That one week in October

Lyrics: "I don't want it all, all I need is a little bit" - Madeleine Peyroux

I arrived in Paris towards the end of October, despite having had the original intention of arriving here at the beginning of September. Having missed several events I was really anticipating, such as a grape-stomping and a famous horse race, I hit the ground running and tried to make this city my new home. At home, I was welcomed by the roommates with open arms while I searched for an apartment closer to the center of the city. David slept on the couch for close to three weeks so that I could have his room, which I believed I have thanked him for to the point of irritating him. I began work the day after my arrival and was shocked to discover that I work about a skip and hop away from the Arc de Triomphe. Yes, correct, off of the Champs-Elysees, pretty much the epitome of tourism and Parisian wealth. Upon walking out of the metro stop, I was visually assaulted by the largest Louis Vuitton store I could imagine [the flagship]. No exaggeration, the 7 or 8 storied building made me feel like the apocalypse was coming, heralded by an invasion of ugly little brown bags.

I got over the location [probably desirable for most, but somewhat distasteful for me] when I actually got to my office and found that the people I would be working for/with were incredibly refreshing, lively, and international. My direct team consists of Sean, who is from London, Brendan, from New Zealand, and Mia, from Serbia. Officially I am an Assistant-Account Executive, working on Brand Management, and my client is IBM. On my very first day, Brendan sent out an email to all of the Brand Management people across Europe, introducing me as the “new member of their team,” an email to which, the heads of these accounts across Europe, actually replied. And thus, the first [of many] times I called our agencies in London, Frankfurt, Rome, or Moscow, I was greeted by excited and friendly “Hello Natalia, how are you!?” In other words, it would not be an exaggeration for me to say that it was great. Because it would be somewhat unprofessional to discuss what I do at work in detail in such a public forum, I will leave it at that.

Within my first week I realized that I do like advertising, at least enough to look into it more. This is partly driven by my interest in cross-cultural psychology, which is very relevant to the field, and by my desire to do pro-bono advertising work. More so than just donating to a charity or sympathizing from across the ocean, I would rather actually participate in something that could drastically help, for example, an immunization campaign in Cambodia, or encourage HIV testing across South Africa. This will come in time, obviously, and has absolutely nothing to do with the launching of IBM’s new campaign in the first quarter of 2008.

Sidenote: my lunches have been delicious. Seemingly random little cafes around my work have led me to discover absolutely mouth-watering sandwiches. I also appreciate that portions here are smaller, so I can feel guilt-less in having a daily dessert!

In addition, I love the commute, despite the fact that getting from the center of Paris to Bourg-la-Reine takes over an hour. I absolutely relish the time I get to spend on the train, watching strangers begin or end their day, listening to Madeleine Peyroux , Buddy Guy, or Yann Tiersen and setting their movements and expressions to music that only I can hear. I feel like an accomplice of both the dawning day and the closing evening - both welcoming and releasing people, escorting them for part of their journey to work, their families, friends, or lonely apartments. It is a gift, to be granted this kind of observation, and I do my best to neither overlook nor underestimate it.

The roommates took me out for drinks on Tuesday and I discovered that for non-students, going out on a weeknight is actually feasible. Once over this pleasant surprise, I had a great time. Then on Thursday [my 5th day in the city], we went dancing for Nina’s birthday. The place is part restaurant, part dance club, and 15 Euros gets you a meal, unlimited champagne for an hour, and entrance to the dancing area. The great aspect of this is that it is specifically labeled as an “After work” activity, meaning that it starts at 7pm and ends at around 1am, giving everyone plenty of beauty sleep before the workday. It was fun to dance again, and with such a large group of people.

On Saturday, Nina, Heike, and I went to Café Universel, which is a small jazz café with no admission charge and live music. The performance was legitimately inspiring, and as I swayed and tapped to the rhythms of jazz, I wondered where these little places are in Cambridge and how come I had not visited more of them. The girls’ night out was great, sipping wine and listening to a great singer. I started to feel more at home in this city. Thomas then picked me up and we headed off to a party on a boat [not a boat party, but a party on a boat, because the host actually lives on a stationary boat on the Seine]. Again, everyone I met was incredibly welcoming, despite the fact that everyone here has asked me my age within 10 minutes of meeting me; apparently, they think I am 24 or 25, and are always surprised to discover that I just recently turned 21.

So far Paris has been very different from what I expected. It is a lot less cliché than I had been told. This may also be because I have come here full of the optimism, cheer, and nervous expectation of someone closing their eyes and jumping into dimly-lit water. I am lucky because most of the people I know here are French or have been living here for an extended period of time [which is not a privilege study abroad students have], so I have felt immersed in a different aspect of the quotidian routine. Most of the people I have met have been kind and friendly, and the city in general has a very unique air. In some ways, it makes me miss St. Petersburg; in others, Boston. And in many ways, it is distinct from anywhere I have ever been. In part, I believe this is because when in Florida I yearn for the cold, grey sadness of fall turning into winter. There is a depth of conversation that is facilitated by the bad weather, a feeling of human connection that is brought about by walking to and from places as opposed to driving. I feel tied to people, tethered to life in places like this, and I do not feel that in Florida and did not, to a certain extent, feel this in Shanghai. I need places that are temperamental - quiet and loud, achromatic at times and vibrant at others - not a single long day of warm beaches or nightlife or shopping. St. Petersburg is that to me, as are Beijing and Boston, and now, Paris.

Untitled

New drawing, done partly in preparation for next summer, partly because I missed the grind of graphite. I miss art. I miss photography, and dreams of Dali, and quiet hours staring at Pre-Raphaelite red-haired models. I miss reading about art, and knowing why something is in a gallery because I remember the story behind the piece, the artist. I am forgetting things, facts, links. I am hoping to gain some of this back in Paris.

Lemme at 'em

Lyrics: "Sentir...que es un soplo la vida, que veine anos no es nada, que febril la mirada, errante en las sombras, te busca y te nombra" - Carlos Gardel

I flew from Miami to Boston to Paris on a Saturday. On the way, I slept little, made friends with my neighbors, and ate the sandwiches my father had prepared for me, a food-exchange ritual we have engage in every time I have traveled in the past three years.

I was as usual surprised at the kind of clothes people don on trans-oceanic flights, which caused me to dwell on my own attire (sweatpants, sneakers, tee, baseball hat). Interestingly enough, I thought about the baseball caps I wear regularly: my white Boston Red Sox one, and my red Swiss flag one, purchased at Balmer’s Youth Hostel in Interlaken, CH despite the price hike. I thought about the simple message I was sending going abroad with my baseball caps: I’m an American.

This past summer, at the Great Wall of China, when our small group was getting ready to toboggan down the side of the hill, a guy – white, late-twenties, slightly arrogant – approached us with the confident swagger and smirk of a die-hard athletic fan, drawn by my Red Sox hat. He was from Manchester, HN, and aside from strange, slightly hitting-on moments, we had a pleasant conversation, interestingly enough because he made a Red Sox comment that I, despite my relative derision of baseball [see previous post about Dontrelle Willis], could reply to [it was a small miracle]. My knowledge of random New Hampshire trivia may or may not have also kept the conversation afloat [Thanks to Katie, I was able to shamelessly mention the Fishercats!]. In any case, there I was, in China, signaling that I was American so blatantly that I might as well have had a cross-forehead tattoo of Britney Spears. For someone who during the summer of 2006, in Switzerland, would pretend to be Russian or Spanish or anything but American, I surprisingly didn’t mind this representation, mostly because since then I have learned to dissociate certain negative opinions about certain “American” things from my actual feeling as an American, despite the fact that I consider myself more Cuban, Russian, and to a certain extent Mexican, than American. Conclusion: the feeling of belonging somewhere – unlike genetics – is not a zero sum equation. I can’t make a whole with 5 genetic halves, but I can create a single identity with four or five or infinity different feelings. Excuse the self-quote for a moment, but this is how I described my family in my college essay, “From each country we have enriched more than our palate; we have gathered the only wealth that can truly be defined as human – an acceptance of the ineffable interdependence between hope, hardship, joy, pain, and survival – and harbored it in our hearts as more than just memories.” And that is how it felt for a moment on that airplane.

And so there I was, preparing to face the French with my Red Sox ha squarely pulled halfway over my eyes. Lemme at’em. It also occurred to me that even if I wear my Swiss hat, I would probably still be demarcated as an American. Who, other than US denizens, wear baseball hats with as much frequency and poise? In my Swiss hat, I would just be filed into a slightly different category: “American who has traveled” as opposed to “American who likes baseball. Typical.”

We flew into Boston Logan, and I could see the New England homes, nestled on uneven ground, the water, darker than in FL, the small inlets dotted with little white boats, and that random small island I always see when landing at Logan, covered in orange, and red, and yellow – the colors of the autumn I missed. I realized then that “home” really is a relative term. It can mean your childhood house, it can bring thoughts of your parents, it can be wholly concentrated on a single person’s love, on meeting your neighbor every morning when you get the mail. And in that instant, despite the many versions of “home” I’ve felt over the years, Logan was home. This airport, which has always been my gateway to Boston, the city I love, this airport made me smile with familiarity, with expectation. I knew I’d be back in February, and I could always depend on it being the beginning of months of surprises, of discoveries, of explorations of the MFA, of walks down Mass Ave, of my slightly unhealthy fixation with Nantucket, of winter and spring and fall. Trevor came to see me at the airport, and just spending a couple of hours chatting by a Dunking Doughnuts was enough to make feel more comfortable heading off halfway across the ocean on yet another leap of faith.

Later, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle and to the surprise of each of my new AAcquaintances [a play on the word acquaintance and the fact that I flew on American Airlines, humor me for a second], I set out alone with my not-so-light suitcases. CDG is an interesting mix between the Frankfurt airport, which I detest, and the Sheremetevo airport in Moscow, which I love only because the long queues signal to me that I have returned to Russia and am welcomed.

This just so happened to be one of the final days of a French transportation strike, which made, well, transportation, incredibly difficult in and around Paris. Eventually, a nice middle-aged Australian couple and I made it onto a train and headed into the city. They were to be my companions as we made it through the mess that was Gard du Nord that Sunday morning, helping me with my luggage, and laughing hysterically after one, no, two, of my suitcases, literally rolled all the way down an escalator. Moments like this made me feel like I was trapped in some kind of amateur undercover shoot for a Japanese game show that follows idiotic tourists around as they make fools of themselves without any assistance or incentive.

On the train home, I also had an encounter with a French man. Do not let the word “encounter” build this up to any more than it was: I asked [in French, may I add] for help with one of my bags, he obliged and then, sitting across from me, asked what I was doing after I dropped off said bags. A shady French man, really? Already?

After two hours in transit, I arrived at Bourg La Reine, a suburb on the southern side of the city, woke David up, and had him drive over to pick me up. Having never met each other, it proved to be quite the humorous encounter: slightly inebriated, not shaved French youth meets slightly hyper, very Americanized twenty-one year old. And then we went home.

The roommates, which I did not meet in this order are:
1. Nina – mid-twenties Journalism student from Germany studying abroad for a year. Makes incredible garlic bread. Boyfriend: Alex; occupation: something to do with Audi.

2. Heike – mid-twenties German girl getting her Masters at the Sorbonne. Speaks Arabic and Persian in addition to perfect English and French. Her boyfriend is a dentist in Egypt.

3. Sebastian: 24-year old graduate of something having to do with “engineering, biology, computer science.” Known as the father of the house and nicknamed by everyone as Putch; me as Putchy. Completed and sold, along with David, software that he is now living off of for a couple of months. Trains for several hours a day for an international grappling competition that will be held in Paris in December. No girlfriend.

4. Julien: Also 24 years old. Also a graduate of some kind of mathy, science field. Has started a business called “Pump your bike,” the purpose of which is still unclear. One of the only people I have met who is always smiling. Girlfriend: nice, but kind of shy.

5. Thomas: 24 years old, from the south of France. Graduated from mechanical engineering but now wants to become a pilot. Along with Putch, spends hours training for the aforementioned grappling competition. No girlfriend.

6. David: 23 years old [the baby, after me]. Competes in biosynthetic competitions. Designs software for wine export companies. Studies biology and physics and engineering. Is permanently playing music. No girlfriend, mostly because of his questionable antics at parties.


Within a couple of hours, there we were, all seven of us sitting around the kitchen, cutting, slicing, cooking together. Then we sat in the living room and ate, toasted, talked. There was a great feeling of ease, of comfort for me, to have landed in a household where cooking is communal, where, without having ever met me, they welcomed me as a 7th roommate within the first hour. At night, in celebration for Nina’s birthday, we ate a delicious tart that Heike had baked with apples from the backyard, drank wine, and sang. David and Nina both played the guitar in the candlelit living room, and I just sat, cross-legged, until the wee hours of the morning, singing to mark my arrival into Paris. At one point, we all repeated, progressively getting louder:
“Country roads, take me home To the place, I belong; West virginia, mountain momma; Take me home, country roads…”

And there was that word “home” again. And after a full day of thinking about it, of wondering and preparing myself for what would be the beginning of all of a lot of hard work until June 2009, I did feel at home. This, at least for now, was home, even if in a couple of months it changed, because home was not, for once, my physical location; it was, instead, a calming down of my mind and heart, which had been wandering for a while now, a blissful satisfaction with the present instant.

Adventures Nextdoor

The day started with me dealing with insane highway rush hour to get to downtown Miami by 9:30, at which time the French Consulate opens for visa consultations. Halfway along the drive, I remembered why I hate driving downtown, because the combination of Hispanic drivers, permanent construction, and general insanity is always a sure recipe for frustration. US1 and Brickell Avenue are not, I repeat, not, my friends. The visa matters went very well, especially because the wonderful Catherine Petillon, who helped resolve my application issues all the way from Washington D.C., was actually in Miami this week, and I got to thank her and creep her out by furiously shaking her hand in person.

After this, I had a little time to kill, so I embarked on a brief but memorable Miami adventure. First, I stopped to have some coffee and empanadas at a random Cuban timbiriche, where I chatted and surprisingly played a quick round of Qubilete [an old Cuban game involving dice, which he was very surprised I knew] with an old Cuban man and his ten-year old grandson, all the while discussing why and how come Fidel was still alive. Then another man referred to me as “La Rusita,” meaning “the little Russian” and gave me a brief lesson on the history of my own countries and the alliance with our “Soviet brothers.” The coffee was delicious: strong, sweet, a jolt to the system that American coffee, despite my love of hazelnut-flavors, does not provide. I also had not consumed coffee in months so after a while I began to feel my heart pounding its way out of my chest cavity. My right arm was also shaking slightly on the wheel of my car. Oh caffeine, so healthy.

At this point, I decided to enter a promising establishment. It’s name? “Coin Laundry of America.” This could not possibly be a regular coin laundry, like the many I’d seen when we first came to the US and lived in that small apartment next to the central Florida International University campus. This was the Coin Laundry of AMERICA, people! Inside, old Cuban ladies eyed me up and down, one of them making a comment about how I as just “skin and bone.” Did I want some rice? No, thank you. One of them reminded me of one of my favorite people, Laura Noya, or Tatica as I still refer to her when I write her letters or call her in Cuba. She obviously had horrible arthritis, as Tatica does, but, fully decked out in curlers, some kind of bathrobe, and plastic flip-flops, was slowly making her way from the washers to the dryers. I offered to help and soon we were having a conversation about the small coastal Cuban town of Jucaro (which to her surprise, I had plenty of information about), and mangoes that grew in our backyard, and her grandson traveling to Venezuela as a doctor, and me somehow remembering certain parts of Havana. She spoke in a fluid and hurried stream of words, like most Cubans, forgetting the final “s” in words and mixing in random exaltations.

From here, I proceeded to meet up with my parents and take them out to lunch at Houston’s in Aventura, a restaurant that for some unknown reason, I have a particular predilection for. It was their 31-year anniversary [not of marriage, but of meeting, which they believe is a lot more significant]. So there we were, waiting for our table for the promised twenty minutes, which turned more into thirty. Approximately five minutes into the waiting period, in walks a rather tall, rather bulky man, clad from head to toe in athletic gear and carrying a small child in one of those baby-carriers [I’m not sure what the appropriate name is]. He put his name down on the waiting list, walked over, and sat down in the only available seat, which just so happened to be next to moi. And here is where this man’s pleasant lunch with his daughter started to sour. I, known to begin conversation for no particular reason and without any incentive to do so, proceeded to strike up a conversation by complementing his daughter, who was quietly sleeping at her father’s large Nike-clad feet. He smiled, looked at me rather strangely, but said thank you. I continued, asking for her name in what I believed was an innocently amiable manner. Soon enough, the two of us were calmly discussing his wife’s name, which is Natalie, and making all sorts of pleasant small-talk. I had played with daughter when she woke up, we laughed about a comment he made about some woman’s oversized nails. Then, THEN, he asked if I was a student, I answered, and, in return, inquired about his line of work. Here, prepare yourself, because everything goes down hill “real fast.” The conversation went as follows:

Me: “Yes, I’m a college student. I’m just taking a semester-off so I’m currently at home. What do you do?”

Stranger: “I’m in baseball.”

Me: “I’m sorry.”

Stranger: [looks confused, laughs] “Why?”

Me: “I’ve always found it to be a little boring. I know it’s just my personal opinion, but I have a hard time watching a full game.”

Stranger: “I feel you. But it’s a different when you’re playing.”

Me: “Yea, I’d assume so. Do you play or are you a manager or something more… administrative?”

Stranger: I’m Dontrelle Willis. I pitch for the Marlins.

[Pause. Long pause.]

Me: “Oh!! Wow, ok I’m sorry! I don’t really follow baseball, as I said, and since I spend most of my time in Boston, I know even less about …. South…. Florida…. teams… um… Marlins.” At this point, my struggling happened because for a second I had forgotten if the Marlins were a Miami team or a FL team. Shame on me. Then, because I thought that I had said something grammatically and/or syntactically flawed, I proceeded to try to correct myself by saying, “Not the fish…I mean…the team….I mean, yea that’s obvious. Ok you know what I mean? I’m done.” All the while, I am clearly flailing my arms in the kind of gesticulation that usually accompanies my explanations, which, when dealing with establishing the difference between Marlin-the-fish and Marlin-the-baseball-team did not prove helpful and only made me look more idiotic. [Note to self: Who says, “You know what I mean” to a NBL starting pitcher? I inwardly rolled my eyes at myself].

DW: [Laughs] “No it’s ok”

Five minutes later, my family was seated, and I left Dontrelle – Mr. Willis – alone with his daughter Adriane, or Adrianne, or Adrianna, I have no idea how it is spelled. And my day in Miami was over. I was ready to head back to the United States.

I need more hard rain and good music

Lyrics: "But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow" - The Beatles

Nothing exciting to report so I will revert to my all-too familiar habit of bullet-pointing [this is a fabricated verb]:

a.) Milestones reached: For the first time in 13 years I have managed to do a split. Amalia Hernandez, the founder of the Mexican Ballet and the cantankerous, positively insane woman who I had the honor of calling “teacher,” would surely be proud, and so am I. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get the muscles stretched that way again and the process reminded me of afternoons at her house, standing by the bar and watching spots of light dance across the floor, envious because all I was doing was my 100th plie. Or the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with her yelling somewhere backstage. I shouldn’t have left ballet with the childishly simple excuse of “it’s not fun”…it’s a beautiful art of body and soul. On another note, I ran a 6-minute mile. For the first time in quite some time I felt like what Mike Markowitz still refers to as a “beast,” though we both laugh about it. I had forgotten what track spikes felt like, wrapped tightly around your foot, almost willing your leg upwards with a Hermes-like weightlessness.

b.) I had a run-in with a key lime pie. Or rather, I tried to make one, but put in entire eggs instead of egg whites, and forgot that Cuban condensed milk is a lot sweeter than American condensed milk [of course, we Cubans have a tendency of taking things like "sweetness" or "grease" to unpalatable extremes]. The end result: a much too sweet, but still edible dessert, and a lot of jokes at the dinner table.

c.) Highlights: I saw “Across the Universe.” Aside from being an aesthetically pleasing spectacle, the movie moved me with its music. At points, the entire theater was singing and stomping to Beatles classics, which I didn’t mind anywhere near as much as I do those people who clap at random jokes in the middle of a packed theater or my one-time experience at the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Cambridge [Tom, back me up on this]. I actually enjoyed it and joined in. Driving home on the Turnpike and listening to a different kind of classic – Joshua Bell – I smiled to think how much of our lives is set to music. [On a sidenote, I wondered how much of my personal liking of the violin is narcissistic, since it's the instrument that most resembles the human voice]. In the past I’ve argued that music has taken away the natural ups and downs of our emotions, leaving us with a finely tuned escape permanently blaring from our iPods. Music can create little ersatz bubbles for us to walk around campus, permanently submerged in a stimulus other than our own thoughts. But oddly enough, on the drive home I felt that my faith in music had been restored. In fact, I felt a bit like Jack Kerouac (to name a figure that is period-appropriate), making rhythm with random words and streaming thoughts, half-accidentally showing the world that music is created everywhere if we just stop long enough to find a beat. And so as Nietzsche said (and later John Stamos, of all people, quoted), “Without music, life would be an error.”

d.) I’ve been thoroughly reviewing my Libertarian views, especially when it comes to the world economy. More to come on this later, if I ever actually get somewhere.

e.) Last night was restless, which is not particularly unusual for me. I woke up from the torrential downpour outside and cursed the alarm system that wouldn’t let me open my window for fear of waking everybody. I’ve concluded that the indoor spaces of houses should be more fluid with the outdoor ones. Windows and doors should be open. Damn alarm systems shouldn’t be in the way of me getting my hands wet with rain.

f.) I’m drawing again. Kind of. I have nothing to say on this other than how amazing it feels to grind charcoal on good paper.

g.) I want to be across the ocean already, so I can stop writing boring accounts of movies and random days, and start doing, watching, looking.