Emily in Paris

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This afternoon, I found myself sitting in my armchair, again.

I few weeks ago finished reading a book for my non-existant Lit class called Les Ames Grises or, The Grey Souls by Philippe Claudel. A fantastic read, for anyone who's interested. The book follows the lives of citizens of a small town in France during the first world war--lives that happen to revolve around two murders of young girls.

Last week, I read Le Diablo au Corps a book about a young 16 year old French boy who has an affair with an older woman, gets her pregnant, and runs away, leaving her to die in childbirth. And, I read Le Grand Meulnes a "classic" of the early twentieth century following the story of the heroic Meulnes who meets a girl in the country-side and spends the rest of his life looking for her. Of course, once he finds her and it turns out they're both in love and they get married, he decides he can't stop searching for something, so he leaves her, she finds out she's pregnant, and dies.

Now, I'm in the process of reading Voyage au bout de la nuit or Journey to the End of the Night, a lovely, cheerful read about a coward during WWI who hates his life, pretends to be insane, then flees to South Africa... and... I have yet to see who dies at the end (although two girls have already left him).

All of this drama has got me to wondering, can the French do anything happy?

Two weeks ago, I visited the Catacombs of Paris with Adam and his family. The history is this: during the Middle Ages, the cemeteries of Paris filled up to the point of over-flowing, and so the French made the executive decision to exhume all of the bodies and put then in the underground quarries that ran throughout the city. A rather mundane story in all. But, what is really horrifyingly fascinating is not the need to move the bodies but the need to organize the skeletons as if it were some sort of art.

I know the French are renowned for their love of order, but being this "orderly" struck me as rather excessive.

Jeanne (my host-mother) once told me that the French are all depressed. She herself is a comic writer, and a lover of romantic comedies. According to her it's nearly impossible to get any jobs because the French "don't believe in happiness."

Now that I think about, black is the preferred color of Parisians, although the color du jour tends to be grey when it comes to politics or any decision making. While American songs tends to embrace Paris in the Springtime, I can't help but wonder if the French really feel the same way. When their literature, and pop culture, not to mention their history, is so singularly depressing, is there anything that can make them happy?

I owe everyone an apology for letting this blog go so long untouched (I'm sorry!). I hadn't forgotten, but actually thinking quite hard and realizing that I have no idea what to write.

I've been here in France for two months now (almost exactly) and at some point in there, all of this "France" stuff became normal. I don't have much to say anymore on the subject of water usage, or French waiters. I've learned how to cross the street without getting run over (and even better, how to cross the street and make the cars stop for you). I've mastered the art of ordering at Starbucks, and understanding the people who ask me for directions on the street. I've even started to get used to "la grève."

(At this point, I still have not been to classes, and they're now talking about striking to June. Apparently, the idea is, the government won't back down unless they don't hold class all semester. So, I've started working with a tutor. I have a paper due next week, a book to finish hopefully sooner than that (and another book to start)... It's busy, but it's not "eventful" around here.)

In two months, I no longer feel like I stand out. Of course, that's not to say people don't change to English whenever they see me (sometimes they do) but that I've gotten to the point where I'm no longer embarrassed or even annoyed that they do so. I've gotten used to walking down my street and climbing the seven flights of stairs up to my apartment. I'm no longer afraid to walk around at night--in two months, I've gotten a measure of the crazy people and the harmless ones. By now, throwing myself onto the subway in order to squish in before the doors close on my bag, getting the check from the angry waiter, and ordering a pitcher of water for dinner are almost second nature.

I guess I'm starting to fit in.

But, just because I'm starting to feel comfortable here doesn't mean I'm Parisian, by any means. To be honest, I don't know if I could ever be Parisian. I think it's like being a New-Yorker--you can live there for years and still not deserve the title. Maybe you can't be one without being born in Paris. So, if I moved here, would I always be the American who just doesn't go home?

This, of course, leads me to wonder, at what point do you stop being a foreigner in a foreign country?

Since my last post, I’ve been besieged with questions. I’ve done my best to answer them below. ☺

So, why "La grève?" The professors are furious with Nicolas Sarkozy (as far as I can tell, everyone here is furious with Sarkozy for something.) Most recently, the president of France has released a new "Statut" of education. This statuts' biggest changes will be the education systems financial structure, the process by which students become teachers in France, and the position of "professor" in general. First, the statute plans to "Americanize" French universities, leaving it in the hands of the university presidents to raise money through any means possible. The most likely route will be through companies who will pay to support feeder-programs. The question the professors have is, what happens to the disciplines that aren't suited to feed into companies? Second, the process to become a teacher will be much less specialized, requiring an exam based on understanding the education system in France, not the material to be taught. And third, professors will be directed either to research or teaching, not both. So, the professors are wondering, why punish people who are good at research by refusing to let them teach, and why handicap good professors by forbidding them from research?

Now, the format this grève seems to be taking is strike, assembly, more strike, protest, and another assembly. Every week there is at least one protest, which consists of hundreds of people yelling, blowing whistles, and carrying banners that say things like “Knowledge is not a Commodity.” During these protests, police line the streets, fully equipped with machine guns, and plastic riot-shields. They’re just watching, but I still cringe every time I have to walk past them.

The rule of the strike is that it cannot penalize the students. So, when classes recommence, whenever that will be, it will be a crash course on the material, and a “normal” amount of coursework done in however much time is left in the semester. You can imagine what that means for a foreign student. At the moment, I’ve already written and turned in a paper for a class that has only met once (which was a particularly interesting feat since the lecture on the topic of my paper, fascism, was cancelled). Next week I have a meeting with a tutor to keep me “up to date” on the class that has not yet met. All in all, while it might sound relaxing not having any classes, it’s a nightmare trying to figure out the logistics of getting credit back in the states. Not to mention knowing that I have to make an hour commute every week just to see if the class is going to meet.

Finally, I guess I just have to appreciate the fact that I currently am getting 5 day weekends. I sleep in till noon, am up till two writing my blog, and spend my afternoons heading over to the Louvre (students of art get in free, and so my student ID says I study art), or wandering around the Jardin de Luxemberg. This is, as far as I can tell, what it means to live French-style.

You can tell a lot about a culture from their language. Under certain circumstances, etymology can be particularly telling. In French, for instance, the word "work," travail, dates all the way back to the 1100s to the world traval, or torture. More specifically, the root is traval d'enfant or childbirth: "fatigue, peine supportée" that is to say, exhaustion and pain to bear. It seems to me, the sense of the word hasn't changed much in the past thousand years. Of the ten classes I should have had in the past three weeks, there have been two. Why? Well, because for the moment, the professors are on strike.

La grève, the strike, holds a special place in the hearts of the French; one that I am still struggling to wrap my mind around. My adventures with it began a little over a month ago, when I first started looking at classes at Paris VII, one of the many public universities in Paris. The first class began with a quick introduction by the professor, and quickly digressed into a three hour lecture on why the professors are on strike. I can't be sure, but I think the complete lack of attention the professor paid to the material of the course was part of the striking process. The next week, when I showed up for class, I was one of three who did. The professor never came. Within the next few days (and two other classes that I went to unsuccessfully) Paris VII seemed out of the running. So, I switched to Paris IV, La Sorbonne, whose classes didn't start until February. My foray into Paris IV has been equally unsuccessful, as I have not had a class since last Wednesday, and one of my courses has not met at all.

The cherry on the cake, was, in same first week of classes in February, I found myself in the midst of a Grève General as well. That is to say, everybody went on strike in order to protest everything Sarkozy has done. Subways, restaurants, shops, professors (naturally). Paris went on strike.

So, why la grève?

For the professor's it is a matter of power, and resistance to change. For the rest of the population, it's a way to shout out what is bothering them. Although the strikes may seem like a trapping of the modern era, France's history is actually laden with the ancient form of the strike: revolution. We know about the big one, of course, and the smaller attempt featured in Les Miserables, but really, the day-to-day life of the French people was riddled with barricades. In fact, the French in Paris loved barricades so much, in 1852 Baron Georges Van Haussman, urban engineer for Napoleon III, invented the boulevard, in part so that the streets would be too wide for the barricades to span. Therefore, we might be able to see the French strike as an immutable facet of French culture. Still, I find myself wondering what it really means to the French.

Is la grève merely, as my Dad has suggested, the symptom of a government that has given the people too much power? Is it the result of being coddled past the point of being able to accept when they don't get their way? Or, is it a healthy expression of power that increases the dialogue between the government and the people? By not striking, are Americans missing out on one of the fundamental exchanges of liberty?

And, of course, the most pressing question for me at the moment is, what happens next week?

To be continued...