We interrupt this story for.... a fucking poem.

This week, I really wanted to continue along with the story. Yet motivation was at a low all last week (hence the lack of entry) and right now, I'm just not feeling it. I've also been reexamining the creative side in my life and it's varied endeavors to see how to make it a bit higher quality, for both you all in the capacity of enjoying it and for me in the capacity of generating it. Part of that is taking to heart what Elizabeth Gilbert's said in her TED talk and listening to my daemon. So today, I do what the little genius in the corner wants and not what I'm trying to force out of myself. So good or bad, this entry is all his fault.

Cette semaine, je voulais vraiment continuer avec mon histoire. Cependant, ma motivation était basse pendant toute la semaine (d’où le manque d’entrée de l’autre semaine) et maintenant, j’ai pas trop envie. Aussi, je réexamine le côté créatif de ma vie et tous les efforts qu’il comprend afin de voir comment les rendre plus amusants à la fois pour vous, comme ceux qui les consomment, et pour moi, comme celui qui le fait. Une mesure est de prendre à cœur ce que Elizabeth Gilbert a dit pendant son TED Talk et écouter mon daemon. Alors, aujourd’hui, je fais ce que le petit génie dans le coin veut et pas ce que j’essaie de forcer à sortir de moi même. Bon ou mauvais, cette entrée est entièrement de sa faute. 

This entry is also a bit of an experiment. I want to start writing in both English and French because:

1) I wish I were Samuel Beckett. (We all wish we were Samuel Beckett.)
2) I need the practice writing French
3) I need the practice translating French
and lastly, 4) It seems like another way to further embarrass myself in a foreign language.

Cette entrée est également une expérience pour moi. Je veux commencer à écrire en anglais et en français parce que :
1) J'aimerais être Samuel Beckett. (Nous tous aimerons être Samuel Beckett, n'est-ce pas ?)
2) J'ai besoin de pratiquer l'écriture française
3) J'ai besoin de pratiquer la traduction du français
et finalement, 4) Il me semble encore une autre façon de m'embarrasser en une langue étrangère.

If you're wondering why I didn't do Spanish while I was in Colombia, a brief glance at those entries will suffice to inform you as to a few reasons: I basically had no Colombian friends when I was living there, something you'll see is quite different here in France... when I get around to telling you about it. If you're asking yourself why I don't do it now, well, it's a bit of work to put together these entries in one language. It's a lot more work to write it over again in another language. And doing it in three.... Well, I have to draw the line somewhere.

Si vous vous demandez pourquoi je n'écrivais pas en espagnol pendant être en Colombie, un coup d’œil à ces entrées suffit à vous informer de quelques raisons : en résumé, j'avais pas d'amis colombiens pendant mon séjour là-bas, une différence entre Colombie et France que vous verrez…. Quand je retrouverai l'envie de vous dire. Et si vous vous demandez pourquoi je ne le fais pas maintenant, bon, c'est pas un petit travail créer ces entrées en une langue. C'est encore plus en deux. Et en trois… Il faut poser des limites.

Anyway, today the genie demands a poem. So it's a poem you all get. Enjoy. Or don't. I didn't write it. That genius over there did.

Quoi qu'il soit, aujourd'hui, le génie exige un poème. Alors, vous allez recevoir un poème. J'espère que vous l'aimez. Ou pas. C'était pas moi qui l'a écrit. Ce génie-là, c'est lui qui l'a fait.

Jambi made me do it.

Litany of Lost Things

Lost my keys

Lost my wallet

Lost my cell phone

Lost my patience

Lost my hat

Lost my gloves

Lost my scarf

Lost my temper

Lost my chapstick

Lost my nailclippers

Lost my toothbrush

Lost my mind

Lost my cat

Lost my dog

Lost my gerbil

Lost my marbles

Lost my heart

Lost my spirit

Lost my soul

But you found them.

(Litanie des Trucs Perdus)
Perdues les clés
Perdu le portefeuille
Perdu le portable
Perdue la patience

Perdu le chapeau
Perdues les gantes
Perdu l'écharpe
Perdu le courage

Perdu le baume
Perdu le couple-ongles
Perdue la brosse
Perdue la boule

Perdu le chat
Perdu le chien
Perdu le cobaye
Perdus les moyens

Perdu le cœur
Perdu le moral
Perdue l'essence
Mais tu les retrouves toujours.

In Russia, You Don't Ride Plane. Plane Ride You.

I left you last at my journey from my home that wasn't feeling homey to France, but first: A stop in Russia. I'm not sure why I needed to stop in Russia. If you look at a map, it's pretty out of the way, but it was the cheapest ticket, and I wasn't going to argue with that. Unfortunately, you do get what you pay for. As I walked down the little bridge connecting the airport to the plane, I heard a sound that I hadn't heard since I worked at Bright Horizons Family Solutions: The sound of a Slavic kid going apeshit.

"Slavic kids going apeshit."

The last time i had the distinct pleasure of watching a kid of from Eastern Europe completely lose it was back when I was working at the daycare. I normally worked with the older kids there, and while they can freak out, the normally cling on to some level of rationality. But this fateful day, I was working in the preschool room, and there was a relatively new kid. I don't remember his name, so we'll call him Boris. Boris had come somewhere from Eastern Europe because his parents had gotten some job in New York. He was still technically in the process of learning English, but he seemed to communicate pretty well with the other kids. I remember watching him for a while, more as a social experiment than anything. I was interested in seeing what happened with this kid who supposedly didn't speak a lot of English had to engage with a bunch of people who didn't speak a lick of his language. Anyway, when no interesting situations presented themselves in the first fifteen minutes, I got bored and played Legos with some of the kids.

Cut to about six minutes later when this kid is suddenly hulking the fuck out on the other side of the room. He's like knocking over chairs and stuff, screaming "I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK ENGLISH ANYMORE!" (in English) and occasionally biting himself. And sometimes the furniture. When that started up, I had to get on the phone and call for backup. I mean, I wasn't trained for that situation. Eventually, his parents came and picked him up, and that was the last I saw of him.

"(in English:) YOU CAN'T MAKE ME SPEAK ENGLISH!"

Now, before my very eyes, this kid was freaking out. He wasn't biting anything but he was fighting tooth and nail to not get on that airplane. He was probably about eight years old and pretty big. But his dad was wrestling him, carrying him upside down, over his shoulder, just about any which way he could move a few steps with him. Really, after the initial shock, I felt bad for him and his parents. I asked the flight attendant, "Is he scared or something?" (assuming she could speak whatever that kid spoke), and she said, "Yes, and so are we." I chucked and sat down.

But guess who decides to plump his chunky ass down next to me? I'll give you a hint: It's the same person screaming bloody murder. Yep, it was that kid. And it was hours before he stopped. But he did stop. And I kept reminding myself that for the four or five hours till we finally touched the ground, and I was finally in Europe. Back after five years.

Oh Jesus Christ, Where To Begin?

Well, after a month-long break, the blog is back! And so much has happened in that month that it feels like it's been so much longer. My hopes of catching you up in a single entry are probably a bit foolish, so for the next couple weeks, these entries might be all over the place in space and time. Like a Doctor Who episode. But let's start start where we left off:

Before arriving in France, I stopped in Chicago before I headed off to New York. The MegaBus from Chicago to New York is ten dollars if you schedule it well enough in advance, so I couldn't really pass up the opportunity to visit a few old friends before I crossed the ocean. In Chicago, I met up with Marko and Paul. But after two days in Chicago, it was off to New York.

The ride to New York took a long time. A really long time. It was eighteen hours of molasses-class purgatory. I got on the bus at midnight, and I arrived in New York at seven pm. Eighteen hours on a bus wasn't as bad as you'd think though. They had plugs for your computer and phone, and there was rudimentary wifi service. But my sense of reality had started to warp a little bit, and soon I began to believe that there was only the bus, there could only ever be the bus, that there was never anything before the bus and there's nothing after the bus. The bus was the end and the beginning, the alpha and the omega, all that there is. So when I saw Frank's familiar face waiting for me when I got off in my once beloved home, it was surreal.

There is only the bus.
The bus is all there is.
The bus is everything.

After I had gotten rid of the suitcase of what was to become my only belongings henceforth, I cleaned myself back up into something resembling a sane human, and Frank and I feasted on the delicious vegetarian meatballs of Meatball Shop and headed to The Eagle for Jockstrap Night, because there really just aren't cultural activities like that in Indianapolis. Or Colombia. Or really anywhere else. At the end of the night, I came back to Frank's feeling like I had started the visit out right and that I was getting to see the arts of New York I loved without that pesky rent issue.

That feeling started to change the next day. I had no real plans lined up, so I decided to just go out into the city and see all the places I missed. Then I realized that there were no specific places (that still existed) that I actually missed. Try as I did, there was just nothing I could come up with that I felt like I needed to see, besides Central Park, which was closed because of the president or the pope or both. And then it started to set in again: The feeling that my time there had ended, that the city that once welcomed me with open arms as the bizarre, vagrant creature I was had changed and I woke up one day to realize it was no longer the same place at all. But now there was something new, an emotion with which I have little acquaintance: jealousy. I was jealous of all the people walking up and down the streets, hurrying to get to this place or that place. That's when I realized that the only thing I missed about New York was living there, feeling like I was, in at least some small way, part of the machinery that moved the world. I didn't miss any specific place or thing, just living there, just the rhythm of the city and the interesting people everywhere. Everyone had a story and a motivation. Few people there are just moving through life without trying to leave their mark or achieve some goal. And I do miss some people I know there, yet slowly but surely, my friends are also fleeing, branching out to other parts of the country with lower rent and less stress. That visit was sad but necessary, perhaps particularly then, right before another adventure. So it was with a heavy heart and with the perpetual forward motion that having no home brings you, that I got on an airplane that took me from New York to Russia and then from Russia to France.