Hard to please

I tentatively went on another "date". It wasn't a date in the French way- it was a pizza with a guy from my economics class. But I know he's interested. So in a way it was a date.
Anyhow, it went well compared to my Groping Misadventure. He's polite and well-spoken. He helped me in and out of my coat. He pulled my chair back for me. He opens doors. He gave me a ride home. He asked me thoughtful questions about political topics; we're both history nerds and he is a musician. We even like the same kind of rock and roll.

So why am I complaining?

I'm not. He was nice. But he had no edge to him. He was too slow for me. It felt like driving a Moped after being used to a Yamaha. He didn't see ahead in the conversation, didn't see the jokes, wasn't funny or witty. I was in control of the evening, and I like being surprised once in a while.

Anyhow, definite upgrade from last time. He invited me to go to an open-mike jazz evening where he will be playing with his band. I may go.

But I'm hard to please, clearly. X is a hard act to follow.

Rant

Damn it.
I am so tired of judgemental people.

How do they find the energy? I find it difficult enough to walk around deciding what I want to do, without making to-do lists for every Jack and Sally I meet.

"You should..."
"If I were you..."

If these sentences have not been preceded by "What should I do?"or "Give me some advice, please, oh ye friend of great acument and perception", shove it, stranger. Oh, you say you mean well? Well that makes it dandy, then. I don't know you, you don't know me, so your opinions are entirely relevant to me.

Example:

In the subway. Morning. Grey faces, everyone is tired, someone is listening to their mobile really loudly, and French hip hop is...bad.

Random person: "You shouldn't carry around so many things, it's bad for your back."

....

Thanks? I have seen the light!

This rant includes: people who give unsollicitated advice to pregnant ladies. People who criticize homeless people because they are "lazy" in front of them.

And these are the same people who just sit there and don't move when someone gets physically assaulted because "it's not their business."

I need Alan Rickman to comfort me with his exquisite drawl.




Rant over.

Bitter/sweet

My sweet, my heart.

These words leave me with reluctance. Whispered endearments.

My sweet my heart my own darling.

Some words have texture. I remember staring at a Flemish painting, marvelling at how the stately futures were weighed down by rigid panels of cloth, and how each depicted jewel brought under the skin of my fingers the remembrance of stones and metal. So much flat reality.

Some words are both flat and textured. I repeat them, finding comfort in their triviality, but they are like poison. A phone against my lips, a spring morning filled with bitterness, washed away by rain.

My own darling, my dearest love.

You discover endearments in every language.

French is my mother tongue. It moves me. I believe wistfulness is its best mode. We have strong consonants, vibrant fricatives, butthey taper off into mellowness, giving an impression of relectance and abandon, quite unlike the watchfulness of German. You cannot really let a sentence drift away in German, or if you do, you are speaking it like a foreigner.

But yes, it took falling in love in English to really love English. In fact, being in love with a grammar Nazi, a high-stickler, gave me freedom to explore the recesses, the dirty corners and bring back forgotten treasures, ready to be laughed away or fiercely protected. His English is better than mine because beyond its accuracy, it is English. Mine is a hamper of toys. I feel no protectiveness towards it, the way I do towards my French.

My love, my delicious darling. Such flatness! I acknowledge their well-worn smirk, unavoidably sickening.To me, though, they are just broken in. I still feel these words and recognize them for the treacherous friends they are. All I've found within them, their music, the rumble of syllables finally meaning something. All I've lost.

In between the lost and the found, the texture of these words: an elusive, delicious texture that brings a smile, and an almost smile, as I say them.

Choices, choices

I hate this armchair, but I try to settle comfortably. I am paying for this, after all.
"So let's pick up where we stopped last week. Why don't you want to have children?"
I look at him. He's scratching his nose, not looking like an inquisitor at all. I smile.
"I don't want anyone to have my genes."
"What's wrong with your genes?"
"I'm chronically depressed." I wave an airy hand. And all that. I also have really bad blood circulation and asthma. But those don't count. They aren't life-threatening. They don't make you want to die. Or try to die.
"Do you believe depression is genetic?"
"I believe that it is, yes. And even if it's not, how could I bring up someone if I'm sad a lot? Wouldn't it be unfair on the child?"
I was brought up by someone with addiction. I know what it feels when your love is not enough for someone to change, not enough to make them happy. When you are a child, you don't know happiness is something you make for yourself. You think it's your fault.
"Why do you believe it's genetic?"
"I don't want to believe I had a choice in this."
I didn't choose to be alive. A lot of the time I wish I weren't. I'm stuck here for the best and for the worse. And my best is amazing. And my worse is soul-killing.
"I don't want to believe that I chose depression for myself."
"You've been through a lot."
"No, I haven't. And even if I had, it wouldn't change anything to the fact that it's my responsability to go beyond my bad experiences to make something of myself. If it's something wrong in my genome, my stumbles don't make me feel so guilty."

I choose to not be angry; I choose to forgive and forget, I choose to fight for what I care for.

"Maybe everything is a choice."
"Life isn't."
"Yes it is. You're here. You're choosing to remain alive. You're choosing to see me. You're choosing to get better. Every morning you go running to pump some endorphins in yourself and make yourself happier."
I can't see through my tears.
"Sometimes I feel no one knows what this feels like. How bloody hard it is. That no one cares."
"Don't you think I care?"
"I don't know."
My family cares. My friends care. But in the end, the shrink is right.

I choose this struggle, and I will run again tomorrow, and I'll think of the things I love and am passionate about. I'll see my friends and family. I'll cuddle with the cats and make really stupid jokes.

Whatever is coming, I may not be ready, but I choose to pretend I am. Give it to me, and watch me take it.

I choose to be a grown-up.

A moment of bliss

Today, or is it yesterday, I heard a wonderful concert. José van Dam sung a beautiful cycle of Schumann lieder, which got me crying after about five minutes. There's something about Schumann, the poetry he chooses, the piano's soft and furious interpretation, the waves of emotion and pain, that gets me every time. Then we had some lovely French chansons. Normally I'm not too fond of French songs, because the lyrics sound so corny. The way people used to speak changed, yet the chansons keep the same distribution of syllables over the notes. It's slightly perturbing when you are trying to listen to the music. But here the poetry was by Baudelaire or Verlaine, so you're pretty much enjoying the best of French poetry.
He concluded with Poulenc's cycle of bawdy Renaissance songs. Watching van Dam, who will always be for me the most dashing Leporello, winks and makes suggestive gestures while the audience howl with laughter was a great moment indeed.
So I cried, I laughed, and I clapped my hands raw.

I was sitting next to X. We were enjoying it together, as friends. Music has always been something we both love intensely, though in entirely different ways. (He's never liked Baroque so much either). But it was part of the pleasure to be there with him, after all that we've been through together, building a new chapter in our lives, yet still able to smile at each other or mistily grin when we were moved. Here is a man who held my hand when my father was terribly sick for months on end. Here is a man who taught me how to enjoy so many things in life, a good meal with friends, a glass of perfectly dry white wine. And this is the man who once loved me and now cares for me, and wants only the best for me, and who knows that I wish him everything he could possibly want.

So as I cried during the Schumann, I still felt like a very lucky person indeed.

Pretentious manifestos

I am currently writing an essay on Hakim Bey's seminal work, TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone), which may well be the most pretentious manifesto in the world.

"No, listen, what happened was this: they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.

There is no becoming, no revolution, no struggle, no path; already you're the monarch of your own skin--your inviolable freedom waits to be completed only by the love of other monarchs: a politics of dream, urgent as the blueness of sky.

To shed all the illusory rights & hesitations of history demands the economy of some legendary Stone Age--shamans not priests, bards not lords, hunters not police, gatherers of paleolithic laziness, gentle as blood, going naked for a sign or painted as birds, poised on the wave of explicit presence, the clockless nowever."

Contrast with this delightful Futurist Manifesto written in 1909 by Marinetti: "We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman. We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice."

Reading this crap makes me want to crawl into a hole and never pick up an art book again, which, coming from me, is the proof of despair.

Disguises

I'm wearing my grown-up dress. It's got a big skirt and a slim top, and I pair it with a blazer and some heels. I'm wearing this dress because I spent all day whoring myself out at the Sciences Po Business convention, giving my CVs and asking for money.Ironically, this took place in the Paris House of Chemistry. It feels quite strange, that this is a thing people do every day, when they ask for grants, for scholarships, and yet I find it so difficult. Give me!Money! On my shoulder you can see my big bruise-scratch that I got from tripping over a branch while running with the track team. Stupid. I also have a couple of beauties on each of my knees. I'm clumsy. Here's the thing: I've been covering up a lot of my bruises and of my hurts recently. On the one hand I deal with them better if I pretend they're simply not there. On the other, I know that they will hurt even more when I attend to them. Scary prospect. All these thoughts collided when I had lunch with my friend L from Lyon today. I felt a rush of nostalgia for all the good times we had together and I loved hearing about all the things she is doing. She admired my outfit and told me how old-ladyish I looked. I took off my top and showed her some of my AMAZING SPORT injuries. She giggled. "I guess some things don't change." I'm so used to people asking me to change, to always improve, that I found something wonderful in that shedding of my disguise.