On Anticipation

In his book The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton writes: "If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardor and paradoxes - than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival."

I am leaving for Casablanca tonight, and then the desert. It is cold here in Paris, on this first morning of April, and it is hard to imagine the radical change in location that is about to happen. Maybe it is our Icarian fears that allow us to be distracted by the pragmatics of travel (where and when and for how long) instead of facing the why of going. The enormity of our hubris, of flying so close to the sun, forces our gaze downward to the glow of the computer screen as we hunt and type for the cheapest fares and fewest connections. The magic of being rekindled is delayed as we plan for the car park. But what would happen if we were required to answer questions beyond the practical? What if Easy Jet, in addition to asking for my passport number, asked me what I was hoping for by walking off into the desert? Did I think that their orange plastic seats would help guide me to a transformation? Would they provide a refund if I returned no wiser?

But first, I have to run to class to read Life After God with my Sorbonne students and finish packing and then get my glasses fixed before buying some French wine for our nostalgic Parisian host who has moved to the medina.

from paris to brooklyn, via casablanca

Springtime still finds me in Paris, continuing to teach literature at the Sorbonne, while working on my PhD on the literature of exile. Celebrating the solstice is not enough here in France, I have learned. The Spring Semester also brings with it a week of ski vacation and a week of Easter vacation, which sandwich another oddly-timed week of "winter" vacation. I happily ask no questions of their scholastic chronology and eagerly leave town.
The end of April will find me in Brooklyn, luxuriating in all things sororal and Lama Marut. Before that, though, it is off to Casablanca. Unrelatedly, but always with that great magic of bookstore synchronicity, I am reading Laila Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. She is a Moroccan author living in California where she got her PhD in linguistics, after having studied in Rabat and London. I came across her first book par hazard, after having read an article she had written in Le Monde. She was writing in response to their journalistic treatment of fifteen Moroccan immigrants who had drowned while crossing the Straits of Gibraltar on a fishing boat. The news received slight mention at the bottom of their online page. In her article, Lalami discusses how the Monde article was the catalyst for her book, how her only way of coping was through the transmutation of tragedy into fiction. In the Lonely Planet guide on Morocco which I am reading, it states, understatedly, that Lalami "explores the promise and trauma of emigration."

this is what change looks like

Spring Solstice brought with her the blossoms, my birthday and Obama's health care bill. For me, a happy trinity. Triads have expanding harmonic frequencies which seem to offer forever unfolding possibilities, resonances of newness which are emboldening and exciting. The sustained effort of a bleak winter is rewarded by red berries and yellow daffodils. Transformation is no longer a metaphor. If it worked for Persephone, it can work for me.
As I begin my new year, I feel the need of a metamorphosis. In his remarks after the approval of the bill, Obama spoke to us about the possibilities that can occur when we rise above the weight of our politics. He said that "We did not fear our future - we shaped it." With a change in tense, I have found the mantra that I can chant as I decide to finally depart from my inverno, my long winter. This past summer in Italy, we drove past Lago d'Averno, the lake 10 miles west of Naples. For the ancient Romans it was the protection for the nearby cave which was the formal entrance to the underworld. I would like to go back there now to fling all the battered baggages for Charon to ferry away.

Ici, tout est calme

In August, Paris is quiet. Everyone (those Parisians who can) has left the city. Every boulangerie in a three-block radius of my apartment has the familiar sign "Congée annuel," or the slight variation "Horaire estivale: Fermé." For the first few weeks of August, there is a sort of yeasty time-share agreement among bakers; not willing to let their neighbors starve, time-slots will be agreed upon and one boulangerie will usually be open on rotation. But for the last week or so of the month, even the iron-clad work ethic of the Sisyphean breadmakers falters. The sign is guiltily scotché to the glassdoor in the hasty départ to the seaside under the cover of night. The following morning, the remaining Parisians can be seen roaming the streets, gaunt and croissant-less, muttering under their smoky breaths that next year, yes, next year, they too shall go ailleurs, loin, très loin d'ici.

But I, on the other hand, already elsewhere in Paris, am filled with the marvel of learning that beautiful new word: estivale.

Paris to the Moon

I came to Paris almost three years ago now with my metamorphosis already mapped out: my triptych-plan was to become happy, to become a writer and to become rich. That is where my pragmaticism ended. Being one of Henry James' Americans, I believed that Paris was the celestial city; this is where those changes happen. And after several seasons spent here, I still believe that. A belief that has been challenged, though, has been on the nature of metamorphosis - is it the sudden shock of epiphany that leaves you blinded, newly-formed and crawling along a different road? Or is it Stendhal's idea of crystallization which necessitates a complex mixing of winters and salt-mines and negative experiences to create diamonds? Stendhal observes a leafless tree branch left in a salt-mine during the winter emerging as crystal-covered wand. He was trying to understand how love can alter the layers of vision - depending if one wanted to see rotten wood or shining light. I feel as if I have been wandering blindly in my own Parisian salt-mine, unsure of what it was I had wanted to find. So, doing what it is I always do in these situations, I went to Shakespeare & Co. to buy a book. On Marie-Hélène's recommendation, I bought Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik. I am hoping that by reading about Gopnik's Paris, I will learn how to talk about mine.

Give France a Chance, or "L'invitation (forcée) au voyage"

It's been said that April is the cruelest month. The five CEOs of French companies who have been held captive in the last month might agree. French employees and union officials have evolved France's atavistic penchant for insurgency into the activity of bossnapping. Union spokespeople have said that these unfortunate measures had to be taken in response to announced staff cuts and plant closures. And it seems to be working: most French bossnappings have had the payoff of reduced layoffs or better severance packages. It is a new twist on the time-honored French tradition of striking and a general taking-to-the-streets. And as with all things French, it needs to be heavily steeped in the murky waters of paradox: the frustration of globalism directed at the singular head of the business monarchy. The poetic heaving of the brick-in-hand is significantly absent, bien sur, but at least Sarkozy might have to reconsider his comment: "These days, when there's a strike, no one notices." A recent BVA/Les Echos poll stated that 55% of French people believe that radical protest measures are justified, and 64% think actions like bossnapping should be depenalized because they constitute a last-gasp effort to avoid skyrocketing joblessness.

Cole Porter did once sing that 50 million Frenchmen cannot be wrong. Although I do also remember that Noël Coward musical: There is always something fishy about the French.

how to visualize joy

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