Maybe I’m bonkers. It’s not that unlikely, actually. When paper pressure rages, I become a little bit of a crazy person. I’ve been spending whole days in the library and computer labs, emerging dazed at dinner time. This morning I sat down in a dark study room with one of my films and the next thing I knew I was late for lunch but hadn’t finished my breakfast. Now it’s two o’clock, and I’m not sure how that happened, either. At this rate it will only be a blink until five o’clock so that I can go outpedal the bulldogs that chase us in spinning class.
I think I’m getting things done. There’s a second brain that does the note-taking and writes all the outlines. I’m somewhere humming and picking at my cuticles while all of that happens. As always, though, there’s a deadline, so forcément there will be a paper. I wonder when it’ll come say hello.
Quick post : Things are great. I love dancing, people, French, exercise, books. I love my kitten.
Today has been tough, though. I didn’t sleep enough. I drowsed in class and contemplated curling up on the bench press bench in the gym. I guzzled coffee at work and now I am tired AND jittery, and I’m gonna go try to speak Arabic now.
I CANNOT WAIT for Monday, when Stewart will arrive and vacation will unofficially begin. I cannot wait for holiday things - family and generosity and love and warmth.
I’m not sure whether I picked it up in France or from my mother’s stories during my childhood about young girls getting snapped up and killed by strange men in cars, but I tend to be suspicious of strangers who try to talk to me.
Nevertheless, some of the most thought-provoking interactions I’ve had have been with strangers : there was Elena, with whom I shared a mishap-ridden train journey to Barcelona. She told me all about her daughter’s upcoming marriage, the difficulties of raising kids alone in a foreign country, her desire for a simple life full of love and works of love. She was remarkable, and I saw her again in Toulouse when she invited Brandon and I to her jungly apartment in the suburbs. My brief friendship with Elena gave me much food for thought.
This morning I has two interesting encounters while I was reading over coffee at Casa Mani, a little coffee shop off-campus.
There’s a French professor who I had my freshman year. She was crazy then – she made us draw trees and then psychoanalyzed the significance of the width of our trunks, the depth of our roots and the presence or absence of fruit in our trees. She told us to choose our favorite stone in the wall on one side of the room where we worked. Whatever connection these things had with the class, “Paris: The Epicenter,” was tenuous at best.
I’ve seen her from a distance a few times this year, but I’ve tried to avoid her. I think she’s an alcoholic. That destabilizes me big-time and I didn’t want to face her, but she came right up to me in the coffee shop today with watery eyes. She talked about all sorts of things, kept wiping her mouth, told me about a necklace she bought cheaply and how she got her first job. I don’t like how I felt during our exchange – I was uncomfortable and impatient and smiled and said “oui, oui, cool” to everything she said. I didn’t add anything to the conversation. I just let her follow her thoughts until they petered out and she wished me “bonne année” and left.
A while later a man sat down on the couch facing my chair and looked at me while he drank his latte through a straw. I did something I’m really good at: pretending not to notice anything that’s going on around me. I emitted “this book is really engrossing” vibes. He started talking to me anyway, about my major and my future. He talked about the cockiness of youth. I kept turning my eyes back to my book, but he kept talking. Finally he said, “The question I’m thinking about over this latte is this: true love or stability?” I had no answer for him, obviously. I don’t know his story.
It got me thinking, though. He’s not the only one who’s trying to find the answer to that question.