More Randoms

so... i don't know what's going on with the formatting of this blog, but it's getting kinda wonky & there's nothing i can do about it, bear with me. :/ these are some more random thoughts i couldn't put anywhere, and the book's something i've been sneaking peaks at on amazon, as i'm getting more and more stoked & geared for greece - it's actually pretty funny. anyway... enjoy! :)

there are winds here they call by name, in the south of france, near nice, they call it the mistral, here it's some horrid name that starts with a t - for terrible i say. it's definately fall here now & it's cold. the winds blow incessantly, in perpgnan they howl & knock you over. they say they last 9 days - 3 progressively stronger, 3 at their height, and 3 coming down. scooters have given way to cars as few of these kids want to brave the cold. i need to buy a winter coat & sweaters, i didn't bring mine as i didn't think i'd be needing any. minus 12 tomorrow they say. i thought grenoble was going to be cold. snow's in our schedule. reading bear grylls is a humbling experience - mighty man. though when the sun shines here it really beats down, i can't wait 'till spring & the southern weather.

i just had a two hour conversation almost entirely in french, and although j'ai fait beaucoup d'erreurs, i feel proud & accomplished, and am starting to think that maybe i can pull this off after all - maybe i will become fluent. hmph. it would be nice. it was also nice to spend some time in good company, with someone interested in more than themselves for a while. but... i'm still thinking in english and it trips me up when i talk sometimes. (i wrote this a while ago... i'm just plain sick of french now. :p)

i'm realizing that hanging out with the rich kids all those years has taught me many bad habits, and i've been living the good life prematurely. walking to school in the bitter cold is a humbling experience, as is remembering what it's like being normal, and having not. not that i haven't been more than deprived in many areas for many years in my life, but again, it's a question of balance, and filling in the blanks healthily. something tells me i'm getting back on course, more and more. as i desire simple & deep true to life moments.

i like my small life here... i like buying only two pears and one persimmen at the corner store. i am learning that one 500g packet of spaghettini can feed me 5 times - 5 times! either i'm a tiny little person (hardly - it's platefuls!) or eating for one goes a looong way. :)

reading bear grylls in all his britishness [finished his everest book] is reminding me of good old traditional church gatherings, pea coats & winter boots, classic easters & christmasses & all that. it's a nice feeling. it's an idealism that i lost and forgot existed in vancouver's modernity, in young life's brashness, in camp's caz. it's nice to have serious goals and serious things to strive for, and it's nice knowing it's okay to come from humble roots, and that you can still reach for the top - it is possible - a lesson i had heard over and over again, but was the only one around me practicing, until it was erased from my memory. classic, traditional christmasses, goals, dreams & wishes. a new kind of purity of life and being. i wish i could write as he does in half-emotion nuance... explaining exactly how he was feeling, gentle & profound. but this is what he has reminded me, and this is what counts. perhaps i will find a home in england after all... i don't know. but i do know that i am deeply traditional & 'classic' after all, something i'd erased in trying to keep up with what's 'cool' - to stay current & relevant... but i think that's just the problem with youth ministry these days... we're becoming like them instead of the other way around... and while that's a danger that's common knowledge & we're warned of, the warning seems to just float on the surface without merit, as everyone does it anyway. and while it's fun for the kids to see adults dicking around - is that really what we want them to get out of it? questions i've raised umpteen times in the past, but only know am i remembering the richness and purity i'd lost, how much of it i had, how substantial it was, and how easy it was for young life to belittle it - that troubles me. anyhow... just looking at the scottish hostels with their cozy attic rooms & plaid wool covers makes me yearn for something i've strived for all my life, without knowing it. i guess i'm a true product of colonization/westernization. a middle-eastern/iraqi-canadian girl, who's always longed to be classically british. how... i don't even know. but all these things are mixed inside me... (surfing included :)) a bit laurence of arabia-esque though i suppose, and so those brits of the 'national geographic society', etc., do deserve to be commended for their honest wish for discovery. anyhow, i've written long enough. it's just fun reading an author who's innermost feelings are so close to mine. great mountaineer, yes, but simple british boy too, yes. we'll see how england treats me this time 'round, perhaps, and hopefully, she will be kinder, and we can be friends. :)

if you want to be the best, you have to think like the best, be among them. 'keep gude company and you'll be counted one of them'.

i wish i had the kind of strength & stamina to climb mountains, but mine is a different kind of perserverence... but i find myself facsinated and entralled by travel lately, and i don't mean my usual hobby, but by national geographic style expeditions. i search for them every free minute, and it just dawned on me that before i got stuck majoring in english literature and becoming a snyde literary nerd, i once wanted to be a geologist, charting the lines of some vast, remote rock face somewhere... perhaps it is time to reawaken such interests. i fear i am not physically up to it though... or am i? i once wanted to be an olympic runner... seriously... i was second girl in my class... hmmm... 'self discipline' - i need to kick my life into high gear.

i'm not bored with life, i'm just bored with this program. i need to throw myself into some more challenging waters... i need to go on a full out adventure i'm finding i need to go to the next level, i'm remembering my goals before societal politics and childish distractions bogged me down... i'm remembering sincere idealism again & NOT selling out... but i don't know what this means or is... :/

i need to disappear somewhere, somewhere wholesome & simple & fun & alive. australia. live on farm w/ sweet family.

growing up, growing up, growing up... i feel such pressure to 'grow up', get a real job, but people with real jobs are boring drones who hate their lives & have mid-life crises... what's so wrong with trying so hard to avoid that?

i feel like there are definate greasers & jets here sometimes, like the outsiders or westside story, or to sir with love. there is also a petty gossipiness i'm not a fan of. i feel like this is now a test of endurance more than anything else: i've never been away from home this long before, and while i was hoping it would be more pleasant, at the end i'll be a different person, yet again, & hopefully fluent in french.

if you look at all the things people proclaim in their status on facebooks, it's like a little microcosm of thoughts, hopes & prayers, that God deals with everyday. it reminds me of that scene in bruce almighty.

"the longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy."

The Non-Adventures of Lena

Written last Thursday:

so, i finally got internet yesterday, and i've since spent about... 10 hours, sucking the lifeblood out of it like a vampire, catching up on everything i've been so far away from for two months. i thought i was a hardcore traveller, a trooper, unaffected, but it seems i am lethally dependant on this thing, for connecting with the outside world. but it's not all technology i'm addicted to. i hardly use my cell phone and my only other gadgets are my mp3 player & camera, but they are only sometimes friends & mostly i can do without. my laptop however, has become joined to my hip, and it is the portal to, well, everything. the thing is, normally i could cope fine, with enough stimulation to distract me, but as this town is greatly lacking in entertaining pursuits... blah... i am left to chain-downloading episodes of gossip girl and consuming them voraciously. yeesh. who'd've thunk? what's worse - speaking of - is i find myself slipping back into the longings of such worlds, where every scene is filled with charmingly witty banter, where everything is safely predictable in tv land, where everyone has their role, and everything is pleasantly formulaic in roughly the same tradition it's been for the past... oh... 30 years? why can't real life be this way? and why is it so easy for me to now forgoe my usual preaching against excess and frivolity - for something deeper - in favour of some fun with the very things? so i suppose that television is my crutch. but i think the attraction lies in the excessive drama of the situations, the sometimes passion that therefore arises, and the... i suppose alpha personalities so fully displayed on screen. it's entertaining. it's full of life & longing. and really, i guess that's what we're all looking for: to get the guy or the girl (if you haven't already), to be the belle of the metaphorical ball, to have friends that have known you since diaper days... and now i've somehow managed to turn even gossip girl into something deeper than it is... and so i guess depth is in the person, not the vehicle. et voila. so... it's been fun getting recharged from the doldrums of everyday life here... a little bit of escapism... a strange element of 'chin up'... maybe it's the english too but... i hope someday that my life is as full as that... without the monetary excess, but with all the joie de vivre... australia maybe? it's been my latest fantasy. that and hunger in africa... oh two worlds... someday they'll reconcile.

Reprise, written 5 minutes ago:

so... i'm getting really homesick right now... which is a hard
thing for me to admit, since i usually put on a front because
i'm weary of people... but ya, it is what it is. i'm watching
LUCYinLA videos on youtube & am in a confessional mood.
it's not really home i'm sick for per se, since i don't really like
that place, but all things cozy & familiar, english & emotional,
christian & connected. :p phooey. i thought i was going to
be meeting all these amazing people. but i haven't. and now
i really don't know why i'm here. classes are cancelled all the
time, i'm really tired of it. i can't wait for greece. i can't wait
for people i can talk to, for friends, for fellowship, for sailing
& sun! for... being able to express emotion & opinion, for
having it be shared & supported. and i can't help but think...
then what? this was supposed to be a glamourous
adventure... and it hasn't been. and now i just feel marooned
- for 5 more months. it's become a test of endurance. and
then greece will be amazing... but then what? new york?
publishing? real estate? children in africa? nothing
satisfies. one is too... more than the other. :p i wish i didn't
have to overanalyze everything, i wish i could be normal,
shallow & fickle. ;) but i've seen too much & read too much &
my conscience won't allow it. the scary thing is... i used to
be an idealist, but the more i did, the more 'reality' crept in &
now i fear i'm a 'realist' which is really just another word for
being jaded. i never thought i'd get here. and i don't know
how LUCYinLA does it. i guess i've just realized that things
aren't that simple... except... maybe sometimes things still
are. and that's the place that elludes me. that's what i'm
homesick for. knowing you can have ambitions and put
yourself out there and someone, something's gotta bite, and
something's gotta be good, and something's gotta get better.
reality - fear's already crept in. maybe not with regards to
adventure - there's still tons of that left inside, now just to
finance it - but it's easy to escape - it's the staying put i can't
handle.

Paris, Part 2

More thoughts, in and around my second trip to Paris, with Jen, for vacation:

So, on coming back to Paris for the 4th time now, I wanted to see all the little treasures I didn't get a chance to see, and master the city once and for all. Here's some of what I did:

Strolled along the Champs Elysees, and it's changed a lot since the last time I was there (6 years ago). It's a lot more commercial now. But, I stopped into a classic Parisian institution - Laduree - a tea house that sells these delectible little pastries, famous for its mult-coloured, multi-flavoured macaroons. Yummy. All was enchanted until I had to go to the washroom, and none were in sight. Never before was I so glad to see a McDonald's, I actually screeched 'how do I love thee, let me count the ways!' under my breathe. :) It was sweet relief, and I've made my peace with the golden arches. :) Even Sephora in Paris is amazing, and I spent some time spoiling myself with all the delicious smells. Then I went to Ile St. Louis, smack dab in the middle of Paris and frozen in the upper class 19th century. It's adorable, and I had caramel Foie Gras in a cute, classy place with Harry Connick Jr. being jazzy in the background under soft lighting & pink Iris flowers. I've also now had escargot for the third time (where a waiter kissed me - ick, not a pleasant story :p), and raw oysters - which are delicious. Next on the menu is steak tartare. :)

Even for all this there is still a melancholy/ennui in Paris, mixed in along with all the romance. So I don't think I'd like to live there after all. There are also the many crazies & beggars, like the Mr. Bean singer, singing so horridly off-tune in the subway at the top of his lungs, I had to supress my laughter with great difficulty... much like upon witnessing strange children with abnormally awkward movements... which also seem plentiful... :) I do, however, want a little French dog! There is nothing cuter, they are a different breed. :)

Then my troubles with Jen started, well, actually they started the first night we arrived, when she was acting like a princess and yelled at me for her own stupidity in not understanding the street name properly (it's French - she speaks French) after I forgot to write down the address of the hostel, meanwhile too busy smoking her cigarette to do anything to help the situation, and so heinously bad with a map that she deserved to sleep on the street that night. But ehrm, anyway... :) We (I ;)) figured it out & she gave a half-assed apology the next day, something about being cold & tired, but which I gladly accepted, only to have her be a witch the rest of that day as well, and things only got worse when her friends arrived; she barely introduced me, and they commenced speaking in Spanish as though I was not there. Things went from bad to worse & it suffices to say that since they insisted on taking a snail's pace, I ended up ditching them at Versaille, we had a very public blow-up at Mont St. Michel, they were so loud at the hotel that a family cancelled their reservation & went home two nights early & so were scolded (the girls were) by the hotelier (who took such good care of me, even giving me my own room without my asking), and we came home seperately and I haven't spoken to her since. I've never had such an interaction since Elementary school, and sometimes I feel like I'm making faster enemies than friends here, but I think it's safe to say I'm in the right, and I'm patiently waiting for her to grow up. My Achilles' heel is being too nice & letting (the wrong) people in. So anyway, after I ditched the skanks, ;) amazing things started to happen. Like the hotelier taking care of me, and meeting amazing people - which is the point, right? Like the Tunisian girl I spoke Arabic with & who invited me to stay with her in Paris... when she finally found a place, :) the guy @ the hostel desk who spoke 5 languages, including Arabic, the sweetest, cutest Spanish girl from Bilbao, who was both a dancer & studying engineering - lovely people, lovely accent, and sharing my room with this amazing Italian girl from Piza, named Maria Elisa (of course :)) who kept speaking in Italian, had walked nearly all of Paris already in the few days she'd been there, drank chilled corona from the balcony, rolled her own cigarettes, and was reading Baudelaire & Balzac at the same time. [Side note - I want to make her a character in my book, sitting in a chair by the open window, corona in one hand, cig in other, straddling the balcony & puffing through the side of her mouth. Classic. I've never met anyone so full of life, so uninhibited, filled with positive energy, & seeking to be quenched with experience - travel, congenialtiy, etc. Like my heart & hope to be. And Jen & her princess friends know nothing of. I find that lone girls travelling the world are the real soldiers, as they approach their lives with gusto. Girls travelling in packs usually have silly agendas. Girls travelling alone are on a solo mission...] Cutest thing ever and so makes me want to go to Italy, which is great as the Brazilian girl had scared me! (She'd hated it & cancelled her plans early, skipping Rome - crazy! :p) But I think Italy just may be even closer to home than Paris. We'll see. Yay for God for reminding me what goodness (& sane, normal people) is like. (There was even a very nice man at the hotel/bar who took care of my luggage - very U2 endearing cool. :)) I even met a very nice couple of professors from California, (the wife was originally from Nova Scotia actually, and very proud of it :)) who kept me company at Mont St. Michel, and told me all about their travelling adventures with their schools' education abroad programs. And, the north of France is filled with cute little towns & villages, in Brittany & Normandy. Very different from where we are in the south. Fat dairy cows, fatter fuzzy sheep, misty green pastures, and so it was idyllic. So, i'm rid of the Venezualan distraction... but now i've taken to talking to the mirror again, or having conversations with you all in my head... which is never a good thing. :) especially when i can't remember whether it actually happend. :) But with the cancer gone, the poetry is flowing.

Other musings, France-inspired:

I've been told to write a book, with all the things I've done. But my life isn't exciting or adventerous as much as patiently enduring one trial and experience after another. patiently getting through, until something clicks. Something, someplace, or someone. But patience is growing impatient in the mean time.

Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the middle - somewhere between childhood and maturity. It's time to grow up in some regards - in the regard of associating with nice work and nice people (nice work mostly :p) (and clean is a better word. Also, I have since met plenty of nice people... however only in passing... :/)

Sometimes I feel so at home here in Europe, my soul feels at home. Europe is healing & calming me (in some ways, and frustrating & restless in others...) There is so much more humanity, a full range of emotion and ways of being. Colours, not just 4 or 5. And Maturity. But my mind is still in North America, and my heart...? Who knows. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a suspended time here, a lost season, far away, where I don't really want to be, where I'm accomplishing nothing. I'm sick of French already... and classes are taking longer to prepare for than expected, so I'm not accomplishing my goals. I guess I have to keep focussed. My mind is both a blessing and a curse.

My own culture is home. Is rich and classy and warm and welcoming and celebatory. It is like the Prince of Egypt, and it is the best in the world... if not for all the fighting. :/ I wish I could be a part of it.

I want to have the kind of career that lets you take off to places for a while, rent a villa with the fam (buy an arabian palace? ;)), and where I can buy lots of tickets to the opera... and Bono.:) I want to have an upstanding, stable, classy career, marriage, & life. (& help people, like CSM, Paris beggars, Mother Teresa, the Italian Doctor in Africa.) I want a cozy, fun, adorable little life. A good life. Good as in goodness. I don't want to be stuck-up, even though I lean towards it. Fun is so much better. Noses can go shoot themselves.

It’s funny who we choose to make a part of our families. Who we spend time with, who we open up to. Sometimes I can’t wrap my mind around the combinations of people who get together and have children, but they do. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s still family. It’s still... a strange manifestation of the human spirit, that wants to make something of itself, that wants to belong to something. There are some great families here, most strange, but all ‘home.’

I am regaining my Jack Dawson, simple "air in my lungs" attitude. This is a good thing.

Sitting here sipping Cinnamon Apple tea & thinking of spending Christmas in London with my brother... heavenly.

The North American values of Daisy Duke women are so scewed. I think strong, Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz types are much more interesting.
'He/she is out of your league' - why is 'league' measured by beauty? Since when is that the quality of most worth, that trumps all others? And is it really as Rob says, you never really know, you just decide...? :/

Ack! An Avril Levigne commercial! I can't escape her, even in France. :p Unbelievable... :)

And on that note... I have synthesized all... for now. :) Now write me so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. ;-)

Paris, Part 1

So much has happend since I last wrote that I don't even know where to start. I've been jotting down some random thoughts & notes, and what you'll see here is my
attempt to synthesize them. I apologize for the sporadic nature, but thus are my opportunities to share with you. I hope you value them.
I began writing these almost a month ago now, and so, of course, some of my thoughts, opinions & experiences have changed since then, but I think they're still valuable.
This, for example, I wrote when I was thinking of 'how hard' it is to travel alone, (as so many people have brought it up) & not be 'plugged in', but, of course, there are two
sides to every coin:
I like being challenged in this way. I think the reason I like travelling so much is witnessing all of God's people, in all their forms, and is why I don't mind being challenged
with not having a ministry, a community to belong to while I 'conduct my research' as it were, as God is with me throughout. Sure, it gets lonely not having the support of
friends and family, but unfortunately, I am all too used to that, and thus I benefit from it not being a crutch in which I rest and stick my head in the sand. When all my
travels are done though, I fear i'll be odder still than I was before, and finding the ellusive community is the thing that most hangs over my head. Some of my friends have
this and so are searching for their own enlightenment... and so, "those that have..." and "the grass is always greener..." but anyway. World traveller, explorer... lost soul
really, amidst other lost souls...
This is what I jotted down on our first trip to Paris since being here, it was a fieldtrip with the school:
First day back in Paris & it feels like home again - I would so live here, for a year maybe, but not more. We got on the metro, or squeezed in I should say, and there was
a band on too, busking. So funny. Btw, contemporary art = pornography. Men think women are just tits and ass. Walked around the Eiffel Tower - got good pics. Lots
of hooligans for the rugby world cup. It's kinda a neat feeling in the air. Walked around Paris by night, got some good pics. Paris is so cozy - for lovers. Paris lovers
are plentiful. The French hang off each other, North Americans could use to learn from that. One flesh.
There are too many things in my head to write down. Paris can only be expressed in pictures - I've taken 900 pictures... that's 900,000 words.
France is a really pretty country, pastel. But it smells like cologne & poop. And their fashion is stuck in time, 60s & 80s fashion. Maybe the effects of less media - rich or
empty?
I don't believe in iconography, but it's amazing what and how much people have done for God. Looking at the statues, there is a deep profundity that we have lost with
comfort & excess. The detail & emotion & magnitude is astounding.
I want to collect art - like the ones I saw in Nice, & the Paris streets. Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism. I want to have babies I can put model airplanes in their
bedrooms.
I am numb to new experiences. Perhaps it is time to settle down... perhaps not. I will always be numb to thoughtlessness. Only God can quench my soul.
I miss & love the English language, its intimacy, art, wit & conceits. It gets a lot of flack for being 'the language of commerce', of the great, cold westernized world... but
being here has actually made me appreciate things I never knew (or ever thought I would know) I took for granted. I am thankful to be Canadian, they talk about us a lot
over here, it's quite nice to realize we're not in America's shadow after all, and our accomplishments are lauded by others, not just ourselves (man that inferiority complex.
;)) We are also England's, US', Australia's & France's sisters & brothers... I think there's something very cool about that. Being over here has made me pround to be
Canadian and a part of the great English literary and historic tradition. English is the language of three major, great nations, five really, and 'the other' that we always
compare to... those other people, over there, who are doing something more right than we are... aren't always really better. For whatever better they're doing, they're also
doing worse at something else. And so, it's all the same. Although, people do understand the concept of 'different strokes for different folks' better over here. Something
that's not as clear in the US or Canada, where every girl has a pair of lululemons. ;-)
Just got back from my weekend in Paris and it was amazing. Exhausting, but amazing. However, I have come home to a firestorm, as Tuesday's my busiest day, and one
of my teachers has taken issue with me, and we had a row. She is psycho, I'm not kidding. These people always find me, but I think that God is teaching me to put my
foot down. My first reaction in these situations is - what can I do do diffuse them, and what have I done to cause it. I am learning more and more though that just because
you are perfectly sane, doesn't mean you should expect the same from others, and it is these 'special cases' I need to learn to stand my ground with, and walk away from.
It's part of being a mature adult, and I'm sick of being pushed around by people with their own issues.
More on that:
I'm beginning to realize, the more I interact with more people, that all the people I outgrew in elementary & highschool, haven't evolved, even though I thought they did, and
now they are finding me. And so, it is inevitable, they are everywhere. I just wish that I could celebrate with this knowledge, and float on top, instead of doing the opposite
& hiding. The thing is, I can't float without company. I need company. maybe I should float & then find the company. Like the Italian girl. maybe I need italian friends. :)
[More on the Italian girl later. :)]
I think I'm a masicist as I keep drudging through these situations, when I should stand up for myself, complain, or just walk away. But I always want to make nice and not
walk away from difficulties. Maybe I've accepted it as normal - maybe it is, we're bound to it - I just haven't been able to recognize what 'normal' is yet. However, enough
is enough, there is a line to be drawn, and at some point I will be old enough to command that respect; not that everyone doesn't deserve it regardless of age. This time I
already feel like the bigger person. Enough is enough.