Mon appareil-photo.

My camera.

One of the few things I did to prepare for this trip was purchase a camera. And after a few days here in Paris, I have begun to remember that I have one. So I will commence à uploading photos (and movies!) that I take. Tomorrow. But for now, here is a picture taken of Île de la Cité, from Île St Louis. You can see Notre Dame to the left, and le soleil hiding behind the cloud. It has been quite warm here recently, and the clouds were the only things that kept my face from burning today.

Also, I realize that it sounds a little pretentious to be dropping in these morceaux de Français, but that's how I'm thinking these days, hearing all this French around me. We were at a café just south across the Seine from Notre Dame, with thousands of tourists strolling around, and it was a bit odd to hear English being spoken one table away. Is it weird to so quickly acclimatize to a language? Not that I can speak it well yet, but I do my best to make myself understood and to understand others.

Paris, politiques, pétanque, et lait pasteurisé.

Paris, politics, pétanque, and pasteurized milk.

This morning I woke up late, around 11:30, after getting to bed at 1am. I really needed the sleep — Sunday night I got 3 or 4 hours, Tuesday night I was up all night, and Wednesday night was my Thursday morning. So I probably am still a little in debt, but I feel pretty good.

Mes experiences Parisiennes today started with the local supermarket (three aisles), where Justin and I did his shopping. The French have two sorts of milk: pasteurisé, which is what we are familiar with, and sterilisé, which is not refrigerated, can keep a long time, and apparently tastes nasty. I probably won't try it.

After the supermarket I took the metro to meet Justin, his friend/neighbor Matthieu, and their friend Laurent at the Bois de Vincennes, a park to the southeast. It is not a forest by any means ("bois" means "woods"). It is a park, with wide paths, some trees, and a lake with an island in the middle. It is kind of like NY's Central Park (though not nearly as big) in that there are a few roads through the park. On the island (which has a bridge and a road to it) there is a restaurant I think. We sat on the bank of the island and had a picnic, a very Parisian picnic I think: baguette, fromage, vin, tomate, concombre. A little hard-boiled egg, a carrot too. Matthieu brought his guitar and djembe. So we sat, ate, drank, talked and played a little music. What did we talk about? Pretty girls, pretty boys (for Justin and Matthieu), slang, work, music, un peu de la politique — the presidential runoff election is in two weeks. There are posters everywhere encouraging people to vote (and lists of where they can/should vote). Why doesn't that happen in the States?

I wandered back to Place de la Nation by myself and took a stroll around it. I stopped to watch a sight that was almost ridiculously stereotypical — middle to old-aged men playing pétanque. There were four or five games going in the square. The other stereotype I've been witnessing is baguette-carrying. My dear Americans, it is actually true that people walk down the street with a baguette (or six) under their arms. I've been here two days, and I've seen it too many times to count. I myself carried a baguette today, stuffed into a guitar case.

New subject: Music is different here. Besides their shitty taste in pop music, the French even do music theory differently. First of all, in France (and in all the Romance countries) musicians use fixed do solfège, so instead of saying, par example, E major, they say Mi majeur. B flat minor would be Si bémol mineur. That will be confusing. Also, an eighth note is "une croche" (as opposed to an English quarter note being a "crotchet"), while an eighth rest is demi-soupir. A sixteenth note is "une double croche". And a thirty-second note? "Une triple croche". Get that? An eighth note is twice a double croche and four times a triple croche. A quarter note is "une noire" ("a black"), a half note is "une blanche" ("a white") and a whole note is "une ronde" ("a round"). In two weeks I have to coach singers with this system. It will be an interesting challenge.

Quelle lustre, cette vie!

What a shine, this life!

Is my heart that fickle? It's ridiculous, really, and too much of a coincidence, to be smitten by the first French woman I have a conversation with. Ah, I know what it is — I am conflating the pleasure of her company and the excitement I still feel to be in this country. Huh. I'm actually kind of surprised that I figured that out. Guess I do learn afterall.

I am too exhausted to journal any further tonight.

J'arrive!

I have arrived!

I can't help but feel some excitement. I am doing my best to control it — I don't want to walk around beaming like an idiot — but it is bubbling in my stomach. I wonder how long it will last. I have been in this country for a little over an hour. I haven't talked to anyone yet, except for my seatmate from the plane, and I left him in the terminal, when he headed for baggage and I headed for the train. (Which was confusing as hell, by the way, and it wasn't a language thing. But I found it, and I am on it now.) I did get some cash from an ATM — my first small victory — and found the train, and bought a ticket (though I did cheat and used both the ATM and the ticket machine in English). We'll see if, when I arrive at Nation, I can order a soda and croissant without a problem. I will feel good if I can.

Of course I'm a little nervous. But I wonder if part of the bubbling is a sense of freedom. I don't know that it is, and I don't know if it should be. I really don't know. Is that what I'm doing? Am I escaping? If that's the goal, have I made it yet? Is it a disservice to my life in Portland and the States to think of it in this way? I don't know the answers to any of those questions, so I don't know if I should try to cultivate this feeling. It could be a cool feeling to have — I can't remember ever escaping from anything, unless you count graduating from Reed (and, upon further review, I think I do).

I didn't realize how large a role Design plays in culture. The two things that make a place feel foreign are the unintelligible conversations swirling around one's head, and the slightly off-kilter design sense one gets, almost subconsciously, from the architecture, fashion, advertising, urban planning, etc. I think our brains are actually used to specific street widths, specific color combinations, even specific fonts. The fonts are different here. I never would have had that thought. Even the graffiti fonts are a little different, I think. It's certainly a little more colorful. (Are the fonts different, or is it just that the words are foreign? There's a Panasonic sign — it is in a familiar font and color. But that's more about global branding, isn't it?)

Paris is, at least on this morning, a hazy city. And here in the northern suburbs ("banlieus"?), it is industrial, dirty.

The train just ducked underground to make a stop. I have nothing to write about black tunnels. They are the same everywhere in the world.