Que je t'aime, que je t'aime... transport en commun

Un truc que j'ai toujours voulu essayer c'est le théatre. Non, je m'exprime mal. Plutôt, ça m'a toujours fait une peur bleue (surtout l'impro). Alors, la peur de l'impro n'étant pas rationelle, naturellement, depuis quelques années je me dis toujours que je devrais l'essayer. Donc je l'ai fait. Au boulot, ils font des sessions d'impro avec un prof et tout. Et c'est super! Surtout les exercices avec un masque (parce que ça cache le visage hahaha!).

Mais c'est pas vraiment mon sujet principal ça... c'était juste l'intro (hahaha impro - intro... bon on s'amuse comme on peut). Donc voilà, je suis allée à mon cours d'impro qui est après le travail et qui finit à 20h. Alors je prenais mon temps pour admirer le paysage de La Défense le soir (il faut vraiment que je commence à prendre des photos!) et bon, d'une chose à une autre, j'ai manqué mon train à 20h30. Je me stressais pas tant que ça parce que je savais que des trains il y en a à toutes les 15 minutes... eh bien non! Pas après 20h30. Parce qu'après 20h30, les trains ils passent à toutes les... heures...

Bon si seulement moi j'avais compris ça. En fait, les stations de train sont toujours en construction ici et lorsque je vois un panneau d'alerte sur l'état du transport et que je lis que ma ligne de train est annulée du 30 janvier au 27 février, je commence un tout petit peu à paniquer. Oui il y avait du blabla sur des bus de remplacement à 22h, mais ça n'allait pas du tout parce que moi j'avais un autre bus à prendre de ma station de destination jusqu'à la maison et ledit bus ne circulait plus après 22h30 et moi j'étais à plus de 30 minutes de train de la station de bus. Alors je prends une autre ligne de train qui m'amène à une station intermédiaire sur ma ligne d'où j'éspérais pouvoir prendre un bus pour rentrer... Oh naiveté de la jeunesse! Rien! Rien de rien! Je demande à une dame qui attendait à la station d'autobus et elle me regarde avec des grands yeux tout en me disant que j'étais très très loin de ma destination et qu'elle doutait fortement qu'il y ait des autobus. Je retourne à la station de train avec la defaite qui pesait sur mes épaules. Puis en lisant et en relisant le foutu panneau sur l'état du transport je vois finalement que ça concernait seulement les trains circulant après 22h... et qu'il y avait bel et bien un train qui passait vers 21h40.

Hahaha que je peux être conne des fois! En tout cas, je ne me souviens pas de la dernière fois que j'ai été aussi soulagée pour quelque chose (peut-être quand j'ai reçu mes papiers du consulat pour la France). Bref, j'ai eu 50 minutes d'attente, mais on the bright side, c'était 50 minutes à admirer la tour Eiffel illuminée contre le ciel nocturne.

French diaries

Alright, I've been away for 3 weeks mostly because I was writing so many emails that I felt I had nothing more to say/I was too drained to write anymore. But now I realized one thing... I am writing too many freaking emails every week. Sooo, in an effort to optimize my time (aka use my time well as Al Hayek would say) I am going to make a diary of ze French experience that will replace my constant email writing sessions.

Hahaha I kind of feel like I'm restarting this blog. I remember my first intro post and it does feel like now. Explaining... always explaining. Oh well, here it is! A documented trail of my experience of the city of lights (and its suburbs hahaha cause like home, I'm more in the suburbs than in the city).

Taking off

Here it is. Last hours. I'm going to keep this brief, for one thing because I don't have much time and also because I feel that this could turn overly dramatic. So:

Pack suitcase: check
Fill out all the stupid forms: more or less check
Send last emails: check

I don't know what much to say... It's going to be an amazing experience even though right now it feels somewhat scary. But fear is a normal part of the process. Fear always accompanies change. But change is good. And like they said in this one movie: the things you are most scared of are the ones that are most worthwhile.

All is new and all is old

Here we are. Another year is dying before our eyes and it is time for the traditional look back on the past twelve months. And as I'm trying to find a word (or two) to qualify the year that has just passed, the only thing that comes to mind is frantic. It started off at a leisurely pace, but by the time the first third was done, I was back to running back and forth between ten million activities. Though it doesn't make for a very healthy lifestyle, I can't say I hate it. I guess that by keeping busy you make sure that you're never bored and there's always something new to discover (even though you might also sometimes feel like you're close to losing your mind).

Another theme that came out strongly this year was creativity, discovery, emerveillement and, if I may say so, dreams. It was a year for pushing the boundaries of what is possible, for remembering what is like to be a kid, for letting yourself bask in wonder. And though the ups and downs were huge, I had a wonderful time through it all.

2011 also marked my official and definitive break-up with tequila (it's not you babe, it's me!) and it saw me crossing over to the dark side (I decided to buy... a purse. Shhhhh!!! No one has to know!!).

I dedicated 2011 to selfishness and self-discovery. Now I think it's time for self-improvement. So I'm dedicating 2012 to discipline and knowledge. I want to take my time. RDI had a commercial where they said that for the new year, they wish everyone to make a difference in the lives of their loved ones. Well, I'm not going so far, but I want to make a difference in my life. So, while taking the risk of sounding cliché, here's to better habits!

Happy New Year everyone!

How fairytale stories ruin girls' lives

The theme for me is love and the lack of it. We all want that and we don't know how to get it, and everything we do is some kind of attempt to capture it for ourselves.

Romance and marriage are socially constructed ideas enforced through popular fiction, sappy romance novels and movies and not to mention wannabe rock songs by former heartthrob Bon Jovi. How can a poor innocent little girl defend herself from this assault on her senses, her feelings and her very core which with enough training and brainwashing will flock like a moth to an electric light bulb to the dreamy but also unrealistic ideals of romance? The truth is no guy will run after you just because you are hurting to stop you from running away; if you publicly declare your love for him in front of complete strangers while using a microphone and a spotlight, he will run, not sigh; and men frankly care more about their goddamn ego than about what you might be feeling. Some people say that they are addicted to porn and that after watching it they might feel sullied and ashamed of themselves. Well, I feel that way…. after watching romantic comedies. Because they enforce a twisted reflection of reality and they leave you pinning after something that does not exist. Kind of like advertising creates a distorted vision of women and their role in society, these stories create a distortion of what a real relationship is like. And the truth is that it doesn’t end with the marriage or with the two people discovering they are in love with each other. Life goes on afterward and sooner or later it becomes ugly and messy and you fight and you want to strangle each other and then you don’t care anymore and you start taking each other for granted and “I love you” becomes just another way of saying goodbye and you wake up one morning and ask yourself what the hell you are doing with that stranger that you don’t love anymore and of whom you don’t understand the slightest thing. And that is when you have to make the hardest decision ever: do I stick with it and try to make it work despite everything at least for the sake of all those years that we spent together and which I don’t want to have been in vain, or do I just pick up my things and start over again. The problem with the way that these movies depict relationships is that they give you the idea that everything is supposed to always be good and happy and dreamy and that people always learn their lessons when they make mistakes. And that’s not how life is. And when life departs from that fantasy people tell themselves that their partner just isn’t right for them and that they just need to keep looking. And they keep looking and keep looking. But it’s impossible to ever find that perfection in reality. Because people aren’t perfect. And as long as we focus on our needs and on how the other person makes US feel, we’ll never manage to be happy or functional in a relationship. I saw this one movie where this guy brings his fiancée and her parents home to meet his parents. And after a fight, the groom is sitting on the porch with his father and his future father-in-law and the advice that they give him is that he needs to decide whether he wants to be right or whether he wants to be happy in his relationship because he can’t have both. That was actually kind of cute. But I never see the same being said to women… because despite our all-mightiness, we can’t take it. We want to see humble, selfless men who are so in love with us that they would be willing to throw their life away just to be with us. And that everything will be alright just as long as we love each other. But love is not enough sometimes. Sometimes I wonder whether love is even a requirement. People have fought so long against arranged marriages because they are not based on love. But what is love? And why would it be an absolute requirement for a happy life? What about respect and friendship and trust? One philosopher once said that true love is what is left after the feeling of being in love disappears. After the butterflies and the heart flutters and the light-headedness go away. What do we have left after that? What do most couple have if you take away the lust and the sex and the flirtatious excitement of new beginnings? Is it comfort? Is it understanding? Is it traditions? Is it inside jokes? Is it shared experiences? Or is it just plain nothingness? Le vide? The sad part is that the movies that actually speak of real life and real relationships, well frankly, they’re so depressing that you don’t really want to see them. Take Blue Valentine for example. That was a painful movie to watch. But it speaks volumes about how couples can become estranged and how even your best efforts are not enough sometimes. But I don’t know one person who would want to watch it on a Friday evening. Because we all want to see the happy and positive side of relationships. Sometimes with the risk of becoming blind to their other facets.

We are all brainwashed nowadays. Men with porn and women with romantic comedies. But where is the true world in all that?

Battles and virtues

Funny how we end up despising that which we are. When every move we make is somehow scrutinized, we just spend our lives perfecting our masks in an effort to make them look natural and real. Maybe it might be easier to be ourselves in a foreign land where no one knows us and where we can just blend in the crowd. Let's be honest for just one second here. While we might act all strong and confident, in the end there's always that lonely night when your true face is revealed and it shows the one feeling that you try to hide so much: fear. Life is scary like hell. And I don't think that there's a particular moment when it stops. Routine is the only thing that might put an end to the fear. When you've gone through the motions so often that it becomes a mechanical mindless act, when you can predict every single twitch that comes next, that is when you stop being afraid. That is also when you stop being alive. While humans might generally be averse to fear, it is also what keeps us focused and lucid. Nothing is more exhilarating than making a choice to face your fears and to let yourself fall into the unknown. Fear is an integral part of life and it makes us evolve. Without it, we become simple shells blown away by the wind.

Then again, you need to choose your battles. There is a reason why people are afraid of standing in front of a running train and that is a fear that should NOT be faced!

I also think that something interesting comes out when you do something that you're afraid of, so I try to take things that I'm not sure that I can do. And this was certainly one of them. I didn't feel like I was right for this at all, and I wondered how to find truth in a fairy tale.

Ryan Gosling

The Grinch that stole Christmas

The older I get, the more the idea of Christmas escapes me. With every passing year the magic wears off more and more and I can't seem to get into the so called "Christmas spirit". The excitement disappeared and left only annoyance, frustration and pure coldness. I don't even know what this time of the year is supposed to feel like anymore. Objectively speaking what is Christmas? Last minute shopping in crowded malls where everyone is pushing and pulling and where you are running to get presents in a pre-established amount of time. Crappy sentimental stories (either real or invented) that are supposed to remind us of our humanity by shamelessly pulling at our heartstrings without any real regard for the issue at hand. Sort of like a general fad... hey it's Christmas so this is the one time of the year that we absolutely HAVE TO repeat to you ad nauseaum how love is the only real salvation for this world (in the absence of Jesus for the nonbelievers... though when you think about it, it comes down to the same thing since Jesus was probably THE initial hippie). People asking you for money at every street corner so it's basically a daily guilt trip whenever you take the metro. Commercials trying to convince you for the n-th time that absolute happiness CAN be found in a bottle of shaving cream and that your brother in law who can't stand the sight of you will have no choice but to love you for all eternity if you also get him a pack for Christmas. Dreary suppers where you hear the same stories and same jokes over and over again.

Ironically, the first time I actually felt a semblance of holiday cheer this year was when I heard this song earlier even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the season especially when you actually listen to the lyrics. But at this point, even a sterile and tasteless Christmas spirit is better than none. It's funny how memories and images can get imprinted onto music. I see my late godmother's yard filled with snow with the dark green bushes contrasting sharply. The sky is cloudy but it gives a bluish hue to the scenery that is soothing. It's early morning and absolutely desert and quiet. And that's it. An almost postcard entrance.



Does that mean that I would rather spend Christmas by myself? Maybe it's a good thing that I'm leaving soon. Funny how the solitude is what attracts me most about Paris. Everything is very scary in this move, but ironically, it is the idea that I will be alone and in peace that keeps me sane. I think the Big Bang Theory might be rubbing off on me and I'm slowly becoming Sheldon Cooper...