Listening Exercises

I wonder if it's something about my face. Or if, perhaps, I simply have an aura about me, an inexplicable vibe that gives strangers the impression, "Here is someone who will listen." Maybe I smile too much. Frown too much. Make too much eye contact. It's usually not a problem. Except for when it is.

When I was in Paris, it seemed I was approached constantly by people asking for directions. French people. And I suppose Paris is always full of tourists and visitors and, even as a local, it's quite possible to get lost sometimes. And, at the end of my three weeks there, I probably knew the subway system and the language just barely enough to be of minor assistance. Even if I could not help the people who approached me, it was never a nuisance to be momentarily engaged in conversation. But I could not help but wonder, in a crowd full of other commuters looking no less lost than I, why me?

It's when I'm working as a cashier in a bookstore that my inexplicable approachability can sometimes prove a difficulty. I don't usually attempt to engage people in conversation about the books they are purchasing, simply on account of the fact that most of the books people are buying are not anything I'd personally be interested in reading. If a customer is getting one of my favorite books of all time, yes, I'll probably say something. If someone is buying a travel guide to France, yes, I want to know when the trip begins. But, for the most part, nearly any conversation I have with a customer concerning the the process whereby she came to make her selection is going to involve me politely feigning interest while other customers, standing in line, glare at me impatiently.

Yesterday, a girl was buying a book on the Kama Sutra--definitely no desire for me to jump into a conversation about this purchase. I was finished ringing her up and was about to greet the next customer in line when she said, a little sadly, "Yeah, last night was our first night together and it was...you know...not great. Not bad but, you know, not what I was expecting." I feel myself going red. I force a sympathetic smile, say, "Ah..." and pray she won't keep talking; but she does.

I've expressed in a previous post my enthusiasm for the ease and familiarity with which Americans speak to strangers. In most cases, I enjoy being able to converse cordially with people I encounter at work and elsewhere. But perhaps, at least in these last few days, I've had a bit too much of it. I'm ready to crawl in bed, pull the covers over my head, and not have to listen to anyone's thoughts but my own.

This is France in a Nutshell: "Ai! 'elp me! I'm een a nutshell!"

In mid-December 2006, after the conclusion of Michaelmas term but before I returned home to the U.S. from my semester abroad in Oxford, I went for an evening stroll in Port Meadow. Bundled up against the crisp night air, I walked through the dark field, gazing up at the starts, and I knew deep down inside, beyond a doubt, that this was the best life was ever going to be.

My two months in France were better.

Tonight I leafed through the journal I kept while I was traveling. Inhibited by an erratic schedule and my own pure laziness, I didn't write about my experiences as regularly as I would have liked; but, occasionally, I did take the time to jot down at least a few thoughts on the beautiful, marvelous, challenging, humorous, life-changing experiences I was going through.

Since I was unable to be faithful to this blog during most of my time in France, I'd like to share a few key passages from my journal, just to fill you in a bit on my activities and impressions from the months of April and May:

26 mars 2011
...Deciding to stay in Paris for three weeks was a really good decision. It's basically the world capital of art, literature, and philosophy, and attempting to take it all in while staying in a hotel or hostel for a week or less would be exhausting and incomplete...

12 avril 2011
...Time's winding down so quickly. On the metro I read A Moveable Feast and when I get off the metro I find myself thinking the way Hemingway writes, only less clean and far less gripping. The other day, as I was walking along, I started imagining that Hemingway was walking beside me and we were talking and he was telling me I only need to write one true sentence, but he was talking more about life in general than about writing when he said this...

17 abril
Time to start thinking in Spanish...
...I'm very satisfied with my time in Paris. It was more expensive than I ever would have anticipated. But Paris is worth it. Paris will always be worth it. Even though it's expensive. Even though it's touristy. It's still Paris...

4 mai 2011
...Since returning to France after the stint in Spain, it seems I love each place I visit even more than the place before. Arles was amazing, but I liked Avignon even better. And Vaison la Romaine pretty much sealed the deal today on an inkling I've been having this week that I ought to come back here in a few years with my kids. I almost want to have kids so that I can bring them here...

9 mai 2011
...I really like milking the goats. That's something I look forward to. That and eating. Eating! It is an event! As it should be! I love eating in France...

17 mai 2011
...At Taizé, I'm able to slow down a bit and do some thinking. But it seems I have too much to think about. There's my education. My relationships. What I have experienced on this trip and how does/will it contribute to my decision-making process for my future. Should I extend the length of my trip? No. I think not. But maybe...

20 mai 2011
...As I was walking down to the Source just now, I had the thought that prayer and art are an awful lot alike. Both require so much work, but the rewards, when they come, are sublime. Because truly nothing in this life compares to the goodness of that moment when I feel the closeness of the Spirit, I will continue to search and to wait. How do we grow? We force ourselves to look past the unpleasantness of the current situation, to focus on the loveliness of the thing we are working for. And yet, when we get it, it is a gift. The closeness of the Spirit, the awareness of God's love, when it comes, is so much greater than anything we could ever get to by our own efforts. Great authors and painters have made similar observations about their work: you spend time with your work every day and often it is frustrating and essentially fruitless. But when the masterpiece at last reveals itself, it is something beyond you. It is a gift. It is grace...

May 24
Aboard the plane, awaiting take-off. Two months in France sounded like it might be too long; but, now that it's over, I know I could have stayed longer...

And that, in a nutshell, is what two months in France looks like.

The one where she decides to go to France

"You must be brave," people kept saying to me. Brave? It might sound brave to some, I suppose, if not downright brazen, that I would suddenly decide to put the remainder of my English-teaching savings toward taking a two-month solo trip to France. I didn't know anyone in France. My mission, simply, was to learn a bit of French and spend some time on some French farms. I had a French school in Paris picked out for the first three weeks but, otherwise, I would be making plans as I went. "Brave." The choice of descriptor seemed logical and, yet, I didn't feel brave. I didn't feel anything. Not even scared. The fact that I was truly going to France--had paid for the non-refundable airline ticket and sent a deposit for the language school--didn't seem real to me. Empirically, yes, I knew I was going. But I didn't feel it.

This emotional numbness, this unshakable malaise, was one of the main motivations that led me to decide to go to France in the first place: I wanted to feel something. It seemed that I hadn't really felt anything for a considerable while. Which, in retrospect, was probably not entirely accurate. I was just depressed. And I think we've all experienced moments (I do almost daily) where we compare the present moment to a preceding one, and are filled with insufferable angst that things aren't as good now as they were when we were in that other town, other job, other relationship, other mindset. Of course, that earlier reality had its imperfections, too, we just don't consider them because we are depressed.

Such was my condition in February of this year. I was jobless, living with my parents, my savings from teaching in Japan trickling away slowly as I searched less-than-half-heartedly for a job. My sister, Lindsay, had just gotten married and, with no more wedding to plan and prepare for, I was left to face the void of my future, armed with nothing but a bachelor's degree in English and a vague intention to go back to school for something. I started to panic. It seemed that all of the career advice I had ever received--to follow my dreams, to do what I love--was rendered irrelevant by the growing realization that I had no dreams and, if in fact there was something I would love doing, I had no idea what it was because I had never done it before.

One day in late February I was hanging out with some friends. This is usually a good idea because being with friends helps me to feel better about my lack of direction in life because most of my friends are in a similar situation. However, since we share the same predicament, my friends are unable to give me any helpful advice and, as soon as I am no longer with them, I go back to being depressed. But on this particular day, one of my friends said something to me that changed everything. She asked me where I wanted to go on my next vacation. It was an innocent question, I'm sure, posed simply for the sake of interesting conversation. Without having to think about it much, I told her I wanted to go to France and spend some time learning French. It was an idea that I had toyed with for a while toward the end of my second year in Japan, and I had never completely discarded it, though the quizzical looks I got from people when I told them the idea and their unanswerable questions, "Why France? Why French?" had persuaded me, in my insecurity, to let it become obscured in the back of the closet of my brain. Now, with the permission of my friend's hypothetical question, I pulled the idea back into the light and, dusting it off, noted just how strongly it still appealed to me.

Yet, in answer to those questions as to my reasons for choosing France and it's language, "Because I want to," didn't seem like strong enough justification for spending several thousand dollars to go on vacation for two months. For the sake of explaining myself to others, I focused mainly on the reasons I shouldn't not go to France:

1. I may never have the time and money to do something like this again.
2. I'm 25 now and it's cheaper to do a lot of things in Europe if you're 25 or younger.
3. I don't have a family to look after.
4. I might regret it later if I don't.

Though it works unfailingly in arithmetic equations, in life, a double negative does not make a positive. Using a roundabout means to justify myself to others rather than simply having the confidence to be honest about my own hopes and passions provided me with a compelling enough argument to legitimize my trip to France and to motivate me to take the practical steps needed to get the trip in motion; but, it set the precedent that this trip was intertwined with my need to prove myself to others, a need that on several occasions threatened to destroy what otherwise turned out to be possibly the greatest two months of my life. It was not until the last week of my trip that I finally confronted this need of mine more seriously than I ever have before and, in a monastery not far from the border to Germany, glimpsed the road to freedom from self-deprecation. It is a road I continue now and will probably always continue to walk but, on the first of March, the day I officially decided to go to France, I was miles from the trail head.

In the three weeks leading up to my departure, I tried to mentally grasp the gravity of what was coming, but all my pondering failed to elicit the feelings of enthusiasm or nervousness that might be expected of someone in my situation. How can you be excited about something if you have no idea what to expect? And how can you know what to expect if you've never done anything remotely like it before? No, I wasn't scared. But one thing I certainly didn't feel--even as I packed all the belongings I would need for two months into a 65-liter backpack, as I sent emails to the absolute strangers who didn't speak English whom I would be staying with in Paris, as I hugged my dad goodbye in front of the San Diego airport on the morning of the 23rd of March--was brave.

Learning French in France

...is exceedingly different from learning Japanese in Japan. For one thing, I know not to expect any praise for my meager efforts to communicate in the local tongue. At best, Parisians respond to my lousy French patiently, but with indifference. They'll often just start speaking to me in English--a courtesy, I'm sure, but a bit frustrating when most of my reason for being here is to learn French.

At my language school the ladies who work at the front desk seem to have little patience or sympathy for people who can't communicate articulately in French. A bit ironic, if you ask me. Yesterday, feeling confident that I knew just enough vocabulary to communicate that I was not in possession of the list of activities put on by the school each month and that I would like one, please, I approached the receptionist and attempted to convey my desire. Without looking up from her computer screen, she listened to my broken explanation, furrowed her brow, and said, still without looking at me, "Je ne comprens pas." It took a little more scrambling for words before I was understood and told that I could get the schedule on Monday.

But the point that should be taken away from all this is not that Parisians are rude or that I feel I am entitled to a little more positive reinforcement. I would argue that neither is the case. Not everyone can be as liberal with compliments as Americans tend to be. The point that should be taken from this, rather, is that I am in fact learning French! With approximately five hours a day dedicated to disciplined study of the language, and much of the rest of the day spent reading signs, food labels, and menus and practicing basic exchanges with waitresses or people on the metro, I'm excited to find that I'm already experiencing results.

Who knows where I'll be linguistically when my course ends in two weeks? But I am thrilled to know that I am setting the foundation for a new skill that I can continue to nurture and develop in the future.

From Paris

Something wonderful happened today. But as much could be said of every day since I arrived in Paris.

For example, on Friday morning as I was sightseeing around the Notre Dame, I randomly spotted two familiar faces: a couple whom I recognized from my university. Though they didn't know me, we are connected by rather significant mutual friends and the three of us were appropriately amazed by the improbability of such an encounter.

Seeing fellow APU alumni had an assuaging effect on the creeping loneliness and slight homesickness that, mingling with my lingering jet lag, had managed to put me in an unfortunately unpleasant mood that morning. I decided to make this trip to Paris (consisting of a three-week French language course and homestay, to be followed by six weeks of additional travel in France and Spain) only about three weeks ago. And though this seemingly rash decision was actually preceded by several months of related "what if" conjectures, the short time that I had to prepare--practically as well as mentally and emotionally--made it easy for me to interpret the stress and fatigue I was feeling at the moment as possible indicators that the whole trip had been a mistake. This is, of course, probably not the case. If anything, it's quite possible that this trip will turn out to be one of the best decisions I've made in my life. Running into a couple of APU alumni in front of the Notre Dame somehow helped to remind me of that.

Another example of a wonderful thing: yesterday I visited the grave of Frederic Chopin. Though I had been looking forward to seeing the final resting place of the composer whose works I most adored as a teenage aspiring virtuoso, I had not anticipated the great and reverent sense of gratitude that overcame me as I stood before that lovingly adorned marble tombstone. Seeing the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Molière was certainly interesting, but standing next to Chopin felt rather profound.

And today's wonderful event? As I arrived at the apartment building this evening where I will be staying with a French family for the next three weeks, I passed by two women who appeared to be mother and daughter an who looked like they could be Japanese (I always keep an eye and an ear out for Japanese people; I can't help it). Sure enough, I overheard a few Japanese words and noticed that the daughter was holding a piece of paper that I recognized as the letterhead for the French language school that I will be attending, starting tomorrow. I approached them and spoke to them in Japanese. It turned out that the girl was starting a homestay that evening with a different host in the same building, and she and her mother were struggling to little avail to communicate over the phone with her host family, to let them know that they were outside, waiting to be let in. Happily, they handed the phone over to me and I was able to convey the message in English. Jubilation! The mother remarked that God must be looking out for them. I didn't tell her so, but I'm absolutely certain that this is the case. And that the same goes for me.