s acknowledgement. I wondered if he was new to town, like I am, and if he too was off to see the real Aix for the very first time.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

Two days in Paris and I already knew that Sunday is my favorite day of the week. Almost all of the shops close down and the French people really take advantage of the excuse to take the day off. I took a walk my first Sunday in Paris that lead me all over the city - from the Jardins de Luxembourg to the banks of the Seine - and saw Parisians all over the place, enjoy the beautiful weather. Granted, with the sunshine and perfect temperature, the day was ideal for passing outside, but I've never seen Americans, let alone city dwelling Americans, taking advantage of this kind of thing. Everywhere I went, people were just sitting outdoors, enjoying a book, a cup of coffee and cigarette, or each other's company. The parks and gardens were filled with people sprawled on the grass - napping , talking, reading - dressed in everything from shorts and t-shirts to skirts and button-down shirts. Along the river, the sides of which provided a great deal of space for the local people to sit down or lie down and absorb some vitamin D. There was even a long stretch where countless men were laying on towels, truly sunbathing in their speedos (this is France, after all). I found out later this is what is called "la plage a Paris" (the beach in Paris). Apparently the Parisians decided that the lack of ocean should not discourage them from having a beach within their city, so they created one. On Sundays during the summer, part of the banks of the Seine become "la plage," where everyone is invited to go and enjoy the beach experience in the midst of the bustling city. Odd? Definitely. But you have to respect their intentions. Maybe that's what every city is secretly lacking, whether they know it or not - a beach.

It was so refreshing to see everyone out and about enjoying the terrific weather and day off from work. In America, it feels like we dedicate all of our free time to something like the television or the movie theatre. No one gets out there and spends hours at a table outside of a streetside café or lounging on the grass, just because they can. American weekends are filled with shopping and time spent indoors. I used to get weird looks for choosing to sit out in Ashulot park, in Keene, just because the sun was out and I'd rather read my book on an outdoor bench than inside Starbucks. But I feel like, on a Sunday at least, the French would have understood. Sunday is like a vacation to them - a chance to escape the commercial, everyday world. The weekend edition of French newspapers comes out of Saturday, not Sunday, an idiosyncrasy I always found bizarre when studying the French Press at an American university. But, being here, it seems to make sense. Reading about the sadness in the world would be wasting a Sunday. People bring their favorite book to the park instead. It's a day of true escapism. Even workers who would be expected to work the weekend in America (employees of food service or retail) are given the day off to enjoy. And believe me, the inconvenience of not having the same selection of stores and cafes is made immeasurably better by the visual proof that these people are really making the most of their time spent not serving me. How can you complain about not being able to get your favorite crepe when you know the girl who makes it is sitting with her boyfriend in the Jardins de Luxembourg?

Maybe it's the historically Catholic part of the French that inspires them to take the seventh day off to enjoy God's world. Whatever the reason, I'm a fan. After all, who isn't into the idea of a weekly, 24-hour vacation? Maybe that's what every person is secretly missing, whether they know it or not.

Current Mood: mellow

Kissing on the cheek, now there is an outdated, archaic tradition that seriously needs to go the way of the covered wagon. I mean what does it even mean anyways? It must be the single, most confusing kiss on the planet. Think about it, a kiss to any other anatomical location has a clearly defined meaning. Does anyone go home at night thinking “gee, I wonder what he really meant by that kiss on the lips?” That’s what I thought. But the cheeks are these zones of mystery and speculation – the kissing equivalent to the black hole.

For example, I kiss my great-aunt on the cheek when I say goodbye. I kiss my closest girl friends on the cheek once and a while. I also kiss the guy I’m hoping to initiate a relationship with on the exact same place, hoping he’ll take a hint. The feelings I have for those people in my life are nothing alike, especially when you consider my relationship with my great-aunt. Her I kiss on the cheek as a sort of tradition and recompense for years of birthday and Christmas checks, a way to say ‘thank you’ in something other than words. The kiss given to the guy is loaded with a very different meaning – something closer to the idea of ‘take me upstairs and ravish me, preferably employing chocolate sauce and whip cream!’ That’s quite the spectrum right there. One kiss can’t possibly be expected to mean all that, it would explode.

But this treacherous kiss becomes even more so when you consider the physical confusion that could arise – emotional limbo aside. Despite the fact that the cheeks are arguable the majority of the face, one would be amazed at how easy they are to miss. One slight inclination or turn of the head and the entire intention is thrown irreversibly off kilter. If the person suddenly turns to face you, you could end up kissing them full on the mouth, which is saying something you had no intention of saying. That can get a little awkward if your girl (space) friend thinks you’re attempting to eliminate that space. Yet if they turn the other way, you may suddenly find yourself with a mouthful of ear, or hair, or sometimes neck – all of which are just plain awkward for both parties. With so many dangerous mis-hits in close proximity, attempting a cheek kiss is simply way more trouble then it’s worth.
And when you really think about it, not only are you risking sending a completely wrong message but, if your aim is true, the message that gets through is completely garbled and impossible to understand – kind of like a cell phone conversation in the Monadnock region. It’s a lose-lose. The system is inherently flawed. So, let’s throw in the towel and give up this kiss. Potential lovers will kiss on the hand and relatives will kiss on the forehead, and everything will become remarkably clearer. Trust me.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Kiss Me - Sixpence None the Richer

While talking to my friend Brad last night, I was introduced to the most curious concept – dating strategies. Maybe I’m out of the loop, or old-fashioned, or just plain stupid but I’d never given much thought to formulating a battle plan for getting the guy. I’ve always trusted to fate, checked my horoscope with obsessive regularity, and attempted to put myself in a position to ensure crash casualty will act with favorable results. This is not to say that I am the girl who sits quietly in the corner, hoping that the breeze created by her fluttering eyelashes will cause him to turn her way and catch her eye. I go after what I want, but apparently in a disorganized, random fashion that could be at the heart of my lack of luck in love. And as I sit here considering this, all I can wonder is why was this kept from me?

According to Brad, he met his newest girlfriend, Amanda, while attempting to “do the friends thing.” When this last part mystified me, he explained that he was still in the “friend stage” of his modus operates. Apparently, there is a method to his madness. When Brad decides he likes a girl, he follows a specific pattern when he goes about doing something about these feelings.

“I usually try to become good friends with the girl, so I can really get to know her,” he spelled out, “then I work on convincing her that I would be the best boyfriend ever. If that is going well, then I’ll make a move.” So maybe this isn’t the most original attack plan in the universe, but who is actually aware of this kind of repetitive behavior and can outline the different stages with ease that says this isn’t the first time they’ve thought this up? His facility with the idea of a recipe for romantic success threw me for a loop, but also got me thinking. Does everyone do this kind of thing? Am I the only one who feels it’s perfectly acceptable to pursue someone helter-skelter? I mean, isn’t everyone different, necessitating a unique approach to winning affection each time? And how can anyone be so organized about something as random as love? I’ll admit to having thought up and executed small-time battle plans, but they were more like skirmishes. My personal favorite is the whole “oh I really want to go see [insert movie title here] don’t you? (hint hint) we should go see it together . . .” I don’t think it’s won me any great military victories, but it’s the only romantic scheming I can think of doing.

The thing is, as crazy as his ideas sound, Brad has a great track record – I have to give it to him, the boy gets the girl. Impressive, considering he’s not a looker. So maybe there really is something to this strategy business. Perhaps I should sit down, look back over my notes from my past relationships, identify a successful pattern of behavior, and apply it to every future situation. Does that seem like an awful lot of work to anyone else?

And talk about romance being dead in this generation! Where’s the heart-pounding excitement in “stage one: become friends?” Where’s the thrill of the crush, of the chase, when you’re working on planting seeds like “exhibit A as to why I’d be a great girlfriend?” Doesn’t that just seem manipulative? It reminds me of a political campaign, with all the platforms, planks, and false promises. “Date me because I’m reliable, loyal and unlike Jane, I’ll let you drive my Mustang convertible when we go out together. Pick Kate: the intelligent choice.” I feel like, in so many ways, you’re getting the person to like the show you’re putting on, not the person you really are. And the dishonesty of being friends with someone just to accomplish the end of dating them. If you want to date someone, be upfront and ask them out, don’t beat around the friendship bush. Honesty is the best policy right? Apparently not, it would seem that a finely tuned strategy is much more efficient. Who knew?

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Lovefool - The Cranberries