Nostalgia

For about a year now, I've been getting these attacks of nostalgia, particularly for moments back in New York. These little attacks just happen out of seemingly nowhere: I'm going about my daily business when all of a sudden--BAM!--a memory hits me from out of nowhere and stops me in my tracks. This has always happened to me. I can remember being in the middle of folding socks as a young teenager, around thirteen or fourteen, and some sort of humiliating memory popped back up and I realized I had totally stopped folding socks and was just sitting there. Remembering. That time the memory was tinged with humiliation, but it's not always. Sometimes it's regret or joy or sorrow or laughter, but it's always demanding. I remember when I first started reading the Dune series, a collection of books that forever changed how I thought and viewed the world, that they mentioned the adab, "the demanding memory that comes upon one of itself," and I finally had a name for this phenomenon.

It's ironic that these adab are of New York because it's because of something like them that I left in the first place. After ten years there, the city had changed so much. People had left, businesses had closed, and the entire geography and culture of the city had seemed to change as a result. I would walk down streets and constantly travel though my memories: seeing the corner vegetarian restaurant that had closed down in East Village in favor of a tenant who could pay higher rent and never came to set up shop, a conversation I had with a stranger who convinced me to keep pursuing theatre in the middle of Lincoln Square when I was unsure, the fun parties in the lobby of the Hudson Hotel and the time that my walk of shame the next morning included my Intro to Spanish Literature class smack dab in the middle. I was constantly being haunted by these ghosts, and after a moment, it became overwhelming.

Oh look, it's that memory again..,

And now, like a horror movie, the ghosts have followed me here, to the other side of the Earth. Though this time, instead of running from them, I almost welcome them, because now when the memories come of themselves, they bring with them a bittersweet taste, a nostalgia that wasn't there before.

I think these memories are a means for my mind to try to integrate who I was with who I am now. I'm becoming a much different person than I used to be. I've decided to prioritize different things in life, like language learning and my writing, for example. I'm not nearly as interested in going out and partying (though don't get me wrong, one weekend out of four, I'm all about it), and generally, I prefer to stay home unless I have something out of the ordinary to go see, like an exhibit at the museum or a festival.

But when I think back on New York, despite being taken in by more "distractions," I feel like I was doing a lot more with myself: I had a theatre company, I was translating literature, I was going to school for my bachelors, all on top of having a job, going out with my friends, occasionally playing video games and volunteering for something random around the city. These days, I feel like I'm doing less, and on top of that, I have a lot less energy. In Colombia I started drinking coffee regularly, and now I feel like I rely on it (even if it's nothing extreme, I'm told, just a couple cups a day), and I'm always feeling worn out at the end of the day. I have a full-time job for the first time in years, but I'm struggling to fit in time to do other things I need and want to be doing while still finding time, and more importantly the energy, to be social and partake in leisurely activities like video games. I haven't touched a game in months, which a younger, former self could barely imagine. I sometimes wonder if this is a natural part of aging or if there's something I'm doing differently. But if I am doing something differently to get in my own way, what is it? If anything, I'm getting more sleep and eating better, so that can't be it. I drink much less as well. Everything I'm doing should be pointing to having much more energy, but it's just not the case. It frustrates me because I went from producing works of art to just kind of having a hobby in languages, and for better or worse, my self-esteem depends on what I'm working for and on, and if that's nothing, then it's hard for me to be happy with myself.

In Dune, when talking about adab, a character (perhaps Lady Jessica?) mentions that when these memories come, they have something to tell us; they demand our attention for a reason. Perhaps their purpose is not only so I can make peace with the new person I'm becoming, but also to make sure that as I change, as I grow older and truly come into full adulthood, that I make sure to take the best aspects of my twenties with me: the feeling of newness, of hope, of magic! that I feel slipping away little by little. Perhaps the reason that I'm tired is because even if I'm sleeping, I've, somewhere along the way, stopped dreaming. And these ghosts, these adab, are an attempt to remind me of that, like when you suddenly have a flash of your dream from the night before.

It's time to snap out of the coma.

And wake up into my next dream.

Lament for the Inauguration

I watched the Inauguration Friday night from here in France with another American friend and with each of our French partners. I know that a good deal of people vowed to boycott the inauguration's broadcast, and I totally respect that and hope that we can move on to ignoring his tweets next. However, I needed to see it. Not to watch it as entertainment or to trivialize or condone the beginning of a four-year mess, but to stand witness. To attend the funeral. No one goes to a funeral because they think it's going to be fun; they do it because they know they have to. They have to so that they can, on one hand, be there to stand witness to the suffering of others (which is an often underrated response) and on the other, to get closure for themselves. And that's how I approached this inauguration: a funeral.

I've been outside the United States for practically the whole election process. I've been on the other side of the world, far away from everything, only hearing what average people are saying via tourists and Facebook. With an ocean stretching between us, it almost doesn't feel real. If I imagine really hard, I can almost trick myself into thinking that it's not really happening: I'm just having a bad dream that I'm confusing with a memory, or that it's the TV show I'm obsessed with that week just spilling into my day-to-day thoughts. But then I remember the very real people who support him, some of them among my own family, and I'm back to reality.

It was my first time watching an inauguration from start to finish. My interest in politics is something that has been slowly picking up steam since adolescence, but it didn't really become the kind of obsession it is today until I ventured outside of the United States, which makes it really just an extension of my own self-interest, I suppose. Since I started following politics in any meaningful way, there have only been three inaugurations: two for Obama, and one for George W. Bush. I was obviously in no rush to watch Bush's inauguration, and for Obama's, I saw clips and images, but I never really made it a priority to watch. The inauguration is all just ceremony. I could watch the ceremony or I could spend that time reading up, educating myself, talking to people, all things which I consider a better use of my time.

One of the first things that struck me was how much religion was a part of the ceremony, which seemed strange and out of place, and later a quick Google search allowed me to confirm that it was indeed abnormal with a record breaking six religious speakers. I expected a prayer. Even if I don't really like the idea, it is the United States, but that was really it. Instead, it was practically a church service. I was as pleased to see subtle and not so subtle hints from certain religious leaders at keeping America a land that welcomes everyone, as I was displeased to have to endure the babble of prosperity gospel televangelists.

Actually, to be honest, I didn't. That's when my friend and I took a break and did a couple shots of tequila because what's a funeral without heavy drinking?

But in all seriousness it was horrifying, and at times overwhelming to watch. Trump's speech in particular. Hearing him attempt to masquerade as a movement for the people, telling them that this was "for them" made my stomach turn and my heart broke for the second time. I had to excuse myself away to cry in the bathroom. Again. It was the morning after election day all over. It's still incredible to me that people can't see him for what he is: a con man. In business he's been nothing but a liar, and as a so-called politician, he will do the same. I mean, am I the only one who can hear it? It makes me feel like I'm going crazy. I feel like I'm watching the United States going up in flames and people are either joking about it (in France, not really so much in the US) or they're cheering on their own destruction.

Even still, I have so much hope. Because for all the people who do support him, there are even more who don't, and a lot of them, many of whom I'm proud to call my friends, are demonstrating and manifesting and protesting and fighting back in any way they know how. So many people refuse to let the ideals of our country die a quiet and easy death, and I sometimes think that maybe this has woken everyone up. Now that some of those who were apathetic before have seen how bad things have gotten, they've finally snapped out of it and are mobilizing. So yes, I watched the inauguration as a funeral, but this isn't the end. Just as death is not an end. It's a change of form, and I hope that our next form is more glorious than we can imagine in this seemingly bleak moment.

I sound like a Martian in both English and French

There are certain things you become painfully aware of when you're living in a country that's not your own. I know it's an obvious observation, but it's true in ways you can't even imagine, even something as ignored but as intimate as your voice. I've never been so conscious of the way I speak, and I don't mean just in French.

Before continuing I must fully confess an important but embarrassing detail for those reading this who have never heard me speak French: My accent in French is thick. It's not so thick that people can't normally understand me, but it is quite obvious from the look in strangers' eyes that it hits them in the face with all the force of an elderly lady's generous application of perfume. However, seeing just the uneasy look in a stranger's eyes is the kindest of reactions. Among the worst is when they respond in English, which in US culture amounts to a (mild or not so mild) form of bigotry. If you're not sure what I mean, imagine the reaction of someone responding to a Hispanic person in broken Spanish (HHHOLAH) and repeatedly calling them their "amigo." It makes you cringe, doesn't it? I live a similar situation here in France. This happens regardless of the persons skill in English. Such as the time when, midway through the transaction, the cashier decided to switch to English but only managed to repeat "She.... She.... She..." over and over again. Or the time when I was ordering in Subway, where the menu items are in English, and they couldn't understand my pronunciation of English words (but could understand the French words), decided my French was bad (the irony!) and then tried to switch to English, which failed as spectacularly as you are probably imagining. It's worth noting, without writing a blog entry of its own, that the problem lies not really in the person's skill in English but in the othering and lack of acceptance of someone who's clearly trying to integrate into your country, but I digress...

All of this up until now, you could probably expect, but it doesn't stop there. Even in my own native language, my speech and accent is the subject of unease. At work, I'm constantly told that, "The American accent is difficult," as if there's only one American accent in a country that is between 14 and 15 times the size of France.

"You don't speak English; you speak American," is another one I hear often, as if I speak some kind of English pidgin. I'm not sure if this is just a weird linguistic quirk since they do, after all, call Canadian French (roughly translated for the French-impaired) "Quebecian" (Quebecois). But when you consider that they often put down Quebec's accent and dialect, maybe it's not some weird linguistic thing where they have the habit of referring to dialects instead of language, and French people are just completely unfamiliar of the idea with language plurality. It's ironic to think that in the US, we laugh at people as uneducated when they say they speak "American," and here, when I tell people I speak "English, not American," I'm considered the incorrect one.

I know this sounds highly sensitive, like I should just get over it. Don't worry. Plenty people of told me this--most of them French--which is why I don't really discuss this with them anymore. At a certain point, it seems fruitless. When you've had the same conversation a thousand times with the same result, why bother? And truthfully, the first times that it happens, it wasn't so bothersome, but it's like being tickled. After first it's funny, but slowly but surely it stops and before you know it, it's unbearable. So I'm trying to develop a thicker skin. It helps that this most often happens at work, and I just have to grin and bear it in the name of being professional.

Now, a year later, it's old hat. Yes, it was fun for a moment to be "the American" at the party, but eventually after the 700th joke about hamburgers and how fat we are or the 345th tongue-in-cheek comment guns, or fucking Donald Trump, it gets old. It also doesn't help that all of these things are serious topics that I worry about at night because I care about my country (well, maybe hamburgers aren't so serious) but they're just jokes to them. Feeling like the visiting ambassador from the "New World" is fun, but eventually you want to be part of the group, not the invited guest.

Well, at least he didn't have a gun, right?

People always ask me what crime was like in New York and Colombia, if I felt safe, if there were a lot of pickpockets, and my answer is always the same, "If you pay attention, you'll probably be fine. Something can always happen, no matter where you are and no matter how many precautions you take. Sometimes you just have bad luck, but in general, it's not as big of a concern as you'd imagine." In New York, I often mention that for cities of its population size, it's one of the safest in the United States. The question used to most often come from concerned Hoosiers who viewed NYC as the "the big bad city," which made it ironic that the one time I was held at gunpoint in my life was while I had come back to Indianapolis for my Aunt Andrea's funeral.

In the ongoing bizzaro world situation of Le Mans basically being the French Indianapolis, people often ask me the same question here, and as of last night, just like in Indianapolis, I had another unnerving experience. Jeremy and I had gone out with friends that night, and we got home pretty late. We had stayed up, talking and discussing, when there was a knock at our door. Neither of us were all that shocked. I immediately assumed it was probably a friend who had accidentally left something behind at our apartment before going out to the bars.

Jeremy looked through the peep hole, assumed it was a neighbor and opened the door. The man, who was about our age and whose face was difficult to see with his hood up, started to try to walk into the apartment. Jeremy, reacting quickly, pushed him out and slammed the door shut. The man pushed on the door, and we quickly turned the deadbolt, which lead him to start grabbing and turning the knob. I was still a bit shocked and looked at the door, and distinctly remember feeling cornered and not really sure what I could do to get him to go away. So I slammed my hands on my side of the door, which made a rumbling sound through the building, and yelled "I'm calling the police!" which I'm sure was so very intimidating in my awkward American accent.

I turned to Jeremy and told him to call the police because right after I said I was going to call the police, I became aware of an embarrassing detail: I never really committed the emergency numbers in France to memory. He was on hold with them for what felt like some time, and when he finally speaks to a person, he was told "just don't open the door" and "everyone's getting broken into tonight." The police never showed.

Equally effective

Sometime during the police call, the man stopped messing with our doorknob and went up to another floor. Jeremy turned off the light, and I crouched down in front of our windows that open onto the street. I flashed back to the time I had been in the proximity of a shooting (also in Indianapolis), and while, stupidly, the majority ran to go watch, I moved away from the windows and to the back of the store I was in. I did the same here, and it was only until I had calmed down that I realized it was extremely unlikely he had a gun, unlike in the US. Meanwhile, Jeremy had opened a window to look out onto the street, and I pulled him back in by the shirt and shut the windows. 

We both continued to watch, and we saw the man eventually leave our building. A car pulled up and the hooded man talked with a woman (who we're pretty sure lives in our building). After their talk (which I couldn't understand), the hooded man got in the car with a bunch of others and the care drove away, and we breathed a sigh of relief. 

Afterward, we began to sort through the facts, and Jeremy decided that he was probably someone who lived in our building but had got confused about which apartment was his since he was probably extremely drunk. In the end, he probably meant us no real harm and was just so drunk he had no idea what he was doing or where he was, but the entire experience was unnerving to say the least, if for no other reason than it reminded me of past experiences. It's been a couple days since, and I still feel a bit paranoid. When I walk around at night, I'm nervous that I'll run into him, and when I wake up in the morning or come back home, I have the irrational fear that he or someone else will be there. Like I said, he probably had no intention to rob us; he was probably just some drunk guy who didn't know where he was or what he was doing, but these things stick with you for a while. When I had a gun held at my face while someone demanded my money, I was nervous for weeks to walk around on the street, even though it was a completely different city. I imagine I'll have a few more days of being nervous. Regardless of the circumstances or motivations, there's something about a home invasion that shakes a fundamental part of you because it challenges what we all believe deep down: that you're unquestionably safe in your home. But hey, at least that means I know now I have a home.

I made a mistake

So, it turns out that maybe I made a mistake. I shouldn't have quit writing this blog. It's been almost a year, and I have been feeling a hole in my life since my only outlet for writing was social media. Facebook as an outlet for creative impulses isn't very satisfying at all; it's just ephemeral snippets. It's like you're starving and all you eat is cotton candy. You get a taste of something sweet, but it dissolves in your mouth before you've even swallowed and you realize you're getting no nourishment at all. It's just empty calories. Creatively speaking.

This blog did so many things for me at once. Writing about what I think and what I observe in the world was a way to digest it and learn from it, to arrange the information and make sense from it. In this way, this blog was my alienist. I lied on a couch in a darkened room and let loose what was on my mind that week. I explained my problems, my joys, my frustrations, then I added some gifs and posted it in the faux-anonymity of the Internet. Emphasis on the faux because, as it turned out, people were listening, which made it a way to let you into my life and to continue to share moments with people who were important to me. A good deal of the people who read my blog were friends who I now live far away from because–spoiler alert–I'm still in France, and writing a weekly post was a way to bring you all along with me, which I wish I could do. I miss you all.

So, that being said, I'm bringing it back: Season Three, An Expatriate Without A Country (a bit in homage to the brilliant and unforgettable Kurt Vonnegut Jr.), the long-term season. I hope you all join me.

And like that, it's gone.

Well, that's all folks.

Yes, just like that. I realized that I need to start putting more energy into some other projects, and I decided to let this one go. I'm a bit sad since I know I had some people who read regularly and I've been told by different people, from friends to acquaintances to strangers, that they enjoyed what I had to say. Thank you, all. Maybe it'll be back one day. Who knows. No promises. Maybe I'll post a random thing or two here as time goes on. But the blog as a weekly thing I do is over. I felt the quality starting to take a drop, and my enjoyment was too. It kept getting put on the back burner until I was barely posting. My desire to make good art, good writing is starting to take over with the change of the year, and while I never thought anything I posted was horrible, the pressure to have something every week sometimes forced me to put up things I didn't love.

But I have a bit of a parting gift for you. A playlist I put together. I decided to center it around the theme that this blog stood on: the wonder of travel and exploration, whether that be another part of the world or your own. I hope you'll listen to it to help say good-bye to the blog, and maybe help my candle light the candle of wanderlust in you.

See you around, folks.

 

I swooned into a pile of love / Je me suis pâmé dans un tas d'amour

Last week I left Le Mans for the first time since I arrived here and went to a place called Center Parcs with my boyfriend and his family.

La dernière semaine, je suis parti du Mans pour la première fois depuis mon arrivée et je suis allé à un endroit qui s’appelle Center Parcs avec mon copain et sa famille.

Yeah, you heard right. I’m dating someone. File that under things I didn’t think would happen anytime soon. I originally met him in a gay bar. Really the only gay bar here in Le Mans. I was coming out of the bathroom, and I said in French something along the lines of, “it’s free.” Nothing of great importance, but enough for him to notice my accent. He asked where I was from, and I told him the United States, which prompted a barrage of English.

Oui, vous avez bien entendu. Je suis dans une relation. Vous pouvez le mettre dans l’archive marquée “Choses que je n’attendais pas.” Notre première rencontre était dans un bar gay. Franchement, c’était le seul bar gay au Mans. Je sortais des toilettes en lui disant, “C’est libre” ou quelque chose de normal, mais ça a suffi pour qu’il note mon accent. Il m’a demandé d’où je suis et je lui ai dit que c’était les États-Unis, ce qui a provoqué un déluge d’anglais.

If you don’t remember, I’ll take the opportunity to remind you that most multilingual Americans find that annoying as hell. Part of it is cultural. Imagine doing the same thing in the United States. You see someone who looks Hispanic, you ask them where they’re from, they say Mexico or Colombia, and then you launch into your bizarre high school Spanish, which probably isn’t that good, to someone who’s clearly doing just fine with English. If you did that in the US, you’d come off as cultural ignorant at best and racist at worst. It also just kind of makes you feel odd and foreign each time someone says a word, and we all like to feel like we fit in now and then.

Pour eux qui ne souviennent pas, je profite de l’occasion pour vous dire que la majorité des Américains multilingue trouve ça tout énervant. Un facteur est notre culture. Pour mes lecteurs américains, imaginez-vous faire le même aux États-Unis. Vous voyez quelqu’un d’hispanique, vous demandez d’où il est, il dit le Mexique et la Colombie et ensuite, tu te lances dans parler un espagnol bizarre que vous avez appris au lycée, ce qui n’est pas probablement très bon, à quelqu’un qui paraît ne pas avoir aucun problème en parlant anglais. Si vous le faites aux États-Unis, on dirait ignorant au mieux et raciste au pire. Ce fait que l’autre se sent étrange et embarrassé chaque fois que vous prononcez un mot, et tous aiment se sentir intégrés de temps en temps. 

So as you can image, I wasn’t pleased, but I could only be a little angry because I was absolutely smitten. He was utterly handsome and had managed to continue to be charming while he was pissing me off, which is impressive. But since I felt intimidated and weird and angry, I ran away to return to my friends and watch him from a distance, hoping for another opportunity to talk to him but also trying to figure out how to make that happen without the onslaught of random English phrases. That opportunity never really came.

Alors, comment vous pouvez imaginer, je n’étais pas content, mais j’étais presque incapable d’être fâché parce que j’étais épris. Il était tout beau et est arrivé à me charmer en m’emmerdant, ce qui est impressionnant. Mais à cause de sentir intimidé, gêné et emmerdé, je me suis échappé à mes amis et pour le regarder de loin, en espérant une autre opportunité de lui parler. Mais je devais découvrir comment le faire sans être présenté avec un assaut d’anglais. L’opportunité ne m’est jamais arrivée.

A few days later, I found him on a dating app and messaged him, referencing the other night, and when he replied, he accused me of being a fake profile. Cute. After a long debate, through which I kept trying to figure out why I was putting in so much effort, I convinced him to meet me for a drink. When the day came, he canceled because of rain. There ended up being no rain that day, just ominous looking clouds that came and went. I started to suspect that he was actually Colombian and was pretty much prepared to give up at this point, but we made another plan and finally got together. When I saw him approach the bar door at the same time as me, I remembered why I was trying so hard: Because they very sight of him makes me melt.

Quelques jours plus tard, je l’ai trouvé dans une application de rencontre et lui ai envoyé un message qui a mentionné l’autre nuit. Quand il m’a répondu, il m’a accusé d’être un faux profil. Très mignon. Après un débat long, pendant lequel j’essayais de comprendre pourquoi je faisais tant d’effort, je l’ai convaincu de prendre un verre. Quand ce jour est arrivé, il a annulé à cause de la pluie. En fait, il ne pleuvait pas ce jour. Il n’y avait que des nuages très menaçants qui sont arrivés et sortis. Je commençais à m’abandonner, mais on a organisé un autre jour et enfin, on s’est vus. Quand je l’ai vu approcher la porte du bar, je me suis souvenu la raison pour laquelle j’essayais autant : parce que la simple vue de lui me fait me pâmer. 

We hit it off immediately. The night went great, and it’s been going pretty great ever since. He’s my favorite person to be around, and thanks to him my experience here in France has been so much deeper. He shows me things I wouldn’t discover on my own and does it all while being his charming, funny, handsome self.

On s’est bien entendus dès le début. La nuit était magnifique et il reste comme ça depuis. Il est ma personne favorite pour voir et grâce à lui, mon expérience en France est plus profonde. Il me montre des trucs que je n’aurais pas découverts seul et il le fait en étant charmant, drôle, beau.

So, back to Center Parks. It’s basically this giant nature vacation resort with little cabins, outdoor activities, and a big giant pool area with a couple large water slides, a wave pool, a crazy river to ride down, and heated pools that go outside, which is pretty neat in December. His sister’s husband had paid for their family to go, but there was an extra room and they invited Jeremy and me. I was a bit nervous to meet his family, but more and more, I’m learning to respond to nervousness head-on instead of trying to hide from it. Go deeper into the moment than try to escape it, you know?

Alors, Center Parks. Il est essentiellement une grande belle station avec des cottages, des activités de plein air et une grande zone de natation avec des toboggans, une piscine à vagues, une rivière sauvage et des piscines chauffées extérieures, ce qui est merveilleux en décembre. Le mari de sa sœur a payé pour sa famille, mais il y avait une chambre qui restait et ils ont invité Jeremy et moi. Je craignais un peu pour rencontre sa famille, mais de plus en plus, j’apprends à faire face à la nervosité au lieu d’essayer de me cacher de l’opportunité, de me mettre plus profond dans le moment au lieu de l’éviter.  

It was an amazingly fun weekend. I rode down two water slides—one with a forty five degree drop—rode a bike for the first time in years, took a walk in some nature, got to know some of my boyfriend’s family, and had a romantic mini-vacation with the one I love. All in all, despite coming down with a cold on the first day, it was a pretty awesome weekend. There was also no cell or wifi signal, which is frightening for the first fifteen minutes but then liberating for the three days we were there. It was so good that I started to dread coming home and having to go to work on Monday. But then I realized I only had one week till Christmas vacation, so I put on my big boy pants and we went back to the city. Where we promptly ate pizza.

C’était un weekend super amusant. J’ai fait deux toboggans-l'un avec une pente de 45 degrés—monté un vélo pour la première fois en des années, baladé dans la nature, appris à connaitre la famille de mon copain, et eu des petites vacances romantiques avec qui j’aime. Somme toute, bien que j’aie été enrhumé le premier jour, c’était un weekend fantastique. Il n’y avait pas de signal WiFi ou de portable, ce qui est terrifiant pour les premières quinze minutes, mais ensuite, il devient libérateur pour les trois jours que nous y avons passés. Il était tellement bien que j’ai commencé à redouter le retour chez moi pour aller au travail lundi. Mais je me suis rendu compte que j’avais seulement une semaine jusqu’à les vacances de Noel et je me suis endurcit et on est revenus à la ville. Où, ensuite, on a mangé de la pizza.

Papaw

Le mal reste avec l'on.
L'on ne peut pas s'evader d'eux, même si l'on veut.

So much is happening so fast, and it's hard to keep up with telling you all about everything. And maybe some things I've been putting off. Like how my grandfather passed away last month. I had decided that I needed to write about this almost two weeks ago, and I kept putting it off and putting it off because well, I didn't know what I could say exactly. And once I had figured out what to say I put it off some more because it was painful. When my sister told me that Papaw was being taken home on hospice care, it came as such a shock in one respect and in another, not at all. I've learned from my Aunt Andrea's and my step-father Walt's passing that being on hospice care doesn't mean they're going anytime soon. They can hang on for quite a while, though I think I knew in the back of my head that this meant he would likely pass before I got home in May, if I was even going home in May. (For reasons we'll discuss later, I'd like to stay here longer. I already had that in mind before I came, but now I have... extra motivation.)

Trop est arrivé très vite et il est difficile de vous mettre au jour sur tout. Et peut-être il y a des nouvelles que je remisais à plus tard. Par exemple, la mort de mon grand-père. J’ai décidé que je devais écrire sur cela il y a deux semaines, mais je l’ai reporté à de plus en plus tard, car bon, je ne savais exactement que dire. Une fois que j'ai compris que dire, je l’ai encore décalé, car c’était douloureux. Quand ma sœur m’a dit que mon grand-père était emmené chez soi pour des soins palliatifs, d’une façon, il m'a choqué, mais d’une autre, pas de tout. J’ai appris à cause du décès de ma tante Andrea et mon beau-père Walt que le soin palliatif ne signifie pas une mort soudaine. Ils peuvent continuer à vivre pendant quelque temps, bien que j'aie su dans un coin de mon esprit qu’il signifiait qu’il mourrait avant que j’arrive aux États-Unis en mai, si je rentre aux États-Unis. (Grâce à des raisons dont nous parlerons plus tard, j’aimerais rester en France pour plus de temps. Je l’avais en tête avant de partir en France, mais maintenant… J’ai plus de motivation.)  

I remember when I saw him last. It was at my sister's wedding. He showed up using a cane and had lost some hair due to the chemo so he covered his head with a cap. He was in as good of spirits as always, but it was strange to see him using a cane. My grandparents are old, as grandparents generally are. I know this in the way most people know intellectual facts. Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Plants perform photosynthesis to make their food. Sound is the vibration of waves through a medium. But if I were to go on how I experience these things, water is just a thing to drink, plants grow without effort, sound is when things go bang, and my grandparents have been frozen at the same age for my entire lifetime. They seemed to never age, always lively and active, always happy and positive, and have always been the clearest source of unconditional love in my life. So to see my Papaw using a cane was strange, but he said he was coming off chemo and I chalked it up to that more than anything. I didn't ask if this meant he had given up fighting the cancer, choosing quality of life over quantity. I also didn't ask how long he was expected to have. In a certain way, I didn't feel it was my business. In another way, I didn't really want to know. Doctors are never really right about those sorts of things.

Je me souviens de la dernière fois où je l’ai vu, le mariage de ma sœur. Il est entré en utilisant une canne et a couvert ses cheveux perdus à cause de la chimio avec un casque. Il était de bonne humeur, comme d’habitude, mais c’était bizarre de le voir avec une canne. Mes grands-parents sont vieux, ce qui est la tendance des grands-parents. Je le sais comme on sait des faits intellectuels : L’eau est composée par deux atomes d’hydrogène et l'un d’oxygène. Les plantes font la photosynthèse. Le son est des ondes à travers un médium. Mais selon ce que je ressens : l’eau est un liquide clair, les plants poussent tout seuls, le son est quand mes oreilles écoutent un bruit est mes grands-parents sont congelés au même âge pour toute ma vie. Il semblait qu’ils ne vieillissaient jamais: ils étaient toujours vivants et actifs, toujours contents et positifs. Ils sont la source plus évidente de l’amour inconditionnel dans ma vie. Alors, voir mon grand-père utiliser une canne, c’était étrange, mais il a dit qu’il allait arrêter la chimio et je l’ai remporté à cela. Je n’ai pas demandé s’il signifiait qu’il a abandonné de lutter contre le cancer, qu’il a choisi la qualité de vie sur la quantité. Je n’ai pas demandé combien de temps on croyait qu’il aurait. Dans un sens, je croyais que ce n’était pas mon affaire. Par contre, je ne voulais pas savoir franchement. Les médecins ne sont jamais corrects avec leurs estimations.

Papaw, my sister, my niece, me, and Mamaw
Mon grand-père, ma soeur, ma nièce, moi et ma grand-mère

At the end of October, it's "All Saint's Vacation" here, and I was off of work when my sister sent me a Facebook message to tell me he had passed. It was unexpected, but then, when is death ever expected. It's never marked down in your agenda for tomorrow. It happens on its own schedule.

À la fin d’octobre, c’est la vacation de Toussaints en France, et c’était cette période quand ma sœur m’a envoyé un message sur Facebook pour me dire qu’il était mort. C’est inattendu, mais quand est-il la mort attendue ?

There was shock and there was sadness, but it was cut short by the business of trying to figure out a plane ticket. My mom offered to help, so I needed to find the cheapest possible. And then I just had things I needed to get done. I was still in the middle of doing a lot of administrative stuff for immigration. When I had finally found time, the grief had hid itself. I lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe it was because I didn't see the real decline, but it might have been good that I wasn't there. My sister said he was very out of it in his last days, and I think my presence could have been upsetting for him. The death of my father had always weighed very hard on Papaw. I don't think he ever really got over it, which is natural. Parents aren't built to handle their children's death; evolution didn't provide the skill. I look a lot like my father, and sometimes Papaw would accidentally call me David, my father's name. In fact, at the wedding, he told my Mamaw, "Didn't David do so well up there?" referring to the service I wrote for my sister and her husband. So if he has Freudian slips of the tongue while he is fine, I can't imagine what would happen if he were fading. I think my presence would have just caused him pain.

Il m’a choqué et il m’a attristé, mais tout cela était écourté en essayant de trouver un billet d’avion. Ma mère m’a offert d’aider, donc j’avais besoin de trouver le voyage le moins cher. Et aussi j’avais beaucoup à faire. J’étais en train d’arranger des affaires administratives avec le bureau d’immigration. Enfin, quand j’ai trouvé du temps, le chagrin a disparu. Je l’ai perdu au long du chemin. Peut-être, c’était parce que je n’ai pas vu son déclin, mais il a pu être bien que je n’aie pas été là. Ma sœur m’a raconté qu’il était désorienté pendant ses derniers jours, et je pense que ma présence a pu être perturbante pour lui. La mort de mon père pesait beaucoup sur mon grand-père. Je crois qu’il ne se l’est jamais remis, ce qui est naturel. Les parents ne sont pas faits pour se remettre la mort de leurs enfants; l’évolution ne leur a pas donné la capacité. Je ressemble beaucoup à mon père et parfois, par accident, mon grand-père m’appelait David, le nom de mon père. En fait, au mariage, il a dit à ma grand-mère, “David l’a bien fait, n’est-ce pas ?” en faisant allusion à la cérémonie que j’ai écrite et réalisée pour ma sœur et son mari. Donc, s’il avait des lapsus quand il était bien, je ne peux pas imaginer ce qui arriverait s’il était plus malade. Je pense que ma présence le ferait souffrir.

In the end, I didn't go back to the United States. It was one of his wishes to not have a big service, and I felt guilty asking my mom for so much money to go back. Mamaw did end up having a small gathering where the family spread his ashes in the woods surrounding their home in the woods. It's times like these that being abroad feels the most selfish, but at the same time, I know that Papaw would want me to be here. He was always curious about things, especially science, but really, he just loved learning. When I talked to Mamaw to ask her how she was doing, she told me that he was always proud that I had grown up to be so curious too, to be out exploring the world, always wanting to learn more. And hearing that made me sad and happy all at once because he understood me. And I made him proud.

Enfin, je ne suis pas retourné aux États-Unis. C’était un de ses souhaits de ne pas avoir une grande cérémonie et je me sentais trop coupable pour demander à ma mère trop d’argent pour y retourner. Ma grand-mère a fini par avoir une petite réunion où la famille a saupoudré des cendres dans le bois autour de leur maison. Les fois comme celle-ci sont quand on dirait qu'être à l’étranger est égoïste, mais à la fois, je sais que mon grand-père voudrait que je sois là. Il était toujours curieux, spécialement concernant la science, mais vraiment, il aimait apprendre de nouvelles choses. Quand j’ai parlé avec ma grand-mère pour lui demander comment elle allait, elle m’a dit qu’il était toujours fier que j’aie grandi en devenant aussi curieux, que j’explore le monde, que je veux toujours savoir plus. En l’écoutant, j’étais triste et content à la fois, car il m’a compris. Et il était fier.

Ceux qu'on aime ne sont jamais absents.

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.

Being Gay in Indianapolis, Indiana

Well, I said I'd do it, and here it is: a follow up to my second most popular entry to date. When I was in Colombia, I lamented how Colombian gay culture lacked the welcoming vibe I found in Spanish and US gay culture and how it had been Stockholm syndromed by straight culture. And here you definitely do find both of those things here, though their manifestations are different. Some places are more welcoming than others, of course. Greg's being the first to come to mind and Tini's being the last, because that place is bougey as hell... But coming into gay culture in New York City has left me eternally spoiled by what I expect from gay and queer culture, and Indianapolis is no exception. While the welcoming vibe almost certainly has to do with it being a smaller city, that also presents problems as well.

I know, I know. Keep it in mind as you read.

The first and most striking difference I notice is how a lot of people are obsessed, to a greater or lesser extent, with looking like a whore or not looking like one or they can't decide which they want to be. So many sexual stories I'm told, especially by people who I may not know well, start with a disclaimer: "I'm not a whore, but..." I don't care if you're a whore. Sleep with everyone. Sleep with no one. Whatever. Why is this even an issue? Why are we making this a thing? We're humans. We fuck. We're gay men. We fuck double because we don't have to worry about pregnancy and until recently marriage wasn't really in the cards. In New York, by and large, this is something we pay little attention to. Everyone kind of manages their sexual life in whatever way they want to without much of a hang up one way or another. Much like how you can throw into a casual conversation you smoke marijuana and take for granted the listener either smokes too or doesn't really care what you do with your own lungs. Here, however, the judgement level is high. Pun intended. Better not mention you manage your health responsibly and take PrEP, regardless of how many sexual partners you plan to have, or it's the scarlet letter for you.

As in I am awesome at not letting my Puritanical upbringing shame me
into making bad health choices.

This is a product of two things: a smaller gay community (to where, unlike New York or Madrid, you can actually call it a community) and mainstreaming. The latter is something that gay culture has been verging toward ever since marriage equality became the major political push. I think in a public sense, mainstreaming is good. It's unrealistic to expect straight people to really get us, despite the opposite being possible. They surround us. You either get it or you just get the world. It is not, however, reciprocal. Mainstreaming in shared and public spaces allows us to find common ground, but the problem is when it infiltrates gay spaces and becomes an end rather than a means to an end. There are things about gay culture that deserve and need to be preserved. It pushes the envelope; it shows that gender binaries and roles in relationships are arbitrary; it shows us alternatives to marrying your high school sweetheart and reproducing copiously: You can get married and have an open relationship. You can not get married and have a closed relationship your whole life. You can have a relationship between three people. You can do whatever works for you, which has been the amazing thing about gay, and especially queer, culture. But what's happening isn't this wonderful melange, but rather, assimilation. Gay life, for many, is becoming extremely suburban, and if that's what you really want, I'm not going to stop you. Part of this whole post-modern queer utopia I'm dreaming up is trying to let everyone do their own thing, but I think that a lot of those people are just looking at their straight counterparts and painting by numbers rather than forging their own identities and exploring who they are with the freedom they've been given. Being gay is no cakewalk just about anywhere in the world, but if that's the cards you've been dealt, play them the best way you can, which is not going to be the same way as your straight neighbor with their full house. See I made another pun. (That one was about babies.)

Stephanie Tanner!
What did I just say about shame and sexuality?

Last but not least, misogyny takes a whole new form here. I'm not going to pretend that misogyny isn't a problem in gay male culture everywhere (also, sometimes, a result of mainstreaming), but there's something that makes it a bit different here. I've noticed big, loud reactions of disgust from a lot of guys whenever anything female and sexual is mentioned: vaginas, periods, sex with women, whatever. Women, while not my preferred gender, are still beautiful; their bodies are beautiful; and there is nothing inherently displeasing about them. I'm willing to admit that maybe if you're a full-tilt six on the Kinsey scale that you don't really find a naked woman's body appetizing, but I think you can save the deliberately loud and deliberately public declarations of your disgust especially when you're in the company of women. One of the reasons I'll admit that the New York gay scene is more misogynistic toward women is that you don't see nearly as women (whether they be gay or not) in male gay bars (despite, I am told, their not having many of their own). Here, it's not completely uncommon to see women in a gay bar. So, can we all make a little agreement? If a woman is in a gay bar and she's totally acting chill and being cool, could you not go on a rant about how you find her body or parts of it disgusting? I talked last entry about straight people being good guests in gay spaces, but that goes both ways. We need to be good hosts.

That's about the long and the short of it, my friends. Oh, and stop reading gayguys.com. That site is the worst.

Louisville with the incomparable Neill and Bachelorettes

Last week I took a trip to Louisville to visit one of my dearest friends, Neill. Neill and I became friends in New York. We went to the same theatre school, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, but didn't become friends until one summer when we both worked at the New York Renaissance Fair. It was then that he pitched an idea for a staging of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and that was the start of a string of many plays we worked on together through Haberdasher Theatre, the company I was once the managing director for.

"Reminisced fondly"

I left for Louisville directly after the Business English class I teach Friday nights, and after I arrived, we spent the rest of the night catching up. We reminisced fondly over our days in New York and how sometimes we feel tempted to return but then remember that what we miss isn't there anymore. Our time there was this perfect combination of factors that made that decade great: the amazing support network of friends, the luck Haberdasher had in getting by on such a small budget, being young and in a big city after living your life in the midwest, that feeling of discovery and adventure, getting into trouble and barely getting out of it by those certain miracles that are only afforded to the young. "It was this moment in time," he told me. And what a glorious moment it was for all of us.

The next day we tried to do a few things around town. We had breakfast and went to the Science Center. "It smells like a daycare in here," I said as we were about to pay our entrance fee, and as we went through the museum, it turned out to be basically that: a daycare. Everything was geared toward small children, and while that's not too much a problem in itself—I can easily revert back to the mentality of a six year old at the drop of a hat—I would feel like an asshole when an actual six year old is there waiting. "Oh, you wanna play with these building blocks? Fuck you, toddler, I'm Indominus Rex and I rule these lands! RAWRRRRRRRRRRRR!" Fortunately, the guys at the ticket desk were gracious enough to refund our ticket fee, and we shuffled along to take in other sights and sounds around the city.

"The giant bubble maker is MINE!"

After a short gaming break, we went out into the night. We started at a pretty swanky bar called Proof with an art exhibit below it and some really good cocktails. Then we hit up a few gay bars, including Chill Bar and The Connection, where a drag queen pulled my shirt off as I tried to tip her for her back-to-back set of Alanis Morisette's "You Oughta Know" and Evanesence's "Bring Me to Life." (I'm not sure who got more out of it: her with the dollar or me with the ego boost.) However, we didn't stay long at the first bar we went to, Nowhere, because it had become invaded by bachelorettes. I absolutely hate when bachelorettes have their parties at gay bars. I know I really should be inclusive, but gay bars are where gay people go to relax and feel normal. Most bachelorette parties run in there expecting things: they expect the atmosphere to be a certain way; they expect all the gay men to be their automatic best friends and ready with a quick comeback and snaps in Z formation; they pound their hands on the bar if they feel like they're not being served fast enough. Basically, they come in and act as if the bar belongs to them and that we're all circus animals whose purpose is to entertain them. I understand it's someone's special day, but really, you're a guest in this territory: be considerate, slow your roll, treat us like normal human beings without the assumption that we're supposed to be great dancers and want to paint your nails, and you might just find we can be very welcoming.

The night ended with dancing on a light up dance floor, and the next day I had to drive back to Indianapolis to go to work. Life resumed, and in my last hour of work, I looked at the calendar. Twenty-one days until I arrive in France.

Back in The Shire

Bonjour, mes amis! Here we are again. Gearing up for another season abroad, this time in France. I'll be in the city Le Mans, which is to the southeast of Paris and about an hour travel time by high speed train. The city is famous for having a sports car race called the 24 Hours of Le Mans, in which cars go fast in a circle without stopping for twenty-four hours straight. This is beyond ironic because I've been in Indianapolis, my hometown, since I got back from Colombia, which is also famous for a race: The Indy 500.

In a way, I've always felt a bit like Bilbo Baggins and Indiana is The Shire. It's a place whose people, like the Hobbits, often don't leave. They are born here, they stay, sometimes they go away, but then they often return. And when they do go, they don't go too far: Chicago, Cincinnati, someplace like that. And many of them, also like Hobbits, are quite content in that. They don't need to leave; they're perfectly fine being here, living their lives day to day, raising families, and growing old. But there are a few of us, the Bagginses of the bunch, that are born with a desire to go out and see the world, to see how far we can go, and it's only a matter of time before our destiny catalyzes it and off we go, off to have adventures, and sometimes write about them.... and apparently also dabble in translating "several works from the Elvish." (Or Spanish or French or Japanese or whatever, right?)

When I left Indiana, over eleven years ago, I thought I'd never return beyond a visit here and there. For a long time, I thought I'd stay in New York forever. But one day, I realized it was time to go, even if I didn't know exactly where to, and that's what I've been trying to figure out ever since. To my surprise, it has taken me back here, where, I guess you could say, it all began.

I'm not really as happy here as I had secretly hoped I would be. Though I grew up here, coming back was almost like going to a new place. I had, blessedly, forgotten most of my childhood, and what I can remember was all confined to just a small corner of the city. So when I got off the plan at Indianapolis International Airport, it was as if I were arriving in a new place. Whenever I go somewhere new, I always hope I'll land in a place that makes me think, "Yes, I could stay here for a while," but Colombia wasn't that place—though if I ended up in Medellin or Manizales, maybe things would have turned out differently—and Indianapolis isn't that place either.

On top of remembering so little of it, Indianapolis has really developed a lot over the last eleven years. The city is really coming into its own, or at least trying, and the visits I would make here and there allowed me to make and stay in contact with a great group of friends who have really made these three months worth it. People are really happy to see me here, and I'm happy to see them. They ask me about what I saw and did while I was away, and I tell them stories. Sometimes some of them had the chance to visit me, and then we made our own stories. In any case, it's been nice to share my experiences. I've always been motivated in life by the goal of acquiring experiences, like how other people collect bottle caps and thimbles. But it's never been just to have them. It's been to share them. It's why I was in the theatre, why I write, and why I teach: to share the knowledge and experiences I gain in my life. I don't want all of it to disappear when I die. I want it to live on through other people, through the words, through their memories which maybe they might even pass on to others in an unbroken chain through the generations.

But in the end, it just doesn't have the things I need. There's no real language school, except for the one I work at, and enrollment is low enough that many languages are placed on hold, sometimes for up to a year, before a class opens for them. It lacks the multiculturalism and opportunity I got used to in New York and took for granted. Now that I've been almost a year and a half without it, I see how much it was important to me. At least when I'm abroad, even if where I am is pretty homogeneous, like Colombia was, it's still new to me; it's still something I can explore and learn from, whether the things I learn be about them or about myself.

I guess going to France is just the next step of that search though, to find that place where I feel like I belong again, to see if I can find an environment that can help me deal with a certain kind of loneliness I've felt my whole life, which has only become more obvious to myself now that I'm not really from anywhere. How am I supposed to answer that question now? I've been gone from New York too long to really say that's where I'm from, and Indiana's not home; it's just where I was born. So how do I answer that question now?

Or do I just belong to the world now? Yes, I think that's it. I am of the world, and it's time to go back into it once more.