French lessons and the hip-hop boulangère

For a country founded in some way on insolence and insurgencies, the French love their lessons. There is this strange need to comment when something is not done correctly, to remind the person who commits the occasional gaffe that, although the gaffe itself doesn't matter, a little shaming is in order.

Today, for instance, I telephone the reservation line for the SNCF to buy our group ticket to go to Beaune on Friday. Now I knew ahead of time that, while I was following protocol, I was about to get a lesson and a referral to the in-town office (I had every intention of using said referral to gain favor with the agents there). And so I was chided, like a child, for not thinking ahead to telephone their toll-free number from the States (?) or have a friend in France create a 'fiche client' (dossier) with at least ten, no fifteen or twenty days advance notice. I patiently took it, oui madame, et oui, like the excellent student of the culture of French shame that I am knowing full well that once I got to the agence in town, I'll patiently endure a second lesson, yet in the end, will have tickets in hand and the trip ready to go.

Worse case scenario, we can buy the tickets the day of. It's stressful, but can work.

What gave me pause is this alien link between shame and learning. How does shame function in the broader enterprise of learning, whether about cultural practices, or other more lofty materials? Do we, as educators, participate in this practice, a practice that does little more than produce silence, like my own as I took my lesson with a sneaky sense of quiet triumph in the knowledge that I would eventually and eccentrically get my way. I find it hard to square that as much as France makes irreverence as essential aspect of its cultural capital, the culture of compliance nonetheless persists, a premise totally counter-intuitive to the challenging insolence of the works of art we love and share with our students. I wonder sometimes about the value of these works in the real and if what they claim might not be out of sync with the social design of modern France. 

On my way back from my first attempt to go the agence SNCF, which was not yet open, I stopped by the local bakery for a croissant nature. The flaky buttery crust peels away in layers and it is as light as a feather, unlike the distant relatives that pass for croissants in the States.  Entering the boulangerie, you expect to see a true French dame who greets you with a sing song "Bonjour, Madame" as you enter bread and pastry paradise. Not the case here in downtown Dijon, quite to the contrary of what the quaint medieval avenues of the city appear to promise. The boulangère around the corner looks like an extra from a MTV special on hip-hip style. Each hand is covered in gaudy gold and rhinestone jewelry, sometimes even doubling up rings on a single finger in an opulent gesture, their defiant sparkle glimmering in the morning light. Her hair is pulled back in a series of small tresses each one held in place with a transparent plastic miniature clip, like the ones hairdressers use. There were probably fifteen to twenty tiny tresses adorning her hair pulled back into a ponytail, which like her overall style, felt strangely out of sync with the easy expectations one might have of French traditions, but for that very reason, it made me warm to her difference, to what might be understood as a form of sassy irreverence.

While lessons might be the rule, I prefer these sorts of surprises. 

Class begins this afternoon, so I'm off to get my next lesson, buy the ticket, head over to campus, and give a first lesson, hopefully with no shame, rather the pleasure of discovery. Looks like a warm beautiful day ahead here in Dijon, there isn't a cloud in the clear blue sky. 

In the grips of la grippe

It's the simple pleasures of France that keep us all coming back. The full bold flavors

of cheese and wine, the crusty bread baked fresh every day, the buttery flakes of a croissant

that peel away as you eat it. The French are committed to a few simple rules when it comes to everyday life; simple, fresh, delicious. 

So when one comes down with la grippe, a cold, there's nothing more sad than not being able to taste what makes France so quintessentially French, the quality and simplicity of delicious fresh food like these strawberries, which I have yet to enjoy fully. So far both cherry tomatoes and strawberries burn the rawness of my sore throat, so I'm sticking to gentler fare, tisanes tilleul-menthe (lime tree-mint tea) for the moment. 

That dappled sunlight on what I know will be delicious strawberries once I can taste again bodes well for what feels like a beautiful day dawning outside. The air is fresh, the street cleaners have already hummed twice along the tiny avenues of the apartment on Amiral Roussin, their brushes humming in rhythm as they polish the already glimmering limestone that casts this golden light in the sun. 

The students arrived yesterday at the dorms. You could spot them at a distance, worn and anxious dragging their luggage behind them after their long journey. While tired and disoriented, the thrill of being in France can be read in their expression despite the affected nonchalence of youth. One bought a "Le Monde" and began reading the newspaper while we sat on the steps, a few others joined me and the TAs as we walked to the bakery and grabbed a quick lunch of tartes (leek, cheese, spinach & chèvre) and orangina while we sat on the steps waiting for the others to arrive. One told me that while she's not keen on trying escargot, she's determined to be open and wants to try new things, have new experiences, which bodes well for their stay and for the fullness of their experience. 

I think that's certainly what is most difficult about living elsewhere.  How to remain open when so profoundly alienated, by language and by an otherness at times so unreadable that everything seems to conspire to remind one of one's difference? From the pink cardboard-like toliet paper in most French bathrooms to the incomprehensible gestures that you sense have some kind of meaning, yet which remains opaque, familiar and repeated encounters with the feeling of alienation measures the vastness of cultural difference. 

My keenest wish is that I aspire to the same openness that student mentioned yesterday. That I don't judge what on the surface appears to be a town so very quiet and quaint it's nearly stifling. If nothing else, I want to appreciate the difference, rather than long wistfully for the electric vibrance, the unconscious energy I derive from living in Over-the-Rhine. 

Time for more tisane and the magic elixir the pharmacist recommended to sooth my cough.

First thoughts, first blog.

In one of my favorite poems in Les Fleurs de mal, Baudelaire exclaims, 

"Paris change! Mais rien dans ma mélancolie 

a bougé! palais neufs, échafaudages, blocs,

Vieux faubourgs, tout pour moi devient allégorie
Et mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs."

"Paris changes! But nothing in my melacholy

has moved! new palaces, scaffoldings, blocks,

Old neighborhoods, for me, everything becomes an allegory

And my dear memories are heavier than stone."

Arriving in Paris last Friday, these verses echoed in my head. While certain aspects of Paris felt as a familiar as breathing; the green grocer on St. Antoine with the amazing strawberries, the sound of the hushed mumur of French, the rhythmic clicks on cobblestone streets, the hush of quiet narrow avenues in the Marais late at night, I couldn't shake the feeling of change Baudelaire evokes in "Le Cygne." These differences, however, weren't at all alienating, but rather filled me with wonder. The squeaks of pedalstrokes as Parisian zip to and fro on Vélibs, free bikes littered throughout the city that one subscribes to that allow anyone to ride for a half and hour anywhere.  Paris is always a space of wonder for me. A place where sensorial experience comes alive, where life is punctuated by colors, taste, rhythm, speed, sightlines, and pause. From the first croissant to the echoes of Brazilian rhythms wafting in to Andrew and Yves' place on strangely less tawdy rue St. Denis, each day was this strange combination of familiarity with marvel at the new. 

Someone one's feels one's own sameness in this space of difference, despite the time, the distance, the years elapsed since I lived in that tiny studio on the rue de Birague, I remember every step, I think, each one coded with meaning. The walk to the BHVP, the garden Francine and I would look out on as she wrote her one-woman show, "Shoes" while I muddled my way through early guidebooks. No great surprise that I've always worked on space and identity since clearly, for me, place matters in my own sense of who I am.

Having arrived in Dijon, the sense of place is different, to be sure. Quaint and quiet, sleepy almost when contrasted with the bustling vibrance of Paris, a vitality I think I draw on when I'm here. So it's strange to be here, strange to know that I'll be living in this place for the next six weeks, making a life and a home in an environment that, while of extraordinary beauty, bears none of the marks of difference that draw me to Paris. 

I'm awaiting John and Ryan's arrival, alas, they may well be victims of the grève or strike announced for today, only 1/2 the TGV are running, no busses in Dijon today either. I do so appreciate social movements here, the way that, in the blink of an eye, French workers can make the population feel their reliance on services and individuals one often forgets to be grateful for. Today it's transportation, tomorrow who knows. 

Apologies for the top heavy photos. I don't quite have the hang of this thing yet.

Signing off for now. More impressions soon.

e