i'm heading to paris in five days, so i think it's a good time to start up this blog again. it's been a year since my last post.
in preparation for my next year abroad, i decided i'd go ahead and look into this whole french culture thing...
as a first step, i googled "moving to paris don't speak french" and found this really funny and informative blog by an american in paris. his first post: DON'T BERET. which has me really bummed because prior to last week i would never have dreamt of owning a beret, much less wearing one. much less wearing one in paris. except someone gave me a beret last week as a kind of joke going away present and... well, it looks pretty good on me.
so i think my plan may have to be: DO BERET, but do it in a conspicuous section of the city while wearing a boat neck shirt and a scowl. DO BERET while laughing a la Gerard Depardieu. DO NOT MIME in beret, but DO ACCEPT COINS AND BILLS into beret from passersby.
as i said, i'm new to this whole french culture thing. but from what i have found out so far, this is exactly the kind of thing that they go for.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Apropos: Head East
i found Head East on my ipod tonight and put it on: instant nostalgia.
growing up we awoke early morning Saturdays with the sounds of my dad's childhood booming through our bedroom doors . i hated it then but it sure feels like Home twenty years later. called my dad to tell him I was thinking of him. life can be so good at the oddest, most unexpected times.
the second home of my own childhood will be sold within the month. so many years of my life within those walls where my sister and I spent weekends or weeks, walls that wear the names of my dad and his brothers in decades-old pencil, walls that I patched and repainted after my grandfather died and before my grandmother moved out. i may never stand in that place again, but I have within me the ghosts of my childhood— my grandfather whose best years are all I ever knew, my own father as he was a dozen years ago, my aunts and uncles and cousins eating lunch then playing 42 at two tables, before and after divorces, fighting over politics or just horsing around. you would think that i could keep them fixed there, but they are changing, aging as i age, becoming more mature as i mature and consider the motives of their lives. already they are not the same as they were before.
i can't wait be back home with my family again and stand within other walls with them. i will try harder this time to fix them there.
growing up we awoke early morning Saturdays with the sounds of my dad's childhood booming through our bedroom doors . i hated it then but it sure feels like Home twenty years later. called my dad to tell him I was thinking of him. life can be so good at the oddest, most unexpected times.
the second home of my own childhood will be sold within the month. so many years of my life within those walls where my sister and I spent weekends or weeks, walls that wear the names of my dad and his brothers in decades-old pencil, walls that I patched and repainted after my grandfather died and before my grandmother moved out. i may never stand in that place again, but I have within me the ghosts of my childhood— my grandfather whose best years are all I ever knew, my own father as he was a dozen years ago, my aunts and uncles and cousins eating lunch then playing 42 at two tables, before and after divorces, fighting over politics or just horsing around. you would think that i could keep them fixed there, but they are changing, aging as i age, becoming more mature as i mature and consider the motives of their lives. already they are not the same as they were before.
i can't wait be back home with my family again and stand within other walls with them. i will try harder this time to fix them there.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
my new reality
i've made a major discovery. having woken up yesterday with flu-like symptoms, major sinus pressure and a grapefruit-sized nuclear warhead gone critical having replaced my brain, I called in, took the day off.
half-formed dream images of lounging on the couch watching bad movies, drinking thera-flu and being coddled by an attentive wife kept me in bed until 1 pm when i finally made my way downstairs to find my new reality.
and it's this: dads aren't allowed to be sick.
my daughter still expects to be entertained whenever anyone is in eyeshot. her toy box of words has ultimate potential; a zero-word vocabulary means my whispered plea of headache! fails to implicate the least subjugation. there are dishes to wash and if i am too feeble to wash them, they will be washed by an unimpressed wife to the further clattering abuse of my miserable head. neighbors will drop by, expected but forgotten, to drop off yet more children to be entertained.
i called in sick today before i went to bed last night. to serve me right, my daughter is now refusing to eat or sleep, even to be held by me when her mom is in the room, and i am certain that this is final punishment for all the wrong i have done in my three decades on earth.
today is crystal's long day, meaning she is out of the house for much of it, and with term ending soon, she needs time to write when she is in it. tomorrow will be the same and this weekend she is in LA training for the SAT tutoring summer job she's taken. what that means is i have a major daddy/daughter marathon coming up and about 24 hours to feel better.
wish me luck. . .
half-formed dream images of lounging on the couch watching bad movies, drinking thera-flu and being coddled by an attentive wife kept me in bed until 1 pm when i finally made my way downstairs to find my new reality.
and it's this: dads aren't allowed to be sick.
my daughter still expects to be entertained whenever anyone is in eyeshot. her toy box of words has ultimate potential; a zero-word vocabulary means my whispered plea of headache! fails to implicate the least subjugation. there are dishes to wash and if i am too feeble to wash them, they will be washed by an unimpressed wife to the further clattering abuse of my miserable head. neighbors will drop by, expected but forgotten, to drop off yet more children to be entertained.
i called in sick today before i went to bed last night. to serve me right, my daughter is now refusing to eat or sleep, even to be held by me when her mom is in the room, and i am certain that this is final punishment for all the wrong i have done in my three decades on earth.
today is crystal's long day, meaning she is out of the house for much of it, and with term ending soon, she needs time to write when she is in it. tomorrow will be the same and this weekend she is in LA training for the SAT tutoring summer job she's taken. what that means is i have a major daddy/daughter marathon coming up and about 24 hours to feel better.
wish me luck. . .
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