Writing a book is hard

Thank you everyone for the lovely messages and support.

You are wonderful.

I'm currently working for a fledging company that publishes school books and co-directing the English book for beginners. This is complicated because 1° I didn't learn English at school and 2° working is complicated and 3°I'm working for very bureaucratic people and I'm a bohemian freelancer who needs hours off to help tidy up apartments, empty houses and other fun tasks.

My partner is called F, and he is sweet, befuddled and very, very clever. He is learning Persian and spends his time comparing English to Persian (NO) and telling me amusing adventures of his youth. I like him. It's fun going to his apartment and working on the book, imagining the drawings and the dialogues and which accent to pick, AMerican or British? And which American? Which British? Lots of questions like that. It's great.

When we first met, he shook my hand, pecked my cheek and told me earnestly :"Don't fall for me, because I'm tired of girls falling for me." If you had told me I would come to be very fond of him then, I would have rolled my eyes.
But I am very fond of him. He's such an old romantic, always falling for the wrong guy, always depressed about love, and then incredibly perky and stimulating.

I'm very grateful to him for bearing up with my moods.

Can't wait to finish our preliminary work. How fun will it be to see the finished product!

Still looking for a title. It seems that every thing is taken: Connect, Listen up, New Springs, Apple Pie, Enjoy, Teamwork, Borders, New Borders, Discover...

If anyone has a snazzy suggestion, I'll send you delicious French sausage. Now if that isn't tempting...

Watching

This is the time for contemplation. After my grandmother's death in July, my grandfather took a turn for the worst and called my mother up yesterday to tell her he was dying and had only a few weeks left.

I watch my mother cry on the phone, feeling helpless and bruised and lost.

I watch the world, a little slowly, retreating inside myself.

I'm still here, on the sidelines. I feel like asking for help, but I realize I can only help myself; that when my sister comes home for the holidays, the person who knows me best will be there, understand. No need to talk.

Snow everywhere.

I feel frozen.

Being yourself

I hate that sentence. Aren't we all a dozen different people every day? Aren't we all bits and pieces and experiences and unexpected reactions?

I'm not doing so well at being myself at the moment. I feel like I'm too tired to make the effort. Yes, I am a well-oiled machine: I have my social niceties, and my small talk, and even some ammunition for the big, difficult topics of life.

I'm tired. I'm afraid that I can't be happy right now because I don't feel the bounce. I want to be. But I'm just exhausted. Can we wait for a few months? Can you let me sleep this bad moment off? Then I will be Sara again, or at any rate the Sara I can be when social and active.

Phi Beta Kappa

Now I'm not good about American Universities slang, or lingo, or whatever you might call it. So when my sister called yesterday to tell me she was invited to her college's Phi Beta Kappa society in the fall of her senior year, this did not ring any bells. In fact, I thought she meant she was entering a sorority, although that also made no sense since her college has no sororities.





My mother, currently with me in Berlin, seemed to know and was incredibly proud. I resolved to google after dinner.

So I did.

You get a golden key! I'm not sure why! But it's amazing.

I may burst with pride.

Ubuntu 4 ever

In France we don't have geeks. Geeks are that quintessential American creation. Sure, we have computer engineers, physicists, mathmos with an intense manga obsession, but we don't think of them as geeks.

My first ever boyfriend was a geek. He liked writing computer programs at a time when we didn't have broadband internet at home. I then befriended a World of Warcraft fan who let me watch him plan world domination and organise druidic poetry competitions. But X was in so many ways (video games aside) the perfect geek. He is a chemist with an unhealthy love of lolcats, a collection of punning tshirts, and can spend hours fiddling with Linux; oh, I got him hooked on Battlestar Galactica. He switched my computer from Windows to Ubuntu back to Windows. It never did recover!

He would hate being called a geek.

But he is.

So now that my boyfriend has introduced me to the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, I am obsessed. It's clichéd and predictable, but it reminds me of all the wonderful geeks I've known in my life. The ones who pull all-nighters to join their American guild and live a jetlagged elf life, the ones who discuss how many microwave ovens you would need to power a jet engine, the ones who read comic books, and of course, all the wonderful computer obsessed people out there.

Because the truth is, we all spend ridiculous amounts of time online, but these guys actually KNOW what they are doing.

Here's to all the geeks who have let me use their science and enjoy their company.

SURPRISE

I'm coming home on Tuesday and have packed nothing, prepared nothing, have to find gifts for everyone, write cards, welcome my mother, clean the apartment. I have made a list, which depresses the hell out of me, so I ignore it zealously.


Well, on Wednesday I was supposed to have dinner with my boyfriend for the first time in more than a month.

And then I got an email in my inbox.

"Let's all celebrate Sara's return to Paris on Wednesday evening!".

A class friend sent this email to about thirty people.

I can't really express how stunned I am. All I can hear is my sister's voice lovingly and sarcastically saying that I've become Miss Popular. YES I HAVE J!
Well, most of the people invited to this thing don't like me, so I suppose I'm not Miss Popular, but Miss Good Excuse To Get Drunk. And that works for me.

I called AD to tell him our plans were cancelled due to my huge and out-of-control fandom.
We are having breakfast together instead. Meal of Kings.
Oh, and I'm getting a set of keys to his place.

THE LIST THE LIST THE LIST is taunting me. If you think this post makes no sense, wait until Monday sets in.

TEDIOUS RANT

One of my colleagues doesn't like risotto...doesn't listen to any type of music...has been in Berlin for a year and hasn't visited a museum...thinks men should be "manly" and women should earn less so as to not scare prospective suitors away...is worried that she is putting on weight and keeps talking about it, no matter how much you tell her to relax...

It's hard.

I think I'm not very tolerant because I so often want to brain her. It's because I'm a snob, right? The fact that she thinks Twilight is the most romantic book ever should not arouse any wrath, or should it?

Berlin is a city with three major opera houses, a million art galleries, lots and lots of beautiful streets, great theatres, innovative design. This is a place where things are happening on a large scale. And she could be living in the middle of nowhere. It's such a waste!

I'm a snob.

OK, what about this? She's going off for a six-month sabbatical with her BF to the other end of the world in 8 weeks and she hasn't cracked open a guide book? How can you be so passive?

I'm intolerant.

But she is driving me crazy and WHERE CAN I VENT? Not at the office because the sole topic is how often a week is too much argh argh don't want to go to work tomorrow.

I'll settle for this. Don't talk during the entire day. And I won't rant anymore.

Yeah.

The Depression Whisperer

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I'm going to say Macbeth suffered from depression. Just a hunch.


I'm one of those people. Tell me you've been having problems, family problems, work problems, any problems, and I will lean over intently, gaze into your eyes and say:
"You're probably depressed."

I am a shameless arm-chair diagnostician and my friends, I WILL DIAGNOSE YOU WITH DEPRESSION.

October is National Depression Awareness Month (Poor October: Breast Cancer AND Depression). Sara is National Depression Awareness Blatherer. Anyone unlucky enough to cross my path will get a lecture on the topic.

Why do I do this? Apart from adoring the sound of my own voice?

Because I believe this is still a taboo topic.

Depression is not cured by "a nice long walk". Depression does not mean you are lazy. Depression does not mean you are a failure. Depression is a mental illness that can make you lose your family, your friends, your job and ultimately your life.

However I also believe we can fight against it. We can decide to get better. Don't get me wrong, it is a long, difficult decision to make, and people in the throes of depression are often not in a state to accept those efforts.

Yet there are therapies. There are ways.

Watch the people around you. Do you know someone who has been unhappy for a long time? Withdrawing into themselves? Do you know someone who is no longer themselves, for lack of a better word? It could be a midlife crisis, could be a bad patch, but if it is depression, what do we have to lose by asking that person how we can help, if they are in need of comfort, or advice.

It is hard to reach out to depressed people. They don't want your help. They want to die.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

To anyone who stumbles accross this message, if you feel you are depressed, please see a doctor. Please talk to someone. It's so hard to do this alone.

I have been greatly helped by people sharing their testimonies and stories with me throughout my own battle with this disease. If anyone should want to talk to me, please do not hesitate to do so.

Depression can happen to anyone.

But I promise: you can get out of it.

3 is the loneliest number

Three.

Three often means two plus one.

I have two friends I met my first year of "junior high" for lack of a better word, when I was ten. We remained in the same class until I was 15, and then they both went towards economics and then prepared the entrance exam for business school, and I went towards literature.

French school system.

I was not a very gregarious child, and had very few friends. My dream, from the age of 10 onwards, was to be someone's best friend. In that internet-less age, best friends called each other every evening on the house phone, and annoyed their parents expecting calls. Best friends had sleep-overs. Best friends could bond against the world.

This never really happened for me. Like the booty call who hopes against all odds that he/she will become the official partner, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my potential best friend-making moves. Should I be funnier? Should I have cuter clothes?

When I finally got close friends, it never felt that I was the one. My two closest friends and I formed a trio, an uncomfortable one at times. I will never forget a trip to Vienna where I felt completely left out and cried myself to sleep every night. I was a very immature 17.

I don't know why the moniker best friend was so important to me. Now I have many friends, all important for me, all wonderful, and I laugh at my past self for having set so much store on a label. How insecure. How silly. No one can be everything to someone.

Now my two oldest friends are going back to school together. Like when we were 15, they will be laughing about teachers, sharing in-jokes about fellow students, spending hours in the same classroom. I suddenly realised this a few days ago and thought "How nice for them."
Then I thought "Damn it. 2+ 1 AGAIN?"

And I call myself an adult.

The Perv leaves

My pervy co-worker is leaving today, after a small office party. This is the man who 1° always makes terribly lewd jokes I don't understand in my general direction.
2° squeezes, strokes and squishels his female collegues as a jest.
3°once cornered me in an elevator and playfully grabbed my bottom.

Now he is going away for good.

"Slap him", says my boyfriend. "Let him get drunk at his own party, make bad jokes, and when he tries to touch you or anyone else, slap him."

"Throw a drink on him."

"Tell him his behaviour is unacceptable."

I think I will talk to him. Tell him it's not funny when you don't understand the language perfectly. That it's awkward when you're an intern and he works there. And more than that, that touching people without their consent is appalling behaviour.

My French colleague told me with a Gallic shrug: "Let's hope for him he never works in America."

Yes indeed.

raining all the time

Don't know why
There's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my man and I ain't together
Keeps raining all the time...

I love that song, especially sung by Lena Horne.

RAIN RAIN RAIN.

Random news and bits and pieces:

Only 5 weeks left in Berlin then I'm going back home...It went by really fast. Now I have guests every weekend, will try to keep up with my friendships here and a lot of lobbying work to do. We shall see.

Planning to spend NYE in Venice. I never celebrate NYE, being so stuffed at Christmas I need a week to recover from indigestion. My grandmother was always the soul of Christmas for me, so this year should be very different, and quite sad. Maybe I should start celebrating NYE!

My grandfather is not doing well at all. My mother is not sure he will still be with us in November, but if he is, I will probably go to London to help take care of him or do daily visits at the hospital. I hope I will see him. I have great affection for him.

I'm looking for good American fiction to read, can anyone recommend something contemporary?

And with this, I go forth through the rain.

Changes

I'm not an adventurous person. My idea of the perfect evening is a good book, some lapsang souchang tea, and maybe a cat purring somewhere in the house. But I have some adventurous sides. I like travelling, I like meeting new people in strange circumstances, and discovering new things.

This clumsy introduction to say: I sometimes surprise myself by doing out of character things.

Almost ten months ago, still shaky from my breakup, I asked a man for his number at a party and called him the next day. Subtle! None of the usual rules we are taught to apply in the seduction game counted then, because I was not after a relationship, just what we call in French an "aventure", a fling. I went for it with careless energy, not wondering if he thought I was crazy or weird, or investing huge amounts of emotion in our dealings. In retrospect, this probably explains why we got along so well from the start. Neither of us was pretending to be someone we were not. It saves time down the line.

Now of course we are going towards...something else. We have plans. He is cautious and commitment-phobish, and to a certain extent so am I. I don't want to move in with him, I am certainly not planning my life around him, but still. We have plans. Plans to spend New Year together. Plans when I come back from Berlin in November. Little plans, like making reservations in a nice restaurant to celebrate my academic success, and bigger plans, like vacations.

I don't feel secure with him. He keeps the distance, always, and I do too, in other ways. It's not safe and nurturing. It's something else. And I trust him more and more, with my feelings and with myself.

I never thought I would be happy in a relationship like this.

Maybe I am less needy, less insecure and less annoying.

But as my sister would laughingly point out, still a serial monogamist!

A diamond as big as the Ritz

An old picture of me which is the closest I can get to the EAT PRAY LOVE look. The "I look so natural and free-spirited! When in fact I took hours to find this flattering angle!"



Last night I was tired after work and decided to go see a shitty movie. That movie turned out to be Eat Pray Love. I had listened to the book while running and not really gotten into the whole guru-following, yoga-practicing balooney idea that spirituality was something you could wilfully acquire. Anyway, I just wanted to see Javier Bardem and James Franco.
It turned out to be the film première, and to celebrate it, some German magazine called HAPPY had organised for glasses of sparkly wine to be distributed around. All the women in the theatre were rather tipsy then, and giggled extremely loudly. I struck up a conversation with my two neighbours, who were speaking bad French to each other, and we quickly decided that we liked each other. Funny how that works.

So the movie was very depressing. BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES...JULIA ROBERTS AND HER GIGANTIC MOUTH...Finally some Javier Bardem.

The story of Liz Gilbert is supremely relatable. I suffer from depression, I know almost no one who hasn't felt trapped in their lives at least once, this is good material. I may hate the mumbo jumbo of the ashram episode, but I could certainly respond to her other themes. Food is my antidepressant of choice...

When I left the movie house, I felt very unhappy. Vividly unhappy for the first time in months. I simply did not want to go home. Going home meant going to sleep, and that meant coming closer to waking up and going to work. I decided to drink a cocktail at the Ritz.

The Ritz Hotel in Berlin is right behind the Sony Centre and Potsdamer Platz, formerly known as No Man's Land. It's now a land of hotels and office space. I swept inside and ordered a Virgin Berlin. My bike was waiting outside and I don't drink and drive...

It was a perfectly soothing experience. Lavish, extravagant, dumb. Sipping my 11 Euro cocktail, I sank into the thick leather bar stool. I think I waited for an hour for my melancholy to go away.

Years ago my sister and I would sometimes dine with our grandfather at the Ritz for Christmas. We would wear our nicest clothes and people watch: older men with ravishing young women, plastically enhanced bimbos, and the occasional family treat scene, like us.

I miss my sister so much. Sipping my Virgin Berlin, trying not to go home, feeling low, I thought of her in America, and felt strangely comforted.

I rode home gently, feeling at peace.

A wonderful spiritual experience A nice drink in a nice bar is sometimes all it takes.

Where I am

Some days I wake up and I can't remember where I am. Last weekend I was in Munich, this week I'm flying to France, to do my presentation on my thesis in Lyon, then going back to Paris for a couple of days. It's going fast. I'm sorry I've been in limbo these past weeks, but I was never quite sure where I was. I wanted to write about the funny things that happen to me all the time here in Germany, but I felt sad and withdrawn; I didn't want to write about this sadness because it will pass, and it hurt to think about it too much. Many people in my family are not well, many things worry me, and I like this blog to be not only doom and gloom, although it often is melodramatic, as befits a Frenchwoman who talks with her hands.

Crossroads. I am deciding my professional future/ do I want to be an academic, with all the freedom that entails? Do I prefer working for a private company and make money, or at least, more? Do I want a quiet life or a busy one?

Where am I?

I wish I could say answers are coming in fast and steady, but it all feels confusing and hard to me. I like permanency, and everybody is changing. Things are moving without me. I want to be able to hold on to a sense of self, of place. I want to wake up and know where I am.

Overdramatic...as usual.

The easiest thing in the world sometimes is just to feel. The warm yield of an apple crumble, the sweetness of grass under my back as I fall asleep, drinking in the last days of summer, the soft skin inside my boyfriend's wrists when we hold hands. These things are easy. These things are now, and gone as soon as they are felt, and no questions needed.

Why isn't it enough, I wonder.

The things we miss

My grandfather is dying. He has cancer, it's spread, and his doctors say we have to wait to give him palliative treatments because he doesn't feel enough pain yet. My twisted sense of humor loves that sentence. My mother is nursing him for a couple of days. I can go to London in November during my holiday, but who knows if he will still be living at home then?

Nice summer.

I feel like calling people up and boring them with my sadness, but instead I bore my sister who is contractually obligated to listen to my moans. I feel like not going to work this morning. Stay in bed and eat crackers. Except I am still running a fever so this could be stupid.

I don't experience a lot of homesickness here in Berlin. I miss people...But I love living here. Yet these past few days I realise that I want to help out my mother, who after losing her mother is watching her father deteriorate every day. Nothing I can do for the moment. Except listen to her.

I'm grieving for my grandmother too. It's a summer of loss, but also a summer of fun, of meeting people, of dancing and of happiness.

It's never black or white.

So it really has been a nice summer. As well. As well as being a horrible one.

And I seem to have no more crackers left.

Salsa makes everything better

"WHO CARES HOW BAD YOU ARE. Life is too short to watch the others shake their hips while you get drunk on the side because you're shy."

Our salsa teacher is wonderful.

And I totally agree. The most satisfying moments of my life came when I decided not to care how bad I was at something and just enjoyed how I felt, how I moved, how I danced.

Letting go

I still have bursts of anger. They come without warning. I'm enjoying a cup of tea, reading a book (today, a hilarious tome debunking homeotherapy) and I just get this ball of churning anger inside me. I get angry so rarely that it's always a (disagreable) surprise when it occurs. I want to punch a wall. I want to smash windows. I want to punish people who get away with being horrible to others. As you can imagine, reading the newspaper is not advisable when I'm in this state.

I have several theories on why I get so angry. My hatred of confrontation makes me repress a lot of feelings. I suffer from depression and when I crawl out of it, anger is usually my first emotion, maybe because it's the opposite of depressive lethargy.

None of this really matters, except that I never know how to let go. I've tried breaking things, but this is only a very short-term solution. I've tried getting angry in front of people, but usually burst into tears, undermining the whole effect. I've tried writing long, psychotic letters or mails I don't send, but their baleful presence in my Draft box makes me feel terrible: small blobs of quivering irrationality, there, reminding me that I have lost my temper.

Running works sometimes. I also talk loudly to my imaginary target. This can get weird. I have no long term solution.

ANGER. I get so angry sometimes; I dream that I am a vigilante superhero and that I can find people and scare the stuffing out of them. Pf course, in these dreams I also ride a dinosaur to work. We're talking heavy realism, here.

If I ever get my hands on a decent superhero outfit, I may well do just that.

Office meltdown

I like my Kolleagues but lack of sleep + rain-induced headache= irritation.

I am so tired of the baby talk. All the time. Between the moans that they will never be "a young mother" because they are 25, and that having kids at 30 means you are an old mother (thus depriving your child of precious time in your company), I am thoroughly bored.

THEY JUDGE ME. All the time. Because I get annoyed when they go on and on about how old parents are terrible. "If your father were younger he wouldn't be sick and burden you."
Hmmm...perceptive and kind comment!

Because I say having children isn't fun all the time:
"You are so negative." No. I just think we shouldn't idealise motherhood and say it is a bed of roses 24/7. And yes, I find newborns boring. No, I won't apologise.

They keep making comments like "careers are less important than children."
To whom? To you? To me? Can't we agree that everyone is different? You know what? Maybe if men pulled their weight, if governments made paternal leave compulsory, there wouldn't be any discrimination against women of child-bearing age in the workplace! Let's talk about that instead of moralising.

I know I'm tired and cranky. I shouldn't bite their noses off, because they are sweet and helpful and bear with me, thus deserving a medal.



Note that I bore them quite as much: today's book was a historical essay on code-breaking and the submarine battles during the Second World War. I talked and bored.

Cool topic though.

Split identity

I'm reading a wonderful book for history nerds, called Masculinity and the middle-class Home in Victorian England. Part of why this book is so much fun is that the anxiety linked to the place of man in his family, his role as father and husband and his socio-economic rights is still very much a topic of thought and controversy.

I could quote the entire book, from the description of marital tasks, sexual mores and club culture in 19th century England, but this passage held particular meaning for me.

"The more alienating the employment, the greater the tendency to conduct life in separate compartments. The classic literary expression of this split comes in William Hale White's autobiographical novel, which draws on his own experience as a junior employee at Somerset House in the 1850s.

I cut off my office life from my life at home so completely that I was two selves. I was a great comfort to me to think the moment the clock struck seven that my second self died, and that my first self suffered nothing by having anything to do with it..."

Now that I have started working in a office, I understand this so completely. I feel like a split personality. It's the language thing as well. In German, I'm demure. I know no swear words. In French I am...different. Articulate. I love swearing in English. It doesn't feel real. So at the office I'm a slightly stupid, nice girl. At home I become me again.

I miss my family and friends most of all when I transition back to myself.

All in all, I wonder how many of us change drastically in the work place.

Done

I sent it this evening, while munching on some candy. I thought I would feel only relief, but instead I'm a bit sad. My paper is off to be judged and critiqued, and I put so much into it, so much energy and research and sleepless nights.
My poor little paper.


So...sleep. You know you're sleep-deprived when...

*you have the shakes and can't type anymore
*your boss asks you if you are ill and when you demur tells you that she knows a good family doctor. And then sends you his phone number by email. Twice.
*you fall asleep when you lean against a wall waiting for a bus.

Now onto some Berlin exploration!

I feel like I should celebrate, a bit, but I'll wait until my supervisor tells me it's shit. Or not.

In the meantime, this candy is really delicious.

My Playlist of Post-Work Bliss

In a few days I should be done. After not sleeping a lot for what seems like a couple of months. I want to see it all ship shape and done; and then I will reward myself handsomely.

Like writing acknowlegments, imagining what you will do after the writing-incarceration is the best part of it all.

The fact that I'm even writing this instead of a pithy paragraph all about Voltaire and his take on pre-revolutionary constitutionalism in the texts of Benezet GIBBERISH ALERT GIBBERISH proves I need a nap. But it's only ten in the evening and I have seven more hours of work ahead of me.

OK. SO...Here is my playlist of things I want to do:

*Read books not for work but for pleasure. I have some great German books to read, including all of Tucholsky's short stoires. I have some Murakami I'm dying to start. I have a Maria Callas bio I'm dying to finish. And now I have to read all Trapedo's work so I can catch up with my friend L's blog on women's lit.

*Sing. Sing a song. Sing it loud...sorry. I haven't had time to learn any new pieces since...six months? Frack the neighbours, I'm getting my Bach on.

*Enjoy my office job and not try to find places to nap. Note: it is impossible to find places to nap, but I'm still trying.

*Run; stop exclusively eating chocolate-covered things; brush my hair every evening, a hundred strokes, the way my grandmother did.

*Get lost on my bike in Berlin. Go to salsa classes. Meet new friends. Actually keep in touch with all my friends and answer postcards and mails with something other than SOSOBUSYTALKSOON.

*Enjoy the last days of summer. It's been raining so much here, I think it will stop as soon as I am done with this baby.

*Sleep. Sleep more. Sleep and then have brunch.

*Plan my wonderful November holiday.

I should get back to it...I have a few good reasons to finish it, as you can see...

What's on your playlist?

The Love-o-meter

My Kolleague is in a relationship that she just won't stop talking about.

It's pretty standard stuff: they met when she was eighteen, he was seventeen. They broke up a year ago, when he turned twenty-three.

"He told me he had fallen out of love. But isn't that normal after six years? You don't feel as passionate as you did?"

Finally after a couple of months he came back and now they live together. But he keeps telling her the most passive aggressive stuff, telling her he doesn't fancy her anymore, that she is letting herself go etc. Once, tired and not feeling tactful, I asked her point-blank why she was staying with him. The way she tells it (obviously with her own bias) makes it feel like he is trying to get her to break up with him. She is planning the wedding and the kids.

"I will never love anyone in that way. That's why I know he's the One."

She nibbles on a cookie. She looks at me.

"Have you ever felt that way?"

I tried to explain that there is no love-o-meter. If you are in love that is. Each love is different. Each relationship too. I asked her if she measures the love she felt for her friends.

"I don't have that many friends. I feel love is more important than friendship."

Again with the Love-o-meter.

This woman fascinates me. She is the incarnation of old-fashioned ideals. She just wants kids. No career. For her, jobs are just for money. He takes all the decisions; he is the more intelligent. I met the guy once and found him nice enough, but I wonder if he wants to get married. If he wants kids in 3 years. If he feels imprisoned. Why he came back.

"I sometimes feel we met too young. We're perfect for each other but if he had a bit more experience maybe he would want to get married more."

So those are my office lunches.

Hard

It's hard to write. You have to be strong enough to own the fact that you consider your voice important enough to be heard. You have to be brave enough to acknowledge that you may well be writing utter rubbish. You have to delve, dig and dig some more.

I'm so angry. So sad. So happy. So depressed.

It's like therapy.

Even if you're writing a historical essay.

So a lot of stuff is coming up. I want to let all those emotions wash over me, but right now I'm too busy. I want to curl up against you, feel your calm and let it seep through my troubles.

I'm very tired. I sometimes get the feeling that everyone hates me at the office. Or that my friends don't like me anymore. That you are so far away, that you'll never come back. That my heart will be broken all over again. That everyone in my family is sick or dying.

It all comes back to the little things: my daily talk with my sister. The smell of curry sausages in the street. The way women here look so beautiful without any makeup. The color of the sky when it falls asleep, Brahms' quintets. Reading about your lives, your experiences, you.

It's not always hard.

The rain is pelting down tonight and I feel all my layers melding together, strong, weak, tall, so tiny I could fit in a pocket, angry at the unfairness of the world, disgusted by my failings, elated, up down up down.

There is always that moment-I want someone else to do it-I want to be oblivious-I want you to tell me it's all right, I'm here baby.

And here I go. I'm running towards the goal.

Thank you.

Question

...How do you manage to have an office job and a family and hobbies? When do you sleep?

I'm working a normal 8h30-18h30 schedule at the office and it is killing me. I have to write all evening afterwards. I need at least an hour to quit feeling stressed.

How do you do with a family on top of that?

The levels of exhaustion must be insane.

Cheating

One of my best friends in the world, A, has known me since I was 10. She is amazing and delightful.

She is convinced my boyfriend is cheating/will be cheating on me.

This is very confusing to me. I discussed it with my sister who not only agreed with me but gave me some needed perspective.

I don't think my boyfriend is cheating on me, for the record. I'm troubled by the fact she is so adamant. She doesn't know him well, or know anything particular that points in that direction. It's just that we are long-distance for a couple of months more; that he is travelling alone with his best friend who is his ex; that they will occasionally share a room to save money.

When X and I were together, he once slept over at Emilie's house, the girl who would ultimately be his rebound fuck; I did not like it because I felt she was attracted to him, but I trusted him. I didn't make a fuss. I didn't fight her.

When I am with someone, I trust them. Now my past experience tells me this is foolish, because my previous boyfriends have cheated on me. I think my friend is trying to protect me against similar disappointment.

But in the end, you have to trust your instincts. I pretended to be OK with X and Emilie's sleepover thing, but I wasn't.

I'm fine with AD travelling with his best friend.

New friendships

Nowadays, I am just as excited about the prospect of new friends than about the prospect of a new love when I was a teenager.

Once you leave a university background, or start working, it's hard to meet new people, and especially hard to meet new people you like.

So when you do meet that special someone, when you click almost immediately, when conversation flows and witticisms crackle, it feels...It feels completely unexpected, magical, perfect.

Biological clocking it

I'm that old it seems. All the women around me are talking about babies. Getting married. Settling down.

Not all actually when I think about it. The ones who are not planning the family are complaining about the fact that they should be thinking about it.

My problem with this is that I don't want children. I KNOW I KNOW. I'm only 24. I have about a decade in front of me to reevaluate. And maybe I will. For the time being I just express how I feel-I do not want to procreate.

Several reasons, some silly, others more deep-rooted. I think there are already too many people on Earth... I'm afraid that depression is hereditary and I would never willingly transmit my illness to another living being...I'm not crazy about babies and toddlers.

It's scary to think that these are decisions my friends are considering. My girlfriends. Men, of course, don't have to think about it as soon.

There is the whole work thing too. In France we have amazing day care facilities. In Germany not at all. My Kollegues discuss whether it's better to jeopardize your career by being a stay-at-home mother or pay someone your entire salary to raise your kids. It's a different environment here.

Why am I rambling like this? What, exactly, makes me so uncomfortable about having to choose a life, childless or with children, job-orientated or family-orientated?

Is it my grandmother's death? Am I thinking about generations renewing themselves?

When does the biological clock start ticking?

Sex in Berlin

I know why people read this blog...Because of the sex. Well, I am here to pander to those so-called baser instincts. I visited the Museum of Eroticism in Berlin, and boy have I learned stuff.

The museum is mostly about pedagogical information. Confusingly, it also presents a collection of antique erotica and paraphenalia. There's a sex shop on the ground floor with very nice and helpful salesladies, in case you didn't understand the exhibition section on toys.



An 18th century dildo, in ivory. It's very decorative!



The BDSM section was not very informative. It was mostly a photo op ploy, with sniggering tourists taking pictures of themselves within or around the contraptions. I didn't like the way this was shown at all.




As usual, my photos are atrocious but to be fair, the lighting was bad.



The two great things about the informative sections were how homosexual sex was always included in the videos, not as a separate thing. So for "kissing" or "erotic massage" you would see gay couples as well as straight ones. There were interracial couples shown as well. A whole wall of plaster molds of penises and vaginas was titled "every size is right" which I also thought a good message. Surprisingly the snickering tourists usually went silent in front of the wall, maybe busy comparing themselves to the different models.

A safe sex video was well-made, with STD descriptions and a catalogue of symptoms. Very non-judgemental.

Finally, a bit of hands-on action with the following photo where you can see a German incitation to look for and feel the G-spot. Two mannequins with realistic inner body parts were shown, one for women and one for men. I enjoyed how sheepish the tourists look when looking for where the prostate was. For all their swagger, they seemed very ignorant.






This was about how nature looks sexual. Cue pictures of rocks.

Finally, a bit of information on how to understand men and women. The museum really went against the usual clichés, and refusing the submissive woman/aggressive man dichotomy.

All in all, I thought the museum was odd but useful in its way. People go there for the giggle factor but will probably leave slightly less clueless.

Office talk: what makes a relationship work

Oh look, a sweet strawberry stand. They are all over the place in this season. Just give two euros to the nice strawberry people, and eat your Erdbeeren in the subway. Sommer in Berlin!

Let me rephrase that.

What makes a relationship work?

First of all, I'm never quite sure how you're supposed to understand the word "work" in this context. Is a working relationship one that lasts forever? Doubtful, no? Because I'm sure that we've all had relationships that did not last but which could be defined as having worked.

(Just typing the word relationship makes me think about my sister who mocks my "serial monogamy" and I miss her so much even summer strawberries can't really compensate)

I've been thinking a lot about this topic because ever since I've become a German working girl, I've been listening to my co-workers chat. And boy do they chat. And they chat about relationships. Men. Break-ups.

It's like a wave of stereotypical oestrogen; it's like I've become one of the GIRLZ: braid my hair! tell me about how your boyfriend encourages you to diet! und so weiter!

So all they do is complain about their relationships. None of them work, yet they stay in these apparently miserable unions, bitching and bitching about how boring/predictable/slobby/bad in bed their Männer are.

So once in a while I'll open my trap and ask the question: why do you stay?

Maybe what makes a relationship work is realizing that nothing is perfect, as one co-worker told me. "Of course, it's not perfect. But it's better than many other relationships I know. At least he respects me."

Or maybe it's shared passions, like the co-worker who is a photography geek like her boyfriend.

Or maybe just fear of the unknown.

I have no idea what makes a relationship work. I know what worked in all my past relationships: learning how to become an adult with someone you trust, discovering adventure and passion with someone you admire.

When the nosy and nice co-workers quizz me I can tell them about my past. I like remembering the funny, teenage years with H and the thrilling, rollercoaster years with X.

So I can talk about that, but not about my boyfriend. Not about how I feel, how it feels. Because it's all so fragile for the moment. Life is so fragile at the moment.

On my bicycle

I bike to work in the morning; in the nascent heat wave. 98°F at 8. The road looks fuzzy because of my dirty sunglasses. The world is incredibly perfect when you're on a bike, swift, efficient, slightly sweaty, perfect. It smells like trees and brown bread.

I watch the Berlin girls in their shorts, long bruised legs, perfect skin, black tattoos on their shoulders. I watch the men, tall, square, casual.

I'm a watcher on my bike. I forget my sadness. I forget how hot it is, how I can already feel my heart beating between my ribs because the heat makes me nervous.

And I want to tell you that I'm OK. I'm not lost, I'm just biking around because I like feeling free.

I know where I'm going.

After the funeral

The funeral was beautiful. My aunts had conjured up seemingly in no time at all flowers to decorate the church, flowers on the casket, flowers billowing down to the floor. My grandmother, who was a garden writer and a garden designer, would have loved it. Around 400 people arrived. Most of them had known her well. People had flown in from America, Tunisia, London. She was a very loyal friend.

We did a very simple ceremony. A string quarted played some Beethoven, excerpts from Mozart's Mass in C were sung. I was relieved no Wagner was on the program. She had loved the Ring. My mother said a few words, as did the priest and some of Gramama's friends.

I read Saint Francis's prayer.

She had read it to us many times aloud when we were children. I'm glad I read that.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
fair and stormy, all weather's moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night.
He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,
who sustains us
with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,
for love of You bear sickness and trial.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,
and serve You in all humility.

And then we all gathered in terrible heat to talk about her and mourn.

My grief will come soon, when I have time. For now I am stunned. And tired. Thank God for my sister.

Writer's block

First of all, thank you for your sweet thoughts.

I'm going to Paris this weekend for the funeral. My sister and cousin are coming back from New York and Boston respectively.

I have to read an essay in the name of the grandchildren. I cry at the drop of a hat. I feel so nervous about writing the damn thing, striking the right note between funny and sad. And then I have to read it.

I have total writer's block.

Funeral

My grandmother died on Saturday.

I miss her

Why football matters (...can't call it soccer) to me

I like being French for a multitude of reasons. Football is not one of them.

So why is the premature end of the French team's adventures in South Africa bumming me so much?

Let me preface this by saying: I love watching sport. I watch tennis, rugby, basket-ball, volley-ball, skiing, curling, (CURLING), track and field, swimming, you name it.

I don't enjoy football that much. And I hate, hate, hate the French obsession with the sport. All the sport newspapers talk about is football. Who is winning the national cup, who is winning the Euroligue, who is winning the European Championship, who is winning the World Cup.

Boredom.

I was 12 when France became CHAMPIONS DU MONDE, world champions, in 1998. It was an amazing day: the whole of France went down in the streets, dancing, singing, hugging. Racism, faced with the amazing achievement of a team composed of white, black and Arabic players (or in French black blanc beur), appeared to be obsolete. Newspaper editorial after newspaper editorial celebrated the success of New France, which integrated its minorities and became leaders.

Fast forward to today. THe French football team has been utterly disgraced. I won't bore those who don't care about the game, but suffice to say we were bad, lazy and atrociously boring on the field.

Why do I care? I care because people are talking back home. People are saying that the team players who come from other countries are lazy because they can't be patriotic. And by people, I don't just mean people on the street, which is bad enough. I mean our elected representatives.

Can you imagine Senators of America commenting on the failure of the...I don't know, golf team for the Ryder cup and attributing it to the fact that some of the players have foreign origins???

So football matters to me at the moment. As a symbol. Racism never disappears in France. It just hides while we're winning.

PS: I'm in Berlin. Adventures to follow!

tell me about your first job?

It's that time again.

Time to leave home.

My sister is gone and with her a part of me, but also a voice of reason. If she were with me now, she would dismiss my fears and make me laugh, and I would remember how excited I am to live in Berlin for a few months (only four!) and that it's going to be amazing.

I'm leaving in a week. Next Sunday is my going-away party. And then I'm going to do a job I don't even understand, in German.

So this is a request: can you tell me about your first job? I'd love to know how it went.

Visiting Greece II

After Athens, AD and I decided to wander around on two islands, Santorini and Paros. Santorini is a volcanic island in the shape of a crescent moon. The sand on the beaches is black, which is very impressive. It's also one of the most touristy places in Greece, so it was quite a feat to get it relatively free from visitors, May being the beginning of the season.

AD and I are both huge eaters, and we ate our way through Santorini. One evening, I slipped on a pretty dress, AD put on a shirt and we went to an excellent and very chic restaurant, which was entirely empty! New food crush: beetroot salad with yogurt ice-cream on top. Amazing.

So what did we do on the islands? We spent a little time on beaches...but not that much. We walked a lot, inhaling the soft, almost sugary smell of fig trees. We rented a quad bike and wandered around the coasts. We climbed up black volcanic rocks and ingested a huge amount of olive oil.

I loved Greece. Before I left, I was pretty nervous. It was my first trip with my boyfriend and we've been dating for six months-it's all very new and freshly painted still, and I was afraid a whole week of twenty-four/seven exposure to Sara would drive anyone mad. But it was wonderful. Even when I got earache on the plane coming home and dragged my suitcase through a rain storm to get home, before preparing for a gruelling week of hellish exams, it was so worth it. I'll never forget the colour of the sunsets, or the way I could feel the past come back to life around me.

Now that I'm preparing for new adventures in foreign countries, I'm thankful I had a true week of holiday, with sunburns, giggles and yogurt ice-cream.

A few snapshots, mostly taken by AD, so they look much better than usual!





Beautiful Santorini and its ridiculously photogenic troglodyte houses...


Enjoying the black sand beach with my partner in crime...


Looking ridiculous with my Birkenstock sandles on our vehicle.


Drying octopii. The fishermen bash them first before hanging them out in the sun. I was both repelled and fascinated by them.

Visiting Athens (Greece, I)

I've decided to start the travelogue with our first few days in Athens. We booked our tickets ages before the trip but then didn't bother to organize anything until our arrival in Greece started looming in the horizon. We booked hotels on the internet, vastly helped by comments on the different travel websites, and just went there, thinking we would play it by ear.

Boy did this plan work.

To start, I have to thank A.D, my tireless GPS and restaurant finder extraordinaire. He never gets lost. He never gets confused. He is always hilarious and entertaining, even on a night ferry when you have earache and want to kill everyone, especially the dehumanized ferry voices telling you to RELAX ON THE FERRY PLEASE.

Ahem.

Back to Athens. So the plan was 2 and 1/2 days there. And the plan worked amazingly well.

We went to a nice hotel near the centre of the capital and decided after a quick change of clothes (huge change of temperature!) to go visit. We went on top of one of the small mountains and saw the wonderful view there, I was quite enamoured.

As I wrote a few days ago, I became very emotional in Greece. I love ruins and ancient history, and visiting all the places I had read so much about...

For some reason I packed a lot of dresses. I don't wear them so often, but I was on holiday!



Love turtles. Their adorably slow and awkward gait touch me and I always feel like stroking their prehistoric heads before they slowly retreat.

This handsome fellow was later rejoined by his wife and child. A.D didn't feel like taking his giant camera out though, but they looked very comfy next to the Dyonesian temple.





This is the theatre where Sophocles, Euripides and Eschylus performed their plays. I may have squealed loudly when I saw it.


This is the agora, which was described in my guide book as "a badly organized, messy area where Ancient Greeks met to discuss political affairs". Harsh!



Travelling with a biologist=ant pictures. You don't want to know how many Hellenic Ants I now have on my computer.

The Acropolis was wonderful, but the museum was very boring. Most of the frieze remaining on the Temple was "bought" by Lord Elgin in 1805 and brought to England, so all the movies in the museum kept mocking the British. All the red lobsterish English people looked even more lobsterish as they listened to a broad Texan accent discussing Corinthian columns.

In the Acropolis museum, I took a few pictures of Hellenic art.

I especially like this pervy showing.



This jockey riding a horse is disturbing, but amazingly graceful, wouldn't you agree?



Not many tourists (it's just beginning to be tourist season at the moment) and so much fun. We had lavish dinners and amazing ice creams, oh and more tomorrow.

Back from Greece

When I was a little girl, my mother woud tell me and my sister stories from Greek mythology. I grew up with Gods and Goddesses who behaved very badly indeed (almost every story about a nymph starts with her rape). Visiting Greece has always been one of my dreams, mostly because of this tradition.

I have so much to tell. I've come down with terrible earache and sickness, and I'm overwhelmed with work, but as soon as my boyfriend sends me some pictures, I'll do a nice travel diary.

Walking up to the Acropolis...Drinking cocktails above the Santorini Caldera...Driving a scooter around Paros with sun-burns on my shoulders...Swimming in the Aegean sea...

It was an amazing week.

Move that body

I dragged my sister to a Zumba class. It's a fitness/dance thing, mixing lots of different latin styles, and it's really exhausting.

I've done fitness classes this year, but it's only running that give me quiet. My brain stops talking talking, and my legs feel the pounding, and the world has a beautiful perfect silent quality to it.

I'm a terrible dancer (although an enthusiastic one) so I was hoping I could keep up with the Zumba teacher, an adorable Cuban man in his late thirties who could shake his money maker in a way I can only aspire to.

Something happened to me during that class. I lost myself in the music, in the gestures, in the tiredness of trying to keep up with the steps and not succombing to the heat, I found myself in that emptiness I love about running. I was pretty bad at anything requiring a good hip movement, Shakira has nothing to worry about yet, but I loved it.

That's the thing about exercice: I do it because it's the best cure for depression. I would do it if it bored me horribly. And I'll be honest: I don't like "fitness" for the sake of fitness, I don't care if I don't have perfect abs. One of the reasons I hated my bodysculpt class was all the negative body talk: "Come on ladies, let's get rid of that fat!" It was noisy and vulgar. People talked about dieting in the locker room. I'm a recovering bulimic: I don't need people talking about themselves as if they were slabs of meat.

I like the feeling that everything is slowing down and that I'm enjoying my own little nirvana for a while. And if it comes with a healthy dose of Cuban sexiness, that's pretty OK with me.

As I wrung the sweat out of my Tshirt at the end of the class, I exchanged a smile with my sister. She looked happy and worn out and delighted.

We walked slowly home, and I can't lie, I may have practised some of those hip shakes this morning.

America the Great

When I left home to live in Chicago for a year, I was twenty years old. I had been with my boyfriend for about three years, and we were wondering where we were going, if we had outgrown each other. I was embarking on an entirely new adventure, and to be honest, I was doing it to see if I could-if there was a possibility for me to be independant and free. I could have gone to England, which would have meant the possibility of going home more often. But I chose Illinois.

I wasn't ready. Or was I?

At twenty I was pursuing post-graduate studies in France. American students my age seemed so much less mature- they struggled with paper writing, and went to class wearing sweatpants. The teaching, too, was strange. You could talk to the professors after class, and sometimes they invited you to their home for tea or dinner. This was terrifyingly different from the very stilted university atmosphere in France.

On the other hand, all those American students I felt so superior to were juggling their studies and a job, sometimes more-they had a driver's licence, they were street-smart. I could snigger all I liked about the plush toys on the bed and the prudish attitude to sex and the ridiculous way they consumed alcohol, they certainly looked independant and free.

I had a nervous breakdown. It had been some time coming, obviously, it didn't spring out of that year in America. I believe that realizing just how incapable I was of making choices was a definite trigger-America made me feel bad about myself. I had fallen in love with so much of it- the energy, the ambition, the goals.

When I went to visit my sister two weeks ago, I was afraid I would feel the same anguish. I visited her beautiful campus gingerly, chatted with her fun, ambitious friends, went to the library, saw a few dorm rooms (no plush animals!).

My sister is so happy in America. She went there at 18. Now our situations were very different- I had to fend for myself, had no one to explain anything, struggled with administrative labors,etc. But her achievements there are nonetheless remarkable. We're talking 4.0 GPA here!

My sister has blossomed in America and that makes me so very happy.

Going there again was liberating. I no longer felt the need to justify how French I was. Yes, I believe that Americans work too much, that Americans are sexually prudish and that everyone should be allowed to drink at 16. But I have a lot to learn from the driven attitude of people my age, who make their own way and never apologize for being successful.

It's been an on/off affair between us, but I truly love America.

Back from the USA!

Because I watched the Cartoon Network as a child in Holland, these vitamins completely won me over.
I <3 Northampton.

I had a wonderful time in America. First of all, I have to say that I love America, I love how completely gargatuan everything is, I love how junky the junk food is, I love how beautiful the country is, I love how nice everyone is. It's perfect. I'm very happy living in Europe, but whenever I go back to the USA I am struck anew by the sheer scale of everything-in a good way.

So I went to visit my aunt and my sister, and I got to visit two college campuses (or should it be campi? Whatever, as any good Freshman would say), Bard College and Smith College.

I'll focus on Smith College because I lived there! For three whole days!

The American Way of Education is just amazing. From the libraries to the gym facilities, to the splendiferous campus, it's just NOT THE SAME THING AS IN FRANCE. The incredible lavishness of it all...Anyway, I intend to talk about this some more, when I'm not ridden with jetlag.

The forbidden word

The French don't talk about money, as a rule. I remember when I lived in America, being shocked at how easy it was to casually refer to your salary, or talk about money problems. Jokes about mortgages. Paying for the kids' education.

I haven't been brought up that way. We always laughed at my sister who was inquisitive as a child, wondering what job would get you what kind of wages. In retrospect, I don't understand why we discouraged her. It's certainly rude to ask people point-blank what kind of money they make, but is it wrong to be curious about it?

Money. Cash. Moolah.

My parents are pretty bad with money, but then they don't really care. My father is certainly the worst person with money I know. Unfortunately I'm a close second.

My short stint in the Catholic Church could be to blame; or maybe chalk it up to bad parental example, (though my sister disproves both theories): I tend to ascribe my unthrifty ways to lazyness and fear of being selfish. I've had such an enchanted, easy life, that it seems churlish not to give money to charities, buy drinks for students who have a hard time ending the month, and of course there are all the silly purchases that add up. My book habit. My obsession with asos.com. Shoes.

I've decided that it's time to care about money. It won't be fun to keep track of everything I spend, but it's necessary. I'm tired of being irresponsible about money, because there's nothing carefree about being stupid financially. I'm not a kid anymore. So I'm making a budget and sticking to it.

Any tips for this financially clueless girl? Are you money-savvy? Do you give to charities?

Bruises

I'm often covered in bruises. Running cross-country when you fall a lot can create a devilish amount of scratches and blue blotches. Currently I am sporting attractive yellowing marks all over my legs and even my shoulders (damn tree branches).

I still wear skirts. I don't care that people can see my training injuries.

But I feel shy about those other bruises.

It's almost been a year since I started writing here. It's almost been a year since X broke up with me. The bruises are fading, but they are still visible.

The fear that no one will ever love me for who I really am.
The feeling that I'll never be enough.

Recently I was on Facebook and I saw a notification that one of X's closest pals had become FB friends with the Rebound Fuck. My heart stopped. It all came back.

What would help me get over this last hurdle? I wish X would tell me he felt sorry for the way we broke up. I wish he could call me and tell me that part of the end of our relationship was that HE has issues, problems and the like.

I wish he could give me closure.

And he won't.

I've been trying to cover up the bruises. But when it all comes back, with the smell of spring, my face pinker because of the sun, the taste of strawberries, it still hurts.

You can stop loving someone and they still have the power to hurt you.

I am happy. I'm in another relationship. Things are going well for me.

And yet, some of my worst fears have his fingerprints on them.

Overwhelmed

I'm feeling a bit weird. I'm allergic to pollen, so this season is a bit trying to me. I'm depressed, for reasons that I can't really get into, because there are no real reasons.

Sometimes I feel like such a burden to the people around me. Help me. Listen to me. How often can you hear that without feeling overwhelmed? After all, it's my life, not theirs. I'm the one meant to figure stuff out.

In a perfect world, everyone would be honest. Or at least a bit. They would tell you that they are busy when they just can't take your drama anymore. So you could always be sure of when you are annoying them or not. You wouldn't have to guess all the time. I'm not afraid of rejection as much as I am afraid of mute boredom and annoyance.

I hate bothering people but I'm convinced I do it all the time.

Jealous

I come from jealous stock. Some people in my family, most notably my mother, are intensely jealous. It's not an emotion I feel very often. As a child, I was jealous of the attention my sister got, like many children, I suppose. As a teenager, I felt jealous of people who had friends. Now I sometimes feel a twinge of envy when people go on awesome vacations. But it's not much to write home about.

Both of my ex-boyfriends were/still are flirtatious, attractive men who were surrounded by women a lot of the time. Some of whom were trying to go out with them. This never made me particularly jealous. And then X actually did more than flirting with one of his groupies.

And I felt so jealous. I suddenly realized what jealous meant. And I hated it!

Jealousy is one of the most pointless emotions I can think of. It brings you nothing but pain. Sometimes I remember in a flash of horror just how bad I felt. How eaten up. How wrecked.

And you never know when it may come again.

talking about sex

Do you talk about sex with your family? With your friends? With your colleagues?

If you look at my sidebar, you will see I read blogs that occasionally talk about sex, and not in an abstract way, in a this-was-last-night way. I don't read them because of the content, per se, I read them because of the voice of the person writing. Because they are not judging me. Or themselves. Or anyone. Just enjoying their life.

I don't think sex is a very intimate subject to write about. It can be, of course. Any topic, skillfully explored, can lead to honest, revealing words. But the topic itself doesn't strike me as more intimate than talking about work problems, or how your children are coping with changing schools, or how much you hate your cousin.

I wonder why, then, is sex considered so taboo, so "dangerous" to write about on a public or anonymous platform. Why people will judge others according to their tastes. Food writers complain that when they criticize some species of asparagus they get endless hate mail, so the Internet is probably full of insane, angry people, regardless of the topic.

But then I don't consider sex "naughty". Or "nice". Or "vanilla". Or "non-vanilla". I don't even understand such distinctions, and why people enjoy the labelling Maybe they like to be thought liberated and edgy. I would go with Oscar Wilde here, who so aptly said that "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all."
I think the same of sex.

I don't like talking about sex with people because of the labelling. Because sometimes people who tell me about their sexual practices expect me to react in some way: shocked maybe, because I am very conventional outwardly, or perhaps jealous.

I'm sure there is a better way of talking about it.

Spring

I wake up and the window is open.
"It's spring."
He smiles at me.
"It is. Do you want some tea?"
"No, I want to look at spring."

A.D holds me as I look through the window. I remember being six and my mother explaining to me what pollen was, after my teacher had told us about all the pollen in the air. Cherry blossoms in Normandy. Perfumed wind stroking your face.

I love spring.

I loved spring in Chicago, when the sun would be still be melting the snow on the street. I loved spring in Lyon when I ran in the parc and saw all the animals coming out of hiding, still in their bulky winter coats, shedding liberally. Spring in Berlin is so beautiful it breaks my heart.

And spring in Paris...All the pretty girls are wearing short skirts again.

"Let's go have ice cream for breakfast before you go to class."

And we ate our ice cream in a park, watching sleepily as kids fought over spades and shovels, talking nonsense and being happy.

"I love you."

loving my flaws

I used to think that lying to people would make them love me.

I used to think that I could have anything I wanted, as long as I really wanted it.

I used to think that love was enough.

It's always more complicated than it looks.

What I find most hard about growing up is accepting that things are not always someone's fault. It's not enough to attribute blame, you have to fix the situation regardless of who is guilty.

I believe that one of our biggest fears, in general, is that people will stop loving us because of our flaws. As soon as they get close enough, they will be afraid and leave.

What I am trying to say is this: I'm not thinking so far ahead anymore. Yes, some people will never get past some of my flaws. Our faults are just not compatible. That is perfectly fine. Painful, but fine. I can't live my life waiting for people to be disappointed.

Because I don't spend my time expecting to be disappointed by others.

Travels, tips and nudity

It's good to be back. You know you've been a bad, bad blogger when your sister tells you that you're not updating enough :)

I've been reading everybody's blogs but much too stressed out to write anything. I am very superstitious and am always afraid to jinx my good news until it's a hundred percent sure... But now I'm ready.

Here's my good news: I got an internship in Berlin, working for a BIG COMPANY, and I'll be doing environmental lobbying. In German. Pray for me. I will be there from July to early November, and I am stoked! I love Berlin more than I can tell, and I can't wait to rent a cosy flat and work and read and write my Masters on the weekend and go to concerts and take trains to Leipzig and Dresden, and eat masses of pastry. By the way, I will have in all probability enough room on my couch and in the aforementionned flat for visitors, so if anyone wants to spend time in Berlin, email me!
Ahem.

This brings me to my first request: does anyone have any advice on how to dress corporate in the summer? I am the everlasting student, so while my cupboards groan with the weight of a thousand witty T-shirts and ratty jeans, I do not seem to own anything that screams SERIOUS WORKER HERE! WATCH ME LOBBY, GIRLS AND BOYS!

Here comes my second request: I will be going to America on the 25th of April to visit my sister and family. I will be staying there for a measly 6 days, because my university is a pain. I will be staying in Boston for a couple of days, and then going off to Northampton. My sister will take care of the Northampton bit, but if anyone has a wonderful tip about a place I should see in Boston, send it in.

Life is busy. Apart from writing letters to big companies in Germany hoping they would want me and my passionate belief in wildlife conservation, I have been working and working. After my uni term is finished, I have to write and deliver a paper for my other Masters diploma and it will be gruelling work as well. So I have decided that I will only have one week of real holiday this summer, beginning of June. The boyfriend and I are trying to organize it, but since he is going to Brazil (jealous), Italy (ditto) and probably a million other places as well, it's a bit complicated. So far we want to go to Greece. And yes you will get postcards.

In the past month I have also done a naked reading for a squatters' happening, written my first international law essay and ran a lot.

The naked reading was one of the most bizarre things ever. A girl in my class, M, is currently living in a squat next to my parents' house, a very posh neighbourhood. It's a huge empty building, with architects and students living in each flat. No hot water and they steal the electricity from the un-thrilled neighbours. They are constantly being threatened with eviction, and since the rents in Paris are astronomical and the lodging situation dire, they decided to stage a big happening to raise awareness about their story. M asked me if I would participate in her "naked reading". At first I was curious why she picked me from all the other people in the class. I found the concept intriguing: we would be in one of the bathrooms in the building, and while two of the girls would take a bath, I would read texts out loud. I like reading out loud. So I accepted.
As I arrived in the squat, I realized that there were a lot of people around. Suddenly being naked in front of an audience didn't feel so carefree and easy. And then I met the owner of the bathroom, who would be taking a bath with M, and she smiled at me. She was stunningly beautiful, in a goth way. As I took in her flawless face with its vivid eye makeup, she whispered: "Do you mind if I wash my hair? I'm covered in sperm."

From then on I felt quite comfortable. We made tea, and then took our clothes off. A curtain separated us from the crowd. They could have a glimpse of us, but mostly they could hear my voice, the soft splashing of the water, and the giggles we shared. Anyway, I was fascinated by the reactions our happening provoked. The men were shy, but many women came to talk to us, and sometimes took their clothes off too, sitting on the warm tile floor.

Some women told me they missed a sense of community between other women and themselves. Some women told me that they hadn't felt so peaceful in a long time. It was quite lovely.. We felt free to be who we were: young, old, fat, flawed, thin, muscular. No one was judging. It felt as if we had created an instant community of acceptance just by facing the gaze of others and being brave enough to put ourselves at risk.

It was a bit like blogging.

Sara does skiing

When I was a kid, my mother invested large amounts of money in my skiing education. My sister and I, every year, heavily kitted out, would be sent to the mountains to learn how to ski. I was never very athletic, but I liked skiing. There's an element of fun, of freedom, of swishing glory about going down slopes. And when you go up again in the mechanical chairs, you get to enjoy the beautiful contrasts between the dark rocks and the crisp, smooth layer of snow.

My boyfriend's parents own a lovely apartment next to a skiing resort and he invited me for a few days. I haven't skied seriously in years, but I jumped on the opportunity. I needed a break, and I wanted to spend some time with AD, and even the prospect of meeting seven of his friends was not enough to deter me.

The train station in the mountains was typical of any small French station: empty and gloomy. I waited for the bus that would take me up, and discovered that I was the only passenger in a 200-place bus. Up we go. The driver was a small, bearded man, with clever eyes. When he engaged me into conversation, I answered politely, trying to keep my eyes on the road so I wouldn't be violently sick.
Turns out he was a militant Muslim and obviously quite keen on converting me.
"What does faith mean! Why don't you accept God in your life?"
I was slightly worried by the fact he did not seem to pay any attention to the winding roads ahead, and tried to talk in a placating way. Whenever he got heated up, he waved his hands away from the steering wheel. I was feeling very nauseous by this point. After swerving violently, the bus almost crashed into a rock. I was almost hoping we would have to stop, so I could be quietly sick behind a tree. No such luck: I was theologized at for an hour.

Finally we arrive.

AD was waiting for me at the bus stop and I was so happy to see him. Still very dizzy and unwell, I went to the apartment to Meet the Gang.

It went quite well. I liked his friends and got along well with them. And oh, the skiing. AD is a very good skier, but I'm a very reckless one. I love skiing very fast and jumping off bumps, and taking difficult slopes. I had a lovely time. At the bottom of one of the slopes, AD smiled at me.
"You have a very...aggressive style."
We skied mostly with his ex-girlfriend-turned-best-friend, who was a good skier and great company. She also adores mountain cheese, so we bonded over that.

Skiing all day, cooking huge cheese-based meals in the evening, and then talking all night to AD: pretty much perfect.

Of course, on the way back to Paris, I had to take an (empty) bus back with my theologian driver, who continued to proselytize and piss me off, but this time I didn't feel so queesy, so I could react intelligently, instead of murmuring monosyllables while clutching my seat.

Now it's back to work. But I have a few freckles on my nose to show that I had a holiday.

Body image, aerobics and me

Maybe it was the way the instructor talked.
"Come on girls, shake that ass, we don't want any cellulite on the beach!"
"If you're not in pain, you're not shaping up!"

Maybe it was the techno music, including a remix of Whitney Houston's version of "I will always love you" which sounded like a child had tinkered with a DJing program on his parents' Mac. Some things should not be remixed. Or even sung. Dolly Parton's version is much better.

Or maybe it was the locker room. I hate locker rooms. They remind me of being chosen last for gym classes and they have a horror movie vibe about them. When I open a locker, I half expect to find a severed head with a post-it on its forehead.

Anyone who knows me just a bit will eventually hear my long rants about how we are conditioned from birth to hate ourselves so we will eventually buy stuff from advertisers. Whether you are thin, fat, in between, or even on a diet, you can love your body and it will show in your confidence. Ahem, here I am ranting again. Moving on...

I had an opportunity to put my endless speechifying to the test this week, when I went to an aerobics and stretching class with a friend. I belong to a track and field club and run about four times a week, but my friend wanted us to do something fun together and I accepted. Also I'm as stiff as a poker, so a bit of stretching won't harm me.

All the girls in the class were incredibly slim, lycra-clad and glossy-haired. I felt incredibly awkward among them from the beginning. I had no trouble following the class, even though I sometimes doubt I own abdominal muscles, and I enjoyed some portions of it, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was ugly. That I took too much space.


I had this feeling all throughout my eating disorder. I'm too big! I'm too tall! No clothes will ever fit! After months of cognitive therapy, I managed to feel proud of myself. I started running. I never feel bad about myself while I run, even if I'm slow or not feeling very well. I feel free, happy, and attuned to myself.

So why did that aerobics class make me feel so terrible?

It's not the other girls. In my university, almost all the female students are affluent and very groomed, with that thin look that most people associate with French women. I am usually the biggest person in any given class, but also among the tallest. This is fine.

So what to do? I've decided to give the class another go. Maybe I was cranky. Maybe I was having a bad day.

But if it still makes me feel bad, and full of self-loathing, I will drop it. At least I won't have to stick my bottom up in the air while the instructor intones: "Come on, girls, stretch those glutes!"

Is there an uglier word than "glutes"? I hope not.

Birthday Me

I'm 24!

Wish me a happy year please, I have high hopes!

Holland for the day

The lakes, rivers and moats in Holland were almost all frozen. It's been one of the coldest winters in Europe this year. I love this picture because it reminds me so much of the time we skated here, and would then make hot chocolate with marshmallows.

I went to Amsterdam on family business Friday. It was great fun. I love Dutch houses. This is a house in a small village. The weather was pretty atrocious and my photo skills are what they are, but I hope you can see how quaint it looks.

This is the sweet shop where my mother and aunt used to go and eat Drop, which is the Dutch word for liquorice, and ice lollies, which I think you call popsicles in America. My favourites are King peppermints. I think all sweet shops should look like this.


When my sister and I were kids we would go to this playground and push each other on this swing. I missed her so much this time around, I asked my mother to take the pictures thinking of her. And yes, I've gone back to brunette.

What's up? I'm busy, looking for an internship in environmental science, writing a Masters dissertation on Quakers, planning a trip to America this Easter, getting ready to celebrate my birthday. Oh, and falling pretty heavily for someone.

Holland is home to me. Just being there for a day was enough to stop time a little. I love the flat horizon, the endless rows of houses, the growling language, the tall, tall people, the bicycles everywhere.

We all have our Heimat, that wonderful German word that describes the place we call home, not necessarily our homeland or the place we live in, but that mysterious link that sometimes bind us to a place.

My Heimat smells like King peppermint.