3.4 Alexander’s life takes an invigorating turn for the dangerous, and thank God

I have been tormented for the past several months by a cloying fear that I will, without warning, pitch over and literally die of ennui. Such a death would not be unprecedented, and I figure that if there is one person in the world it could happen to, it would be me. Imagine my surprise, then, at two recent brushes with death that had nothing to do with ennui whatsoever. (This is my narrative, and I can couch it in whatever terms I want.)

ALEXANDER NEARLY DROWNS, OR MIGHT HAVE CAUGHT A CHILL OR SOMETHING

As I want to have my teeth checked whilst I still have amazing insurance, I was forced to navigate the bureaucratic death-trap that is the French healthcare system. I’ll spare you all the specifcs (though I’ve since resolved to carry an RIB with me at all times, since you can’t so much as use a public restroom in France without presenting one), but I will recount the second time I visited the insurance office.

The office is way, way on the other side of town, in an area I never visit. The first time I went, I caught a ride with a post office van (different story). But I didn’t have my Carnet de Famille or something, so I had to go back again, but this time I had to walk. So I set off one hot sunny morning to trek the several miles to the office. I had to be back at school by 2pm for a class, so I was in a hurry, and grumpy because I had eaten an unsatisfying meal in a rush to give myself enough time to run my goddamn errand. But as I tramped on down the hills in the hot sun, I realized with a mounting dread that, when I arrived, the offices would probably be closed. (1) It was a Monday, and French offices are sometimes closed on Mondays (2) I would arrive 12:30ish, smack-dab in the middle of the excessive French lunch break.

Despite my increasing teleological despair, and the growing certainty that my effort would be futile, I kept schlepping. And as I walked, I was thinking “My life right at this moment is something right out of the type of short story people don’t write anymore.” So I started musing how the story would end if written by writers of different nationalities. Russian: I would arrive at the office, and it would be open, but I would be shot for no good reason. American: I would behold the closed office with my wind-scoured face, battered but not broken (I would always have the land). I think I had an English one too, but I’ve forgotten it now.

Anyway, I take the wrong road and see that the office complex is on the other side of a long field. So I cross the field to discover what I thought was a ditch is actually the Ill River. There are no bridges within sight, and I am literally across the river from the office complex, so I wade across!! How zany, right? Me and my friends have so much random fun! Except that the Ill was colder, faster, deeper, rockier and more slippery than I thought it would be, and I nearly fell over about half a dozen times. Doing so would have ruined all the paperwork in my backpack, thwarting my plans indefinitely, but whatever: live fast, die pretty. It also caused me to hallucinate a long-dead lover, not that that’s any of your business.

Anyway, I wait for my feet to dry, put my shoes back on, and go to the office, and the story ended up having a French ending after all: I was told that I still couldn’t sign up because I hadn’t brought an RIB, even though I had specifically asked if I needed an RIB the last time and I had been assured twice over it was not necessary.

OKAY THAT WASN’T TOO INTERESTING BUT THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY KIND OF FRIGHTENING

Growing up I thought I just didn’t like shrimp, but toward late high school and college I realized the unpleasant sensation I felt in my mouth wasn’t a bad taste but discomfort: my palate started itching, and my throat, while not swelling, became kind of flabby-feeling.

Neither of these are the worst things in the world, and I used to eat shrimp dishes if I thought it would be rude to refuse. (Oh thanks for cooking this wonderful food but I may or may not be kind of allergic to shrimp so why don’t you just throw it all into the trash can.)

The last time that happened was three years ago, and my mouth itched a bit. So a little while ago I was in Mulhouse at an assistant party, and there was shrimp scampi. Boy was I hungry, so I picked out the shrimp and ate the pasta. Aaaaaaaand my throat swoll so much that I had trouble breathing (not major, but still). When I talked I sounded roughly the way people do when they’ve had all four quadrants anesthetized at the dentist’s.

Don’t worry guys though I totally drank some tea and recovered! NICE TRY ANGELS

But Alex we only wanted to show you Heaven

God damn you Angels, I don’t want to see heaven

Oh no, it’s such a beautiful place, we just know you’d love it

What menaces you are, what jackals! Leave me be!

It’s the most beautiful place imaginable. Wouldn’t you like to see it, only for a few seconds? Just a few short seconds, and we’d bring you back, we promise

No Angels, I know your tricks!

You are too precious and too beautiful for this world, Alex. Come with us to heaven. Warm our cold wings with your brisk hands.

Gross, Angels!

EAT THE SCAMPI

[Also I’m from Bayou La Batre, Alabama. From Bayou la Batre and allergic to shrimp. What a world this is, right?]

3.3 February Vacation Adventures

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!