resolutions

sometimes i catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror & i/m not sure who i/m looking at. i don/t recognize myself anymore. i have a hard time connecting this mask to the figure hiding in the shadows behind.


i/ve been getting these headaches lately. these splitting migraines that last for days. the kind that incapacitate me. i literally cannot do anything other than lay down & focus on breathing.

when i sleep i dream of things no one wants to see.

my immune system is down. my body hates me. i can tell you some of the reasons why, but the rest i have no fucking clue.

one: everyone in france chain smokes. going out anywhere means essentially living in a chimney for however long. clubs, bars, restaurants, cafes, all the same. even small gatherings at friends/ places. it just means everyone but me smoking in an even smaller environment. i told myself before i came to france that i would not let a cigarette touch my mouth. just because everyone else here does it does not mean i need to buy into it. however,

two: remy smokes. he/s quitting. and there are days when he/s really really good at it. when he only smokes one or two. when he tells me he/s sorry for the sake of MY lungs. but then whenever we go out or anyone visits (because EVERYONE here smokes) he just goes back into old habits and smokes one after the other. i/m not really sure what move to make next. i mean, he knows my position, and he tells me he doesn/t like it, he doesn/t like how it makes him feel, that he wants to quit. but i know he enjoys it. and he knows i hate it. but i don/t know why it is that i hate it so much. because i know what his lungs look like? because i hear him struggling to breathe at night? because his snoring keeps me up for hours? because at the end of the month we don/t have enough money to eat right, but he still manages to buy a pack of smokes? because i/m not doing it? because he won/t let me do it?

i guess that/s one of the parts that/s so frustrating. i told him a while ago that i was going to match him. that i would start smoking so that he would stop. that every cigarette he smoked, i would smoke one right along with him. and he got so angry. he told me he didn/t want to watch me destroy my body like that for no reason. and i told him that was kindof the point. anyway, i didn/t do it until new years/ eve. i just couldn/t handle it anymore. he had been so good. he had even gone a day or two without. and then friends came over & he just chain smoked like crazy. i understand it/s hard to quit but shit it/s been a hard couple of weeks for me. & i was drunk & pissy & fed up & i watched mateo roll smoke after smoke for him & so i told him that was it. so i rolled myself a nice little cigarette &...

anyway. i rarely drink anymore. let me rephrase. i have a beer every now & then. but it/s no longer like it was in college. i/m getting older, i can feel it. my body can/t snap back as fast as it used to. a night on the town equals a night of pain & pissy-ness the next day. suffice it to say, new years was a day of recovery.


i think i/m depressed again. & i don/t know what to do about it. & poor remy. i thought moving in here would make things better. it has. it has. don/t get me wrong. i am a thousand times more happy here than i was in vichy. living in vichy was seriously hell. every night was sleepless, most days was friendless & funless, adventureless. what happened to me? but still, here in this apartment i can call my own i have no motivation. i don/t ever even want to get out of bed in the morning. i/m not like that. what happened?




i don/t know which of my emotions are real & which are forced anymore. i can/t tell real from fake, i confuse dream & reality & lately my dreams are not exactly roses & sunshine.

is this just winter? or is there something deeper here? i feel like i/m constantly falling. & i/m not afraid, because i know there is nothing below me but more emptiness. it/s just that falling this quickly is not such a pleasant sensation & i want it to stop.


happy new year.

transitions.

crazy how vital the state of the bathroom is to me concerning final living-arrangement decisions. i seriously would have moved all the way to the city just for this shower. seriously.

and it/s not even that it/s that incredible of a shower. besides the fact that it actually has hot water (and at times, scalding hot), i think it is mostly because in this case it is exactly that: a shower. the salle de bain at the house i rented a room in in vichy was not. it was a salle de bain. a room with a bathtub.

which normally i don/t mind. i like baths. i would even go as far as to say that i often LOVE baths. HOWEVER, this particular bathtub confused the hell out of me.

first of all, it was purple. which did not at all match the rest of the bathroom decor. second of all, it was situated next to one of those give-yourself-an-enema things. a bidet. according to wikipedia, a bidet is: a low-mounted plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the genitalia and the anus. Originally a French word, in English bidet is pronounced /bɪˈdeɪ/ (US) or /ˈbiːdeɪ/ (UK). oh joy. do i really need my genitalia &/or anus washed that thoroughly? is bathing/showering just not enough? to some, apparently not. just seeing one of those things makes my ass pucker up like a shriveled california raisin. or, shit. i don/t even know. i get intimidated just being in the room with one. i have no idea how it works & i/m not exactly running door-to-door to find out. it just doesn/t really create a peaceful atmosphere for me, one in which taking a bath would be a calming experience. instead, every time i try to lay back & relax, forget about everything, the damn bidet takes over thoughts, making its purple presence known over in the corner.

bidet aside, the main reason this "bathtub" confused me, however, is that there was a showerhead attached. a hose with a showerhead. a nice one, too. good water pressure and all. the problem, though, is that there was no shower curtain. nor was there a shower door. nor was there anything to suggest that this showerhead should actually be used for taking showers. the cord was too short to reach higher than chest-height when standing, which also added to the mystery of it all. it was this teasing, taunting, evil shower head. and every time i got in that goddamn freezing purple tub, i always convinced myself that i had just miscalculated, that of course the showerhead reached long enough to actually wet my hair while standing, and that this time, for once, i would be able to take a real shower.

but sadly, no. i was defeated.

i dreaded bathing. not that french people do it that often. not that I do it that often back home. but seriously, i dreaded getting out of bed in the morning because i knew it meant sitting on freezing cold porcelain, leaning awkwardly until i could wet as much of my hair as possible, and trying desperately to ignore the damn bidet camped out in the corner.



i have solved my problem, however. no more evil-showerhead-bathtub. no more absolutely-nothing-to-do-ever anymore, either. no no no. the old-people-everywhere has been switched for young-people-everywhere, the small-town-france with the country in the backyard has been switched for small-city-france situated in the backyard of the mountains, with the country next door. i still work in the smallest town ever. i just live in a slightly bigger city. with room enough for more than just a bed. with an actual apartment i can call mine. with an address that is my own. with a kitchen & bathroom and living room that are my own. with no host "parents" sitting around doing nothing all day. no no no. with people my age. and things to do. and i get to take the train to work every morning. and i get to wake up next to someone i love every morning. someone who loves me.

and for all that you know how much i/m paying??? 200 euros less than i was for a tiny excuse for a room in a house that wasn/t mine.

i really appreciate everything jacques & danielle did for me, i truly do. but i can only sit around holed up in my room playing on the internet & watching episodes of 24 obsessively for so long. i needed space. my own space. space to breathe.



so yes. there you have it. i have moved to the city. moving in with rémy. going to start the new year in a new place.

please direct your post from hereon out to:
mlle chelsea elizabeth
11 petite rue du belloy
63000 clermont-ferrand france

i/d rather not.

so today on my way to work, i/m not sure why, i started thinking about worms. i was walking along, looking at the post-rain ground & thinking to myself "i haven/t seen a single worm since being in france...i wonder if they exist here?" which then became quite a silly question, but how should i know? they/ve never heard of chipmunks or cranberries, either, so it seemed like a valid thing to want to know.

"jeez, i can/t even remember the last time i saw a worm," i thought. "total lie. you remember. freshman year on the way to/from omega, that cement walkway up the hill. after a fresh rain it would be swarming with worms, half-dead, struggling to be somewhere other than the pavement." i would always try to move them from the sidewalk to the dirt, even the dead half-squashed ones. it was so so sad to see them squirming there, totally defenseless.


funny thing, life. i saw two worms after that, one on my way to work, one on my way home. both incredibly tiny. both incredibly dried out (despite the layer of wet on the ground). and both incredibly dead. after wanting so badly to see a worm, to pick it up & feel it wriggle between my fingers, to leave traces of slime & dirt deep under my nails, after seeing the two dead ones, i quickly changed my mind. i/d rather not have seen those two dried up corpses. i/d rather have gone on longing.

perspective

i sit here listening to the npr daily stream. it/s magazine editors, talking about the bests of the year, talking about the most influential people of the year, talking about what/s to come next year. & there/s this undertone of african-american perspective. voices from ebony. talking about the influence of obama. "what/s the future of the black family economy?" etc etc

today in class we talked about holidays. so we could talk about months & it would be a little more interesting. we did thanksgiving last week, so this week we/re going through the year, talking about all the different holidays.

december:
24- christmas eve (ca veut dire quoi, "eve"? le jour avant? la veille? ahhh! d'accord!)
25- christmas (oui ici on france tout le monde fete noel! pas comme vous, avec votre "thanksgiving" qui est la plus grande fete. ici, c'est noel.)
31- new years' eve (d'accord donc "eve" veut dire la veille, donc c'est le jour avant le nouvel ans?)

january:
1- new years' day. (ahhh oui!! la nouvelle annee! oui oui on fait ca ici, aussi!)
15- martin luther king jr. day (-grand silence-...

-can anyone tell me who martin luther king jr. was?
...silence...
-you can guess. go ahead...
-a king?
-a little king?
...more silence...

-no...not a king. he was a man. a black man. a very influential black man. who "had a dream"?
...silence...
-a dream, that one day his little black girl could play with little white girls? that we could all live together, with equal civil rights? he tried to fight racism? he/s very well known chez moi, really.
-oh! racism. ok. he didn/t like racism. cool. so what do you celebrate?
-well, we celebrate his birthday, actually, that/s what the 15th of january is. but it/s to commemorate him. because he was killed. assassinated, really.
-WHAT? WHY?
-well, he wanted to change things. some people had a problem with that. some people have a problem with change. he was black, and he wanted to end racism. so he was assassinated.
-hm. okay.
-seriously, though. you/ve never heard of him before this?
-no.
-really, though? are you sure?
-yes. this is the first we/ve heard. why?

umm... WHAT??? how is it that the youngest person to ever receive the nobel peace prize, recipient of the marcus garvey prize for human rights and the presidential medal of freedom, a man who has streets named after him in over 730 cities in the united states, and is considered to be the 6th most important person of the century by time magazine, the third greatest american of all time by the discovery channel, and the second most admired person in the 20th century according to the gallup poll is unheard of in this town? how is that possible?

i even tried part of his speech (as best as i could translate & remember it), to try to jog their memories. they HAD to know who he was. they just HAD to.

no use.

then again, they are in fifth grade, and they are french.

still, it took me a few minutes to pick my jaw up off the ground. looks like january will be a month where we are certainly not hard-up for material.


(by the way, in doing a little research of my own on mlk jr. earlier this evening, did you know that king county, MY county, the county i spent my entire childhood in, the name of king county was rededicated to him, to MLK Jr. in his honor in 1986? probably not. i didn/t. but even more interesting, did you know that our beloved county changed its logo to his face this year? in 2007? no longer do we have that cute little crown we/ve all grown to love. instead it/s mlk jr./s face. weird.)

then: (1969-2007)


now: (as of 2007)


craziness. you learn something new every day.

stitches

exiled. exiled is what i thought i was.

i love wednesdays. so funny how we rate our weeks. how certain days carry more weight than others. in elementary school it was whatever day we had art or music. in middle school every day sucked. in high school it was (naturally) fridays. in college it was (bellingham-style) thursdays (though really it depended on course-load, quarter, & time of year). in taiwan it was saturdays; saturdays seemed oh so far away come mondays, but when they finally arrived, they could not have been more sweet.

now it/s wednesdays. or rather, wednesday is my favourite day of the week besides thursdays, which is the only weekday i don/t work. even though it/s my earliest (i have to meet isabelle at the train station at 8am so she can drive me the half hour to busset), it is my favourite. the children at this tiny school nestled between castle & countryside are so eager to learn. you can see it in their eyes, their desperate searching, and when they/ve found the words they were wanting they keep them safely guarded, precious treasure to be caressed & fondled & oohed & aahed over until next week when they pull it from the pretty little boxes children put their most prized possessions in. they show me their words, mouths over - ee nunn seee ayy teee ing, lip & tongue & teeth caught in messy tango over th/s & f/s & r/s and the endearing inconsistency of their ever-changing vowels.

i never thought hearing numbing repetition of words such as "pumpkin" and "strawberry" could tickle me such a shade of pink.

suffice it to say, i/m in love with this job.

of course, today is wednesday. most of the other days of the week i/m grumbling about this or that. grumbling that my schedule was once again adjusted. grumbling that i (literally) have to walk 3 miles uphill in the snow (well, that one day it snowed last week) just to get to school in the morning. grumbling that i never have enough time to teach what i want to teach. grumbling that i/m not prepared enough. grumbling that they didn/t prepare me. grumbling that i/m not making enough of a difference. grumble grumble grumble.

not always. i don/t grumble to myself. it seems only to be to other people, but that/s mostly because other people only seem to grumble to me, and sometimes it only seems fair to return the favor.

this is love, she thought, isn/t it? when you notice someone/s absence & hate that absence more than anything? more, even, than you love his presence?

i/ve been writing letters, lately. many. and because of this, i/ve not written much for myself. here. there. in my journals. they/re mostly blank. or more blank than i/d like them to be. but the letter-writing does the job for me. i write & i write & i write in furies & then i seal the envelope & it/s all gone. all the anxiety or joy or numbness. it all dissipates, washed out like jeans that have hung too long on that thin line in the sun, it leaves me silent & still. with no more anxiety or joy or numbness i am free to just be. to just exist. to just breathe. one of those moments between thoughts or after fully exhaling where there doesn/t seem to be any more than everything, everything that is just hanging still, hanging there ready to be plucked like a plum on a pear tree for no apparent purpose other than its perceivable ripeness.

sometimes, while writing someone i may or may not love dearly, i imagine centuries ahead. i imagine my letters bound & published, read by the warmth of some great hearth. letters loved enough to don coffee stains & smudges, fingerprints & tears. i hear their lips take the shape of the words, speaking without speaking. i see their eyes, a window-seat passenger on an afternoon train, scanning the text too quickly, skipping over words they deem too short to merit their attention: the, and, end, i, why, me, you. the not-quite-four-letter-words. words omit get important parts. i hear them exhale much too heavily once-too-much & i know they are moved.

sometimes i wish i had a copy of every letter i/ve ever written. to know which pieces of me i/ve left behind & where. to know how to know myself intimately. but then again, that/s poetry. showing others what you can/t see yourself.

poetry. like the heavy smell of sex & sweat & body & breath, not at all beautiful, & so much so that it just might be the most beautiful scent you/ve ever known. like damp autumn earth or cement in july. honest.

exiled. exiled is what i thought i was. alone on a god-forsaken island. left to repeat the one joke i remembered, over & over & over & over. each time exaggerating & embellishing a little more. [remember when i was happy? (forced, nervous laughter.) remember when i had friends? (forced, nervous laughter.) remember when i knew who i was? (nervous, nervous laughter.) hah. hah hah. heh heh. (pause.) remember? (silence.)] wondering why i never laughed at the punch line. turns out i had never told that stupid joke right, not once. funny how telling yourself something over & over & over & over somehow makes it true. [you are not sad. you are not sad. you are not sad.] & while i can tell one helluvah story, i/ve never been so good with the truth.

honest. honest is what he makes me want to be. not so much to other people. i haven/t been a pathological liar since my freshman year of college. but then again, with so much open road ahead, so much on the line, who isn/t? no. no. not again. honest. honest this time. not so much to them. not so much to them, but to myself. honest to myself. not honest in the way that i haven/t been truthful to myself, but in the way that i/ve been holding out. that i/ve "forgotten". honest in the way that i/m slowly relaxing, letting all the "forgetting" slowly come undone, a half-finished scarf that was unevenly stitched & much-too-tight anyway, stitch work that needed to come undone if it wanted to ever breathe properly, that needed to be re-examined & re-worked & re-loved.

honest. i needed to be re-loved. honestly.