A Letter To My Parents

Dear Mom and Dad,

I gave you so much sass/attitude/anger/awkwardness/poop/work in the time it has taken me to get here, where I only am because you didn't let that keep you from loving me. It has taken me existing on my own an ocean away with the skills and values you put in my heart and mind through sheer laughter, time-outs, tears, sending me to college, throwing carrots around our kitchen, smacking our legs out from under our legs with a pillow until we broke the bed, and massive house-wide water-fights to understand how much I've been given. It is because of you that I am a person I am proud and thankful to call your daughter. I love you both so much.

Love,

Bug

This is my equipment for plugging in anything from the United States. Note the hair-tie.

Bathroom

Métamorphose (or "Good Morning Franz")

Naomi awoke from a night of fitful sleep to find that she had turned into a giant bug. Scared and a little bit hungry, lying on her back, she wiggled her many legs in the air and listened to the sound of her high-pitched whine. She bucked and wobbled, grabbing the air with her dozen hooked toes, her middle left foot just managing to lift a piece of damp wallpaper.

            Finally exhausted, she stopped. She clutched the small square, wishing she could use it as a tissue until she realized she wasn’t crying. In fact everything seemed so ridiculous that Naomi couldn’t help but laugh a buzzing beetle laugh. She remained still, remembering hearing of this happening before. She imagined a huge beetle named Gregor knocking at her window, munching a rotting apple he’d pulled from his hip. “Better come with me.” He clicks, offering her a bite and two hooks, “I know how this ends.” Would this have happened if you’d not made it through the Iron Curtain? She hums. Gregor turns away to hide his misty eyes, and in a strangled buzz replies “Why would you say something like that?”

            She takes his hooks and rolls onto her weight, accepting his bite of apple as she peers into the nightmarish hole in his exoskeleton. Naked joints slip by one another in slick black gore than runs un-corked down his leg and her pink bedroom wall. Small hairs of mold left by the apple circle it all like tinsel. Curious, she tastes the liquid now at her feet and the morbid spice sends her screaming to the ceiling. Gregor’s laugh pops and cracks as he trains his milky eyes on her. He cooes until she slowly stops shaking and crawls down to him.

            Some hours later, when Naomi’s mother came home, she found her daughter no longer able to speak. She would try violently, a screech in her throat, to scale her bedroom wall whenever her mother or father or brothers came near. She would tear open her fingers on the bare cement after she’d removed the remaining wallpaper.

            The morning they wrapped her in a blanket and took her away, her mother picked up a rotten apple core from under the desk and threw it out the window. 

What I've Learned From French People

Was the question I was asking myself on my way home from my new friend Adrian’s house. After my classes let out and after my friend Brendan and I spend half an hour watching our friend Clara do hand-stands, I was en route to the bike rack when I happened to laugh at this one guy (Adrian)’s shirt because it said something to the effect of “The Rice Krispies told me to.” Noticing, he walked over and talked to me a bit about Méli-Mélo (the on-campus international group) and different events in rapid parisian French. He offered to show me what turned out to be an ice-skating rink ON CAMPUS I’d had no idea about where apparently a famous ice-skater from Poitiers revisits all the time. “All the time” as in “this particular week”. Like right now.

Then we were biking again. It wasn’t clear to me whether we were going to my house or his, but we were headed towards Buxerolles, which was comforting. When we hit a stoplight and both of us went different directions, I whirled around and asked him what was up. He invited me to his house “real fast” and I stalled. On the one hand I had just spent the last 2 days in a sick fevery scarf-tangled mess at my house, missing school and the free events downtown. However, on the other hand I have never been one to necessarily put personal safety over adventure. So we biked the remaining tiny distance (turns out we’re almost neighbors) to his apartment.

There I was given water, a stack of comic books, and a comprehensive list of French radio stations/ podcasts by a guy who turns out used to act in Paris but who is also fluent in LSF (French sign language) and wants to work (as I understand it) as an interpreter. I sat, drank, read, watched, and listened for roughly 3 hours before I said “Je dois partir, j’ai faim!” (I gotta take off, I’m hungry!) at which point he stuck his head out of the kitchen and asked “Tu veux pesto?”

Pesto.

And hour later, after 3 helpings of the pesto rice he made us, I finally left. Adrian is another wonderful piece of evidence that I am, as my friend Mikey once told me, absolutely where I should be, doing what I should be doing. And less “me-related” he is just one of those “excellent people.”

When I arrived home, my host mother surprised me with a red journal/sketchbook as a “just cuz” present. Later, when I was celebrating today with a helping of my 80¢ tub of chocolate ice cream, Odile came up next to me and dribbled chocolate syrup on top. I wish I believed in reincarnation because her and Yanna would come back as mythical beasts with powers of telekinesis, flight, teleportation, transfiguration, lazer-vision, ice-palms, and always the exact change for everything they want in their pockets.

Période Glaciare, my first french graphic novel. Post-apocalyptic archaeologists try and piece together our society upon discovering the Louvre.

After Histoire de l'art et Architecture Grec

I address my thoughts this way to

Diffuse the tangled netting of grammar

And understanding that holds my English

Brain to the floor and licks the

Toes of my mind. The glacial pace of

Comprehension takes no pains

in humbling my cocky college self as it

Shoves my head into the troph

of knowledge where I learn that languages are

big and that it’s very hard to breath under

water. Often I wonder what I look like through

this growing window in the language barrier.

Do I seem nice? Am I anything like I think?

The window peers at my feet, sized 40 here, a

View of how I shuffle when I’m nervous,

which is luckily less than most. I hope that if I feed it

the blood that drips from throwing myself

into the fan, it will grow into a lovely set of

French doors, and the neighbors will lend me

A key just before I break a pane so that

I may walk and talk, polite but colloquial,

With the natives who have enough beautiful

Rubble to ignore.

Un Poème D'amour À Le Futur Simple

Je connait l’imparfait

je suis ‘gressive à subjunctif

je pense que le passé composé

soit un peu O.K.

Mais je t’aime futur simple

ma grammaire adorable

les finis sont sucre

si j’étais lucre

je t’acheterais une voiture

parce que tu es mon amour.

How I Learned French Geography

I still don't know French geography

France Deux

Mouche

It’s a good day. Nice and sunny. I can do anything. So sunny. It’s a good day. Whoop! Little breeze there. Hummmmm. Hum. Hummmm. Getting kinda windy. Still a good day. Cloud. Dammit cloud go away! Shoulder’s a little sore. That’s O.K. What’s that? Whatsthatwhatsthatwhatsthatwhatsthatwhatsthat?

Warmer. No sun here though. O.K. day. What’s that? Person! Personpersonpersonperson, Food. I think there’s food. I’m pretty sure there’s food. There has to be food. Where’s the food? Hum. Hum. Hum. I hate that watery sound people make. Irritating. Stupid. Swatting. Swatting is stupid too. Hummmmm. Something smells. I taste something. Hummmm……..FOOD! foodfoodfoodfood. Wantwantwant. Foodwantfoodwantfoodfoodwant.

AH! HUM! Swatting is so stupid! Fine. Window? Ouch. Window? Ouch. Window?! Ouch! Window?! Window?! I see sun! Where’s window?! Ah! Hum! Hum! Window? Ouch! Hum! Window? Ouch! Bad day! Horrible day! The worst day! I hate today! Window?! Ouch!

O.K. sit tight. Just sit for a second. Calm.

WINDOW!?! WHAT THE FUCK! WINDOW?! OUCH!!!!

Sit. Sit. Shit. Sit. Calm down. You’re O.K. Food? Maybe. Hummmm……Bah! Person! Stop swatting! Today sucks! Sit. Sun gone. Sitsitsit. Kind of cold. Window? Wiiiiiiind-ooooooow? Ouch. So tired. Ouch. Really really tired.

Ouch.

One French Minute

September 11, 2011

I have tried at least a half -dozen times to write down how I feel about 9/11 as an American spending this significant cultural anniversary abroad. I couldn’t decide if I should write about how the world has changed, or how my life has changed, or how I feel about the whole damn thing. I still can’t. Everything I try to commit to this post is simultaneously too big to write down and too small to really express the mixture of pride and grief in my heart.

Being so far away has been tough, especially as French media does not shy away from recognizing today with the same footage that irritated me so much as a 9 year old in southern California when it played on every station for 3 days. Watching the mixture of human calamity in that footage 10 years later, the fear that would turn into sadness, anger, compassion, love, and emptiness, transcends nationalism and puts me face to face with this fucking kaleidescope of human experience. We are so alone, and at times we can feel so alone that it surprises us when our solitude is interrupted by events of togetherness, whether it’s a tragedy or case of love that draws us back into the ensemble of human beings.

This is way too wordy.

All 9/11 has taught me is that horrible things happen and 10 years is not too far away to cry about it. However, not only is it not an excuse, but it is a license to love has hard as I can for as long as I can because people are fucking beautiful monsters.

In Lyon I....

*Navigated myself across the country with minimal help from strangers. It matters not that SNCF is relatively idiot-proof, France is now my bitch.

Lesson#1 Apparently infants no longer get to freeload off their hardworking mothers in these tough financial times, but rather earn their keep as living line-spot holders. I turned around at one point to check for my 12-25 card in my backpack and saw that the mother that had been accompanying the baby carriage (equipt with baby) behind me had vanished. The only thing I could come up with was “ummmm………?” A few minutes later, just as I had come to terms with the fact that I was now going to have to raise this child (I’d picked the name “Gus”) the mother returned and hopped back in line.

Miss you Gus.

*Spent several hours over a couple days in Le Musée des Beaux Arts

Lesson#2 Turns out, armed with a photo student I.D., one can gain not only free admission to nearly all the museums in France, but also free audio guides. Awesome awesome awesome aweseome!

*OWNED at air hockey

Lesson#3 I get really competitive when it comes to air hockey

*Walked around the old old old streets of Lyon all night with my friend Josh from Poitiers

Lesson#4 One should watch the natives to successfully avoid being arrested. I spent the first two days regretting not jumping into the fountain of Lady Liberty next to the Musée des Beaux Arts, which I had held myself back from doing because I thought it would be a bigger legal tangle than I was prepared for. After coming out of the museum one day, I saw a battalion of young people covered in shaving cream dancing in the fountain. I decided I was in the clear. That night, walking with Josh, we sat on the lip of the fountain as I took off my belt and boots feeling my resolve being to eb. After minutes sitting there putting it off, a group of drunk locals serendipitously stumbled by and dared me. The rest of the night squelching around in a wet dress was exactly what the doctor ordered.

*Went to Mass

Lesson#5 All those Disney castles I’ve been seeing here in France actually serve one hell of a function. Every 8^th of September the Cardinal and the Mayor of Lyon come together at this special mass and give talks. Makes for a very crowded church in a 64% Catholic country.

Lesson#6 The 8th of September is also the independence day of Brazil. Coincidence?!?!

Probably.

In France, Even Feet Are Fancy

As a woman from Oregon equipt with a perfectly adequate set of getaway sticks I walk everywhere I’m not biking when I need to get around Poitiers. Poitiers is a pint-sized town compared to it’s big brothers and sisters like Lyon and Paris so walking from downtown to the little ‘burb of Bruxerolles where I live has never really occurred to me as a problem after my initial attempt.

My third day in France, the day of the bazarre, I decided to give walking from our house to centre ville a shot. I asked Yanna how long she thought it would take and she responded with the most genuinely horrified look I may have ever seen.

“Non non non, c’est trop loin! Essaie pas!” No no no, it’s way too far! Don’t try!

Feeling nervous but assuring her I wouldn’t die, I hit the bricks. Half an hour later I was standing in front of the Notre Damme de la Grande, which is an old church that marks the dead center of downtown.

Too far? FALSE!

Furthermore, as I operate under the belief that Poitiers rearranges itself whenever I turn around for a sec, I am often asking the locals for directions. Whenever I ask any French person the direction to Bruxerolles from anywhere, even from WITHIN Bruxerolles, I get the same horrified look and a “Yeah it’s there, but really really far.”

After 2 weeks of qualitative data as the result of being perpetually lost, I’ve come to the conclusion that to the French, if it’s more than an 8 minute walk, why on earth would you even try it?

However, goofy as it may seem to someone raised, for the most part, entirely on the west coast of the United States, it cannot be said that the French are being particularly persnickety. They do afterall have killer shoes in every sense of the word. And even though I’m comfortable clubbing in either Jedi-boots or tennis shoes, it’s only because I’ve emotionally figured out how to be OK with having my feet outshined and my wallet 200 euros fatter in my (possibly neurotic) narrow-eyed suspicion of the cost-worthiness of a bus pass.

And all those well-dressed people usually follow up their warnings with ride offers. At the end of the day, French people (maybe just people in general) are just really really nice.

A word on French driving: Medians here do not have the ridiculous purpose of posing a physical barrier between you and other lanes, but rather, are stepstools covered in trees, benches, bikes and people from which one can better watch oncoming traffic from the comfort of one’s vehicle.

Don’t ask me, I’m the crazy girl that walks.

In France, Pokémon Read The News

As I was running around trying to make chocolate chip cookies out of bread yeast and a chocolate bar, Yanna plopped herself down in front of the toob and started watching cartoons with headphones. Because of this, all I could hear was the hum of my own panic and the news program on the radio my host mother had turned on earlier. Add all this together (panic+news+cartoons) and you get a stressed-out american who doesn’t think it’s at all weird that Pikachu is talking about Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged rape.

I have complete confidence in Squirtle’s background as a journalist.

Cookies turned out to be the bastard children of chocolate chip cookies, which in no way keeps me from feeling LIKE A GOD!

The Most Brazilian Thing I've Ever Heard

Paulo, Carol (my new Brazilian friends) and I were having drinks the other afternoon in the plaza next to L’Hôtel de Ville when, in response to something I’d said, Paolo turned to me and said: “Without enthusiasm, reality is just reality.”

It’s one of those things that get’s permanently lodged in one’s heart.

My favorite word is also now the Portuguese word for “moon”

“Lua”

Goodnight lua.

I Hit A Car With My Body

Biking home with my neighbor friend Byron, like we do, a European jillapi of a van pulled up next to me. Thinking nothing of it I kept on a-pedalin’ when all of a sudden the van began to melt into my lane and turn right in front of me, cutting me off. As it turns out, my right break doesn’t work very well and all I could see was the cigarette the driver ashed on my tire as I careened into the side of the van.

I emerged without a scratch but a little more skittish on the road. Lesson learned.

The van was also fine.

Earlier in the week, the same friend Byron gave me a bus pass when I couldn’t find mine. Thinking I was being hilarious I made him a note that said: “I.O.U. 1 billet. Merci!”

When he got home, it apparently fell out of his backpack and square on the welcome mat at his host mother’s house. Not knowing what “I.O.U.” meant, she immediately assumed it was a gang note and called the police. Byron arrived home after school to a freaked-out host mother on the phone with a friend.

France loves me.

Notes From French School

You Can't Spell "s'asseoir" Without "ass"

Today I went to get my french cell phone with my Portable French Culture Navigating Device (PFCND) which only I have and which looks a lot like a 14 year old french girl named Yanna. As I was waiting to become french person #06 35 90 27 24, I tried to ask the lady if I could sit down in the chair in front of me when I realized I hadn’t learned the verb “to sit.” My PFCND was texting a friend and had figured out the whole phone situation so far so I didn’t want to pester her any further than I already had.

So I stood.

Learning a language through immersion has been a host of things, mainly a lesson in appreciation for the nuts and bolts that go into our ability to function on a daily basis. Trying to stammer through what everyone around you can do as easily as they breath is hard.

Like…..hard.

BUT! This is the way this kind of thing happens. There is an unlimited amount of “je suis désolé”s and the term “fluency” is a daily reminder to go with the flow.

Everything is temporary.

Heavy……..yikes!

The French Drink Boxed Wine

We were just eating crêpes for dinner with the T.V. on when a comercial of a hedgehog having some downright enviable sex with a sponge came on. Then we had dessert.

Today was my first day of French school which consisted mainly of me signing so many documents that I am suspicious that the French government now owns everything I hold dear. Gulp.

HOWEVER! I could never dreamt up a more diverse and interesting group of people to bite my fingers with. Super proud of my dear peers.

Anyone Who Says Anything Bad About The French is Gonna Get a Knuckle Sandwich

Today an old woman at the bazarre gave me 6 beautiful hardcover french classics for free because in crappy French I told her I was an American student.

Two days ago I went to my first soirée with all the professors at the University. I was the only english speaker. My 14 year old host sister and best friend here reached up and patted my shoulder at one point as I was hugging the wall and said “Iz O.K., ve know you are crazy”

I got hit on by my first french native, who was a dude dragging a gigantic stick down the streets of Poitiers.

See title.

Virgule. When one cannot communicate, one draws the pets of 14 year olds to win their affections.

Haggling for a Fake Book When Shit Gets Real

So my third real day in France and every day things are getting easier. For realz. My goal is to one day write what has been going on in this house with Virgule the cat, the world’s best 14 year old and a meal that would make women far stronger than I weep fat tears.

Today there is a hug bazarre in my neighborhood and my host sister thought I’d be fine manning the table myself for a while. While nothing catastrophic happened I found myself inexpicably apologizing to anyone who LOOKED like they were about to fire off some speedy french in my direction.

Further proof that only the cool kids go to France.

Later, wandering the tables that sold everything from VHS tapes of Scooby-Doo to horses, I came across a Fake Book (in English) which I haggled from 10 euros down to 7 IN FRENCH. Walking away with my prize I had one of those moments where I realized what I am doing is not crazy and the lines of what I can and cannot do got that much blurrier.

I also bought a 123 year old book (unbeknownst to me) for 1 euro. Fuck yeah? Fuck yeah.

My Favorite People in New York

The old security guard at the Met who told me the secret spot I could stand to see the two Chagall paintings they have, even though the gallery was closed.

Alda and Eileen, the two chatty grandmothers who sat next to me during Hair and wished me luck on my trip.

The driver of the first cab I’ve ever hailed who moved here at 25 from Indonesia and wasn’t scared because if you only have to be scared if you commit crimes. He also felt strongly that his subway navigation to the JFK International Airport was far better than those written on a piece of paper left for me on the breakfast table which I clutched as tightly as my passport.

Dumpling Man

The team of strangers who guided me, handing my sweaty, dehydrated self with my humongous duffle and wildly swinging video camera off between them through the subway.

The earthquake in Virginia that shook New Yorkers into looking up perplexed and going “Whoa.”

The old woman who yelled my question into her husband’s ear who then wrote the answer in the air because he had just come from the dentist.

Jullian, the French musician who asked if what I was writing right now were lyrics to a song.

It's Time To Check In

I woke up yesterday morning hung over and still tasting orange juice to an email from one Delta airlines whose subject read “It’s Time To Check In Naomi!”. I simultaneously reacted in two ways, reaction A being: “NnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnuhIdontwannaaaa!!!!!!” and reaction B being: “Yes. It is time to check in Naomi.”

I am writing this from gate D9 in Portland International Airport. I have just successfully navigated the precious bundle of my personhood through checking my bag AND security AND finding the right gate which I have never done without my twin sister Ray. Bring it Salt Lake City/Kansas City/New York City. Especially New York City.

Sincerely,

Feeling Like A Big Kid

Geneology

For the last couple months I have let my developing, pretentious, liberal-arts-collegiate mind stew in the notion and presumption that the reason I feel so restless is due to the fact that white people have no culture. I was so stinking proud of my idea.

Earlier today I got to see my 84 year old grandparents at my aunt’s house before I go to France and they go back to Kona. I’ve been working at my Aunt’s house all summer and sometimes, when I’m tip-toed on a stool painting a bathroom, or when she’s holding the ladder for me as I wash the upstairs windows she will begin to tell me about her recent findings into our family history, of which she is the sole scholar. Today at the breakfast table I suggested that she show us what she’s found recently. She ran upstairs, and came back with a few big file boxes and plopped them on the table. My auntie Jan, Captain Jack, Tutu, and I began to flip through a big black photo album that had belonged to my grandpa’s mother. “This is why you always put names and dates on pictures!” said my Aunt exasperatedly, “We only know who 10% of these people are!”

“Look at this here kiddo” said Captain Jack, holding up a black and yellow photo of a man and a woman in front of an old car, “That there is a Model T. My uncle sold it to my brother Billy for guess what? Ten dollars! With how the gas tank was set up you’d lose power going up hills so you’d have to drive the thing up backwards!”

I turned to a picture of a young man leaning forward in a suit, the way superheros do in movie posters. “Is this you Grandpa?!” I asked, he said “Yup!”

“Look at that hair.” added Tutu, ”I just loved that black black hair.”

She then held up a black and white photo of a tiny blonde girl that looked identical to my cousin Christina. “Thats me!” The girl was standing out in front of a shed in what I was later told was Sweden in the dead of winter. During a drive earlier this summer my Auntie Jan had told me the story of the death of my grandmother’s grandmother, my great-great-grandmother. She had died in late fall in Sweden and the ground was too frozen solid to permit any sort of grave-digging. They had instead laid Granny on a table in the wood shed behind the house to wait until the ground softened in spring. Auntie Jan said that Tutu has memories of looking through the slits between the wooden walls and seeing her frozen-solid grandmother and asking why she wasn’t coming inside to eat with them.

As we got deeper and deeper into the photos and the two older generations at the table began to sink into their stories and ask questions of one another, I started feel the proud supports of my young convictions snap apart. I saw pictures of the warship that my grandfather had served on in the Korean War, that had turned two years into a lifetime of repeated stories. The same ship was later used as target-practice for nuclear weapons testing. I was steeped in baby pictures, heavy skirted women, frozen grandmothers and backwards driving cars. My family has come from all over the globe and we are returning from whence we came, we always have and we always will. I may not feel any less restless and I may have to come up with new ideas.

But I have a culture.

From the Secretary's Desk

In my first day of what would become a two day career as a legal assistant (secretary) I was doing a lot of filing. The type of filing that involves verifying that everything is in alphabetical order because what I can screw up has already been screwed up. As I was flipping through the manilla tabs and maroon legal folders, the part of my brain not diligently memorizing the first four letters of every last name was actually reading each of the names and swimming through who I thought they could be.

A little background: The office (which I started calling "our office" in my head) does a lot of what is called "Elder Law" which is basically what it sounds like. Geoff Barnhardt, attourney at law, specializes in setting up what is going to happen as someone is aging, what happens as they're dying, and where all their stuff goes. There were 4 file cabinets towers with cases labeled "Open" and roughly 15 cabinets labeled "Closed". I filed all of them. I went through names that made me laugh, names that were entirely consonants, names that were the same as some of my friends, names that I wish I had, names that were entirely vowels. One name made me pause. Fingering the "S"s I hit a folder that said: "Skye, Remember".

Before yesterday I had never even seen a will and now I've touched several hundred. Her file was in an "Open" cabinet and that made me feel good, I hope she's doing well.