So what is it?

This post might piss some people off. Just letting you know in advance. See, there I go, being all American and politically correct and not wanting to offend. Be offended if you feel like it.

What I'd like to know is what is it that makes us (Americans) display the level of patriotism that we do. I'm not picking on Beth (I love her and she's an amazing and loyal friend) when I point out that she commented that she was 'thrilled' to be an American. I think a lot of people would say the same thing. And then there's the whole flag thing. But I want to know WHY we say and do things like that.

I've been living away from the US for 11 years and I've never once heard anyone of any nationality other than American say something like that. Or seen a flag hanging in front of a house.

Today in class my students worked an on article from theeconomist.com about Obama's speech from the other night and the race issue and we started talking about patriotism and related issues. I questioned them about their own patriotism. They said it was something they felt but didn't show unless it was a regional thing (think Corsica, Basque, Provencal, Breton etc). They also tried to distinguish (but couldn't) between the notions of being chauvin and patriotique.

Le chauvinisme est une manifestation excessive et agressive du patriotisme et/ou du nationalisme. Il est le reflet d'une admiration exagérée, voire trop exclusive, de son pays. (From French Wikpedia)

Chauvinisme is an excessive and aggressive form of patriotism or nationalism. It reflects an exaggerated or even exclusive admiration for one's country.

I think there's something there. I don't think we are patriotic, I think we are chauvin. To an extent that eliminates our capacity to see other points of view. A cultural egocentrism that gives us a serious kink in the neck.

This post will be full of sweeping generalities

I read a study last week about eating habits and obesity in different cultures. One of the things the researchers found was that the French tend to take cues from internal signals to stop eating - feeling satisfied, not feeling hungry. And Americans are more focused on external signals - the plate is empty, the television program is over.

But the thing is, I think it's actually true in general too. I've always had the impression that the rules the French follow are not the external ones. Walk down the street here and you'll see evidence of that all over the place. People park where they want, drive how they want, refuse to conform to something as repressive as 'standing in line' and much more - there is a general tendency to grappiller et gruger. But still, this society is ruled by an internal iron fist. It's very hierarchical, full of unspoken (mais ça ne se fait pas!) rules that govern behavior, social mobility and economics.

As Americans, we are very good at following the external rules - we stand in line, pay for parking, and generally feel guilty if we cheat or break the rules. But on the inside? There is certainly no transgenerational iron fist. There is little there guiding us - which leads to an overdependance on external rules. I believe it's also why we can be so ridiculously ostentatious. It's not enough to recycle, everyone has to know we recycle.

Europeans often ask me why Americans will go over the top, crazy militant for a relatively small issue (think cigar) and then completely let the huge issues slide (think GWB and the past 7 years). I think we focus on the small problems that are easily identifiable as breaking one of those external rules because when it comes to the big stuff, we wouldn't even know where to start.

I'm in Paris

For the whole weekend.

Alone.

Confit de canard

Nearly 10 years ago I was still sort of a vegetarian. Well, actually , not really. I had started eating fish again because being a strict vegetarian in France is just so impractical if you're living anywhere other than Paris. And, despite what some of you might think, I am practical, on occasion.

I was working in Nantes at the Chamber of Commerce, a lot of hours. On fridays I rarely had time to go home for lunch so I often ate in a little brasserie nearby. They always had fish on fridays (Catholic country). But one friday, I didn't want the fish. It was one of those really boney fish, more effort to eat than I was willing to make. The other special of the day was confit de canard. I grew up in a family of hunters (don't analyze that please) and had fond (and delicious) memories of duck, not confit, but still. And it was poultry, not meat meat (doubled intentionally). So I got the duck. And a glass of thick dark red wine, the kind I like most.

And I ate the duck. Oh my. The perfectly crispy skin, the most incredibly tender meat, the whole thing just melted in my mouth. It was amazing, that thigh that had soaked in duck fat for months, being infused and penetrated by flavor and fat. It was the perfect welcome home.

On weathering time

Le temps et le temps. Time and weather. Weather and time.

What do they have to do with each other? I do not really know. Perhpas it is that they both must be endured sometimes. Like today.

It's stormy out. Dark and windy and rainy and cold. So you wait. Wait for the rain to stop, wait for the sun to come, wait to see, wait to know.

I suppose at other times they must be enjoyed. When the weather is just the way you like it - whatever that is. When time feels like your best friend, giving you two hours that feel like the sweetest forever.

How do you like your weather and your time? How do you weather time?

Under construction

In the car on the way back from school today (for lunch), Boy2 asked me what yo meant. I told him it didn't really mean anything.

His reply: Ah, then it must be a conjuction.

The good news: he listens.

The bad news: he repeats.

Spiced and sweet

Balance in all things, right?

Which is why when I made the clementine and honey sorbet, I added ginger and cloves and cardamom and a bay leaf.

It really tastes spiced, but not spicy. Warmth from the cloves, pungency from the ginger and cardamom, and earthiness in the bay leaf from my front yard.

How do you find balance in all things? Where do you find your sweetness and spices?

Dinner last night

Boy2: Mama, what does pitch in mean?

Me: It means to help, to contribute.

Boy1: What does contribute mean?

Me: To give time or energy or money or effort towards something. So, who wants chocolate sorbet and who wants clementine and honey sorbet?

Boys1&2: Both, a lot of chocolate and a little clementine.

Boy2: Mama, what does so mean?

Boy1: It means donc.

Boy2: I didn't ask how to say it in French, I asked what it means. And anyway, you stay out of it.

Me: So is a conjuntion among other things, it means different things depending on how we use it.

Boy1: What's a conjuction?

Me: Don't talk with your mouth full of sorbet.

On origins

When French people ask me where I'm from I always hesistate. If I say where I grew up (Illinois), they assume I moved to here from there. If I say Seattle, they assume I lived there from birth until I moved here.

Vous êtes originaire d'où?

I suppose it shouldn't matter if they assume those things, but the places I've lived have been so important in my life that I cannot let the assumptions slide. So I've develeped a brief, lengthy answer: I grew up in Illinois, studied in North Carolina, and then worked and studied some more in Seattle. All three places marked me deeply, as a child, as a girl/almost woman, and as an adult.

I used to just say that Seattle was my ville de coeur (city of my heart - my expression, not a standard one) but stopped a few years ago when I had to accept the very real possibility that I might never live there again. Heartless.

Ville de coeur. I'm not even sure how it came to be that. Seattle is a city that didn't welcome me so much as look up at me through the mist I loved immediately and say, "What took you so long?"

Flash fiction, tome 2

It happened at one of those ridiculous youth group meetings. The preacher-in-training was young and dynamic and we all gathered around him. We were there because our parents didn’t want us to end up lost.

And yet, I had watched it happen twice before. They started out fragile and ended up fanatic, wandering in the halls at school with a bible on top of their books, staring bug-eyed when they talked about the dangers they saw in everything not found on the short list of sanctioned activities they kept posted inside their lockers.

On that sunday, the young preacher-in-training was asking questions. Getting to know each other under God’s umbrella, that’s what he called it. He asked a question and we all had to answer, a circle of verbal dominos he pushed into falling.

The last question made us giggle. “What do you do when you are alone in the dark?” The answers ranged from true, “I sleep,” to kiss-ass, “I praise God freely.” As he made his way around the circle, I tried to prepare my answer. But when it was my turn, I couldn’t stop myself. I tried, I really did, to say something else, anything else. But I couldn’t. I told them, I told them all what I did alone in the dark.

The silence spoke next and I knew that I was the only one to hear its whispers.

You will never be lost. Not here, not anywhere.

In Justice

You didn't come here on a whim. But you don't believe you were marked to come here either. You do not mark for inflection, never have.

You found the spot, in the middle, which you do not like. In cases like these, it is always best to keep a door nearby, or at least a wall.

Questions are asked about how. You respond eloquently. And then when. You fill in the blanks well. Before this panel of superior peers, you let your soft edge meet, with no resistance, their hard center. You learned that lesson.

Everyone is looking for the same thing. They just want to understand. They don't want justifications. They speak of nothing justiciable.

You finish.

You will find no justice here.

Ah, justice

The French legal system is filled with particularities. I don't know a whole lot about it really and what I may know could be incorrect but that's never stopped me before.

First of all, there are three professions that we don't really have at home. L'huissier, l'avoué, and le notaire. There are people in the US who perform aspects of these jobs, but not all. I'm sure no huissier would like to be called a fancy repo man, but he kind of is. And a notaire here has very little to do with a notary public at home, at least in terms of financial gains . As for the avoué, well, s/he is technically a lawyer, but only goes before the cour d'appel. Avoué, huissier, and notaire are all ministerial officers, while the lawyer is not. The office of the first three is called une étude and a lawyer's un cabinet.

Where am I going with all this? Well, the profession of avoué is on its way out the door. There have been a lot of reforms of the legal system here in the past 6 months, along with the obligatory strikes to show discontent.

Notaires and huissiers are about to lose their monopolies on certain activities and the profession of avoué will simply no longer exist.

How strange.

Tell me, what do you do when what you do, what you've done, and what you've become no longer exist?

Flash fiction, tome 1

I hadn't been in the city long. Certainly not long enough to make it mine or allow it to penetrate me the way places sometimes do. I had taken its trains. I always start with that.

So many sights on the train here. The pregnant women left to stand, the businessmen carrying their worry in the same hand as their briefcases - leaving the other hand free for the newspaper, the old women making endless trips somewhere. Wherever do they go these old women? I dream of being able to talk to one of them, just one. She'd have something to tell me about this city I haven't felt yet.

After the trains, I move on to the men. Different physically but all alike too. I've never met a wolf I didn't follow home.

But apparently the sun was in my eyes today. There was a man, I was sure he was a predator, and our eyes met in that big music way. And then he said something I never would've expected, "Filthy American." Perhaps I was. But I was no longer a stranger in the city. An insult is just a welcome of a different kind.

Nearly an island

You cannot be an island, no one can be, that is what they say. But you are surely not, obviously not, mainland.

So what on this earth, literally, are you?

A pennisula? Perhaps. No. Even better, well, not better, but more accurate, a presqu'île. Which is not an island, not at all, but closer to being one than a pennisula. That is you. Joined to the mainland only by the long slender curve of your neck. Head on the mainland, body and viscera finding their ground in the surrounding ocean.

Understanding finally, you allow the soft fingertips of mercy to trace the outline of your lips. Your smile will never be the same.

A word about conversion

Or we could call this le cul entre deux chaises...

I've been baking a lot, especially lately. Most of the recipes I use are American, many even from the family cookbook compiled by a distant cousin years ago (an absolute treasure that cookbook for many reasons - excluding velveeta and cans of cream of mushroom soup). Which is fine, I have a set of measuring cups and spoons. But for some things, like butter, I have to convert. Butter is sold in rectangular blocks here, not sticks. So a half of a cup of butter, a stick, has to be converted into grams, (it's about 120 grams, by the way) and then I have to weigh it on my digital kitchen scale, which is also fine, it's just something that has to be done.

Because that's what happens when you live with your ass between two chairs. You do what is necessary to keep your ass right where it is and not lose your balance.

You integrate the conversions as you make them, building a database of duality. Sort that.

Which two chairs are you sitting on?

In the wish

You could see where you were, but not feel it. It was light, so you should've felt warm, but you didn't. It had shadows on the edges, or at least one edge, so you shouldn't have felt alone, but you did. And then you gave your sight away, just a loan.

Blinded, blindsighted, blind now, you put your hands out in front of you - to feel your way around, high heels on cobblestones. Predictably, you trip and cut yourself. You bleed, it's for real this time, nothing honeyed. You wish its stickiness away.

What else is in that wish?

Misc

Because sometimes that's the best there is.

The boys are in Nantes at their grandparents' house. It's school vacation here (AGAIN!) and I've still got a lot of classes so my in-laws sweetly offered to take them for the week. Before I took them to Nantes, the boys had just enough time to make me laugh and make me wonder.

So, we were having breakfast and Boy1 was teasing his brother. I called for calm, it was way too early for anything else, and Boy2 did this thing. He held up two fingers, as if to say 2 or make a V, and then pointed them at his own eyes, and then at his brother's and then back to his own. Is that from a movie or something? Anyway, then he looked at me and said, "I've got my eye on him. Don't worry, Mama."

A couple of days later, I had a serious linguistic conversation with Boy1 about the difference between passer and dépasser, in reference to karate belts. I later learned he had had the same conversation with his father and with the karate teacher. The thing about Boy1 is that when he thinks he knows something, he cannot, for the time being at least - I'm hopeful this will change with time - open his mind to the possibility that he might not know all the story. Most of the time our linguistic discussions end with a standstill until an encyclopedia or a dictionary is consulted. And if it's about a French thing, I get the invariable, 'but you're not even French, Mama, how could you possibly know this?' At which point I smile instead of citing diplomas and years of residence. He's so sweet and smart (yes, I know, all parents think that) and also so very stubborn.

For the life of me, I cannot imagine how he came to be that way, stubborn, I mean.

It needs a name

What do you call that? When you realize you know something, not a brain knowing, but a deeper knowing - a mitochondrial nod of recognition to a certainty you must have been carrying with you, unaware, for nearly ever. When every question finds an answer, every feeling a mirrored response, every impulse an outlet, every anything that rises up finding its counterpart, easily, effortlessly, within the limitless confines of joy?

I call it the door slamming open, not closed.

Vlan.

How beautiful is that?

Remember the quality guy? Well, I have to say, he has simply been a wealth of information.

He introduced me to a new word last week - no, a concept.

Poka-yoke.

A funny sounding word. But what it does is very, very serious.

It's un système anti-con. An anti-dumbass system. Or in prettier language, a behavoir-shaping constraint for mistake-proofing.

Can you imagine? An anti-screw-up device. Something you can use to calibrate anything. Slip it into the system and you're sure, you're guaranteed it'll work.

Who wouldn't love one of those? Who wouldn't love a guarantee?

And don't get all superior on me and tell me how much we learn from our mistakes and all that. You wouldn't have to use it all the time. You could still make mistakes whenever your fancy dictated it.

On being managed

When I was an undergrad, I took a seminar on Baudelaire, the poet. It was interesting, I learned a lot, and I had a wonderful teacher. PJ Lapaire, who became a good friend.

Anyway.

I also used Baudelaire, actually something he said, as the basis for the essay I wrote for my graduate school applications.

I'm totally paraphrasing here but it was something along the lines of - the stricter the form, the more creative you can be within the form. I wove a tale about creativity and freedom and linguistics and poetry and whatever else and it was either good or it wasn't but the rest of my application was because I got in.

Regardless.

My point is, my question is, where do you find freedom?

Is it in total liberty of movement, pushing the walls away and feeling all that limitless space?

Or is it in the cellar, where the salt stays and preserves during winter? There is freedom there for some, I think.

Or is it within a place that has limits, maybe an older place, a place that knows you well, that can manage you without breaking you and let you feel free, you are free there, without feeling chaotic?

What does that place look like? And what does it feel like when you take a breath there?