30 November, 2006 | 8 Comments

I’ve not had a very good week. (No, really?) Today I gave notice on my apartment. I’m moving out on January 2nd and I have no idea where I will live. I’ve been wanting to find a cheaper place and when I raised the mere possibility of moving out, my landlady went psycho. She started sending me hostile and vaguely threatening e-mails. Here’s a postscript copied and pasted from one of her more civilized messages:

“If you have any problem with my english I suggest that you learn french.”

Gee, I thought that was why I came here? She also accused me of stealing her mail so that her taxes would be late. Given her Jekyll-and-Hyde personality switch, I decided to just bail out before things get worse. I called the agency I rented the apartment from and spoke with the British woman who runs it. I explained my landlady’s bizarre behavior and she said, “Well, don’t forget this is France.”

And then of course my visa expires tomorrow. So I’ll be homeless and an illegal alien. Lovely. This morning when I woke up I actually envisioned myself being deported. I went to Cité Université to inquire about my residence permit. All of the bureaucrats I had dealt with so far regarding this issue have not been very nice (which is to be expected, I guess). As I waited in my third queue of the day, I started to lose hope that I’d ever get this mess sorted out. I finally made it to the front of the queue and tried to explain my situation. The guy behind the counter said, “I can speak English if you want.” Then he smiled.

Yes, I swear this happened.

I said, “My visa expires tomorrow and I don’t have the carte and I’m afraid I’m going to get into trouble.”

He said, “It’s no problem.” Then he gave me a list of documents I need to take back there tomorrow. “Bring me these documents, I give you the carte,” he said.

“Really? That’s it?” I said.

Though I was calm, something about me must have given the impression that I’m a woman on the verge. He looked at me and said in a very soothing voice, “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be okay.”

I wanted to hug him. The weird thing is I think he wanted to hug me too.

So I skipped class and took the RER to Luxembourg and then walked home in the freezing cold. I stopped at my favorite patisserie near the Hotel de Ville and bought a treat to take home. A slice of “abricot eau de rose” (apricot and rosewater) tarte won’t fix my problems, but it can’t hurt.

Deep breath. Everything is going to be okay.

29 November, 2006 | 1 Comment

Lauren, aka Maitresse — a fellow American Ph.D. student/aspiring novelist/blogger in Paris — has co-edited a special issue of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. The subject is “Theories/Practices of Blogging.” There are a lot of great articles to read and I particularly enjoyed Lauren’s piece on expatriate blogging. I’d never really thought of my role as an expat blogger in a critical light before, probably because I became an expat blogger by accident and until recently, didn’t realize just how much being an “expat” has become a part of my identity.

In London, my blog was much more balanced between expat postings and other types of posts. But being in Paris is a different experience — it’s a much more obviously “foreign” culture, thus heightening my sense of being an outsider. Since I’ve been in Paris, my blog has become almost entirely focused on the expat experience — much to my surprise. Though most of this is due to the fact that I feel like a foreigner here all the time, there are other reasons as well. In the UK there was not a language barrier (ahem) and so I had a lot of local readers. Because of this, I didn’t feel comfortable writing freely from an expat perspective; it’s often hard to write about your experiences of another culture without unintentionally offending people with your ignorance and generalizations. And I was quite fond of my readers and didn’t want to offend them. But now that I’m writing from France, I have very few (if any?) French readers. It seems that my France-based readership is made up almost entirely of English-speaking expats. Therefore, I feel more at liberty to write about my experiences in Paris.

(more…)

29 November, 2006 | Comments

Paris’s most famous and beautiful bridge.

28 November, 2006 | Comments

Nothing definitive to report on the residence permit. I went to the Préfecture de Police today (a massive complex across the street from Notre Dame) and the evil lady in the visa department screamed at me “Madame! Oh là là!” when I told her I hadn’t applied for the carte yet. She directed me to go to Cité Université tomorrow to do something or other. I guess I’ll find out what I’m supposed to do when I get there. Or not.

I was feeling rather distressed after all this, but as I walked outside in front of Notre Dame, I saw that they were putting up the Christmas tree. That made me smile just a little bit.

A few days ago my landlady informed me that I am supposed to pay the electricity bill myself. I thought she would pay it and then I would reimburse her since all the utilities are in her name. But apparently not. So I went to the post office a few days ago to pay this bill, but I was missing some sort of reference number and wasn’t allowed to do it. Sigh. So for the past few days I’ve been waiting to be plunged into darkness. The electricity hadn’t been paid in over two months! Tonight, however, I got up the courage to call EDF directly. When you don’t speak the language well, it’s hard doing things on the telephone. You can’t use your hands or do charades. But I like having lights and heat, so I decided to brave it. And I had a lovely conversation with the customer service lady who told me I speak French very well and that she understood everything I said and that I understood her. And you know, I really needed to hear something positive like that right about now, since I’m feeling very discouraged about my French and life in general.

So God bless the EDF customer service lady. She made my day.

28 November, 2006 | 6 Comments

My visa expires on Saturday and I have not yet applied for the carte de séjour (residence permit). This is actually quite serious. I don’t know why I haven’t bothered to apply. My behavior makes no sense. There’s a very real possibility they’ll make me leave France. And the weird thing is, I just don’t care. Why don’t I care? I’ll head over to the Préfecture de Police tomorrow and see if they’ll take pity on me. Since I have no good excuse to present, I think I’ll go with “I didn’t know I needed a carte de séjour,” even though there’s a white piece of paper stapled into my passport that states I need one. Tears [real ones] might be necessary.

In case of emergency, do any of you in London have a spare bedroom I can move into? I’m really rather quiet. Messy, but quiet.

God, now I feel sick.

27 November, 2006 | 1 Comment

two songs i’ve listened to over and over today:

“american pie” by don mclean

and

“creeping death” by metallica*

[*i was a teenage metalhead. sad but true. rock on.]

27 November, 2006 | 2 Comments

Line from an IM chat with an American friend, re: my habit of staying up very late:

“Your sleep schedule amazes me. I often forget that we are actually in different time zones!”

Another friend from home told me last night that she thinks my body is on Eastern Standard Time, rather than Central European Time. And actually, I think this might be the source of the problem. I have a US-based job and as such, I am always subtracting 6 hours from whatever time it is in Paris. I have been blaming my sleep troubles on insomnia, but perhaps my body is confused because I’m trying to live in two time zones at once.  Sometimes I have conference calls or web-based meetings at 1:00 a.m. my time. Most of my work is done online and you know, the sun never sets on the internet. The lights never go out.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t own a computer.

26 November, 2006 | Comments

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young [wo]man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

–Ernest Hemingway

26 November, 2006 | Comments

Yesterday I visited the Musée Rodin. I waited until the roses in the world-famous rose garden were no longer in bloom. Great timing! On the plus side, an exhibition of Rodin’s erotic drawings has just opened. There was a sign outside warning that children weren’t allowed in, but I’m sure this was just a ploy to increase ticket sales. The drawings were extremely explicit, however, bordering on the grotesque. The most interesting thing from my perspective was that the women in the drawings (women who were all quite flexible) would be considered fat by today’s standards. I plan to write more about this in the future, about the female forms on display in this city and how they look very different from what we consider the “ideal” today.

After spending 30 minutes or so rubbing shoulders with some of Paris’s finest pervs, I went to the main museum, housed in a glorious light-filled mansion that was at one point divided up into artists’ studios. Rodin lived in one of the studios until his death. (Matisse, Rilke and Isadora Duncan also had studios there at various times.) My favorite sculpture was The Kiss (pictured above), which is probably almost everyone’s favorite. Interestingly, if you look at the statue close-up, the male of the pair is missing a rather important body part. Ahem. I thought this was very strange. Someone should do a dissertation on this. The world needs to know why.

I also loved the sculptures by Camille Claudel. (If you’ve ever seen the movie Camille Claudel, then you might remember the scene where Isabelle Adjani as the going-mad Camille stands outside the window exquisitely screaming Rooooddddddiiiiiiinnnnnn!!!!! I kept hearing that in my head as I walked around the museum. That movie sorta poisoned my view of Rodin forever.)

You can see more of my photos here. Here’s an image of The Thinker with the Eiffel Tower behind it. Oh. So. Lovely.

24 November, 2006 | 2 Comments

A shocking incident of anti-Semitic and racist violence after a Paris football match last night leaves one person dead.

24 November, 2006 | 1 Comment

I did a web search of my blog name a few days ago and discovered that several websites have been using my photo of the memorial service for murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. This photo has generated a lot of interest for some reason — a political science magazine in the Netherlands is publishing it in an upcoming issue.

I’m guessing now that there must be plenty of other websites using the photo that I don’t even know about. The sites I found (including a few in Russia) gave a photo credit to “Anglofille,” which is also my Flickr name and where they obviously downloaded the photo. That’s the only reason I found them. [I'm not sure why Flickr gives people the opportunity to download another person's photos, since this is just an invitation to steal them.] I’m not going to start writing to these websites and demanding that they remove my photo. I don’t feel like taking on such a project and to be honest, perhaps this is karma come back to get me. When I first started blogging I often used photos on my blog that I had no right to use — photos from newspapers, never Flickr photos. Even I wouldn’t have gone that far!

But I am quite annoyed that the Paris blog Parisist used my photo rather prominently in their post on Politkovskaya without my permission. They should know better than that. Linking to my Flickr page does not give them the right to use my copyrighted work without my permission. And given that I am a Paris blogger and that I have had them in my blogroll, I would have appreciated a bit more courtesy than that. Not cool.

23 November, 2006 | 5 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving! Think of me when you eat your turkey and yams (ooh, I love yams with marshmallows!). I’ll be in class till 5:30 today, poor little old me, and when I come home there will be no turkey roasting in the oven, mostly because I don’t have an oven and no one I know does either. (But I do live in Paris, so don’t feel too bad for me.)

A restaurant near where I live in Paris, serving Louisiana/Cajun cuisine. They also operate an American grocery that sells Stove Top stuffing and peanut butter (which is not easy to find here and when you do find it, it’s very expensive).

**UPDATE** I feel very sad now, but it’ll pass…I hope…otherwise it’s going to be a loooooong day.

23 November, 2006 | Comments

“There is not much future in men being friends with great women although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is usually even less future with truly ambitious women writers.”

–Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

22 November, 2006 | 2 Comments

What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.

She’s running out the door,
she’s running,
she run, run, run, run, run.

–Radiohead

21 November, 2006 | 3 Comments

Otherwise known as the folks who fill my comment queue and inbox with spam every motherlovin’ day:

Dear CEO,

I hope one day when you’re having a staff meeting, a giant meteor falls from the sky and lands on the tiny cave where you work, effectively pulverizing you and everyone who works for you into nothing more than a finely ground dust.

[It is my great hope that no innocent people are hurt or killed during this incident, but I'm willing to concede that such collateral damage may be necessary to rid the world of your evil presence.]

Yours truly,

Anglofille

21 November, 2006 | Comments

Skype meetings that go on for three hours.

[Especially not after racing home in a rainstorm to attend the meeting that starts an hour later than scheduled. But I'm not bitter. Billable hours.]

21 November, 2006 | 1 Comment

“He once plucked a mosquito from my cleavage.”

["He" = National Book Award-winning celebrated author who must remain nameless. Ah, grad school memories...]

20 November, 2006 | Comments

Descending in the elevator at La Grande Arche.

A movie shoot I almost walked right into.

Riding the métro.

[FYI: These movies look crystal clear on my computer. YouTube destroys them.]

20 November, 2006 | 5 Comments

On Saturday I went with a friend to visit La Défense, the “big city” section of Paris. All of the city’s skyscrapers are herded together there and kept under close guard, lest one of them attempts to make a run for central Paris and ruins the city’s photogenic beauty. I told a friend from home about La Défense and she expressed disbelief that such a part of town even existed. It’s a few métro stops from the Arc de Triomphe, but not visible from most parts of central Paris. Thank goodness.

What makes La Défense worth a look is La Grande Arche, a stunningly massive cube that is part of the axis that begins with the glass Pyramid at the Louvre, runs through the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. This is France, so you don’t just plop a giant cube down anywhere. Noooooo. The Arche was one of Mitterand’s major construction projects. It is so huge that Notre Dame Cathedral could fit inside of it. As you might imagine, it’s quite dizzying and magnificent in person. It contains offices, an exhibition gallery and more. At the top there’s an observation deck that requires a ride in a glass elevator, but for some reason this didn’t scare me.

I took a bunch o’ photos you can see here if you want. For some reason, I particularly like this one — a carousel in front of a skyscraper. I think this sums up modern France in a weird way.

19 November, 2006 | 2 Comments

I recently did a post on Monica Bellucci, which was very feminist in nature. As a result of this, the traffic to my site has nearly quadrupled. (I am not kidding.) People from all corners of the globe are stopping here, readers from all continents, even readers from places like Iran and Saudia Arabia. And the reason I have all these new readers is because web searches such as “sexy photos of Monica Bellucci” and “naked photos of Monica Bellucci” are directing them here. (Great job, Evil Google™.) So here is a message for all my new readers:

SUCK IT