I recently came off a two-week break. During the first week I spent four days heading conversation workshops in a high school in Mulhouse. I woke up at 5:30, took a shower, and made myself breakfast before trekking down the snowy sidewalks to the train station as the sun rose. At the same time every morning the streetlamps flicker a few seconds for no apparent reason — it makes me think of some sort of plot device in a Rupert-bear detective story. I actually am extremely fond of pre-dawn mornings — going out into the chilly wet darkness, when nobody else is around and the sky is a lightening grey. This feeling is undoubtedly the reason that church camp counselors wake the kids up early to go pray on the top of the mountain as the sun rises. The freshness and oddness of being made to wake up at an unusual time adds to the effect as well. And afterward, you have the entire day ahead of you and the promise of a good night’s sleep at the end of it, plus you’ve already showered and everything! Of course, it’s easy to sing the praises of early mornings now — talk to me again at 5:31am. Or after I’ve held a nine-to-five for a few months.
It was very snowy and cold the whole time, and all told I walked about an hour to an hour and a half each way in my commute to the high school in Mulhouse, so I bundled up in a lot more layers that I usually wear for my twenty-second commute to the Altkirch high school. It was nice to have a new batch of students to teach, since it meant I could ask all my old questions over again. “Tell me about a sport. Tell me about music. What are your hobbies?” One bizarre thing about these students was that three of them had a childish, borderline-autistic habit of not acknowledging me. Usually (almost universally), even if a student doesn’t know an answer or chooses not to answer, she will make some sort of nonverbal acknowledgement of the question, or at least of my attention — students automatically change their demeanor when they realize they have become the center of the instructor’s attention. With these students in Mulhouse, it was like they didn’t hear me at all. Whatever they were doing before I addressed them (usually staring into space, or looking at their fingers, or something comparable), they continued doing, as if they hadn’t heard me at all. Their eyes and face didn’t register any change at all. It was strange and disconcerting — I’d get the hysterical, surreal sense that they didn’t hear me, or that I actually hadn’t said anything to them and had only imagined it. They weren’t being purposefully subversive or disrespectful either — when they finally answered they were friendly, eager, and not unintelligent. Then when they stopped talking they slipped right back into this semi-conscious cocoon, and when I asked follow-up questions the whole process would start all over again. Strange, right? Either way, I was paid well for my time. This works toward solving the plane-ticket-home-or-six-hundred-dollars-worth-of-cocaine dilemma that’s been plaguing me — I certainly can‘t have both (yet), but the possibility of a satisfying compromise seems more feasible now. (Just kidding, Mom and future employers).
Then I chilled out for the rest of the week before spending the second week with my grandparents in Hilsenheim — chilling out some more. (Chilling for a bit, which seemed so appealing when I chose the title of my blog, has lost a large quantity of its charm from overuse). The only interesting thing I remember happening in the time between my teaching gig and my visiting the grandparents was the neighbor’s cat coming to play with me as I went out one evening to go grocery shopping. I crouched down and let it come on my lap, and I showered it with carresses and murmured love-words to it — “Pretty pretty kitty titty — chaircat of the pretty kitty committee!! Pretty itty bitty kitty. Precious! Precious!! Precious, precious kitty!!” After I finally got rid of it I discovered by the light of the streetlamps that it had tracked pawprints all over the front of my pants — I clapped them off as well I could, to spare the checkout-ladies at the Super-U from any uncomfortable conjectures they might otherwise have formed. But I’ll tell you something strange: though the cat betrayed me, I loved it all the more for its betrayal. Such is the nature of love.
In Hilsenheim, I watched a lot of German carnival coverage (in German) — it’s like Mobile Mardi Gras minus the beads, plus confetti and bunting, and with more people in masks, and more marching people in costumes supplementing the floats. Then I watched a lot of the Olympics. Some of those Alpine skiers had terrific falls — it reminds me of the folk-wisdom that people only watch Nascar for the crashes. Those people should just watch skiing — I’m surprised those women aren’t dead. One thing was especially shameful — a French skier just tumped over for no apparent reason within two seconds of the start of her run. But I’ll tell you what: those female skiers are the most wholesome, corn-fed women I’ve ever seen. I could imagine Magdalena Neuner with her hair tied up in a bandana, sweeping the mud out of her papa’s farmhouse after a flood.
And I lied about all that narrative stuff: of course there are some lifelong narratives one never escapes. The two defining ones for me are (1) my arrow-straight trajectory toward death and (2) my generally-improving grasp of the French language. Let’s leave aside the former for now in favor of the latter. I’d say that my grasp of French has, after many months at a plateau, started improving rapidly. Suddenly (it seems) my vocabulary has improved quantifiably and my grammar has become much more fluent and complex. For instance, I used the word “en” unconsciously for the first time recently — my uncle asked me if I had a return ticket from Sélestat, and I said without thinking, “Je dois en acheter” (I need to buy one). I guess that doesn’t sound very impressive. Also, I’m reading La vie est ailleurs (the author-reviewed French version of Life is Elsewhere) straight through without any problem — that would have been inconcievable five months, or probably even two months, ago. Further, I find myself pleasure-reading my Micro Robert dictionary, and then incorporating seamlessly the expressions I’ve taught myself into conversation. Look out Spanish, here I eventually come!
Came to my senses & I chilled for a bit 