FIELD NOTE 3.73 - Colorations.

Annick has said time and again how much she enjoys hearing the way international students express themselves in French because we are the ones who allow her to truly appreciate the language and how it can be changed to suit the person. Also, she says, it allows her a brief glimpse into how we process the language.
Normally Annick will choose one special student to serve for the day as the student to be picked on repeatedly and through multiple examples. This sounds far worse than it is. As she is French, her insults end up being nothing more than casual jests and we all enjoy it very much. Last Thursday I was lucky enough to have my chance come up.
I think the profs have talked about me in their break room and during lunches. More than once comments have been made to me about how shy I am and they sometimes treat me as if I'm fragile. I endure this. But still it didn't stop Annick from telling me that she had picked me as her guinea pig that day or, as the French say, as her tête de turc - an idiom which arose from France's long and drawn-out history with the Middle East.
So again today I seemed to fall into this role and I even tried to tell Annick as such, only when I tried to think of what to say it came out "Je suis le turban encore aujourd'hui." Turban, I learned, is definitely not the same thing as tête de turc. For a second I read confusion on her face before understanding finally came and she made the connection. She laughed for a solid minute and then told me that she loved my coloration of the language. Coloration of the language and coloration of my cheeks, no doubt, for I could feel them burning.
But at least I had chosen a word that was kind of related and I wasn't too far off the mark. Besides, I'm here to learn and I still have a lot to learn!

FIELD NOTE 3.72 - Southern charm.

I've come to realize that in France, just like in the United States, when someone tells you "You look tired" it really means "You look horrible." Needless to say I have heard this phrase multiple times in the past few weeks and have come to accept it as a phrase which, like the sporadic downpours in Nantes, is just a constant that I need to get used to.
In my defense, sleeping on a 4-inch slab of plastic-wrapped foam every night hasn't been exactly wonderful on my back and some nights I can almost swear I'm actually sleeping on concrete. And most days I actually am tired, the aftereffects of either too little sleep or too much work.
So I fall back on that age-old trick: a good and solid Southern upbringing. If there's anything growing up in the South has taught me, it is that everything, even the worse of insults, can be delivered and deflected with a bright smile and a slow drawl. I'm sure that my French sounds horrible when I do this, but it seems to do the trick regardless - the topic soon changes and I can yawn to my heart's content behind my desk. Sure, I may look bad some days and my hair might be a little poofy, but at least I know that here a small dose of Southern charm can still go a long way.

FIELD NOTE 3.71 - Déjà vu.

Since the prof of my economy and society atelier was forced to cancel our last class on 26 April due to a conference she will be attending in Germany she has seen fit to require us all to meet for 2 1-hour sessions on Tuesday afternoons. Today was the first of these.
At the end of the session I was struck by the strongest sense of déjà vu as I looked at a girl's tan leather pencil case with a very tangled pair of iPod earbuds laying atop it, which triggered the strangest sense of having already seen the unfamiliar classroom and having already heard the prof's words about the current problems in Russia.
This isn't the first time I've felt like this here, but today was by far the strongest. Sometimes a little part of me wonders what this means for my life. Foolish, perhaps. But still there is the lingering question about whether or not I'm unknowingly living a second chance, a do-over.
I'm familiar with the bootstrap myth, the false idea that we can all pull ourselves up to richness and greatness by the sheer strength of our will paired with a good work ethic. Statistics disavow this. It's been proven that the children rarely excel past the socioeconomic level of their parents. I wonder if I am destined for the life of my parents sometimes. I am scared this will be my future and at the same time I'm scared for anything else that is not this life.
I used to have such a strong vision of my life but now I can't see where any of the roads now at my feet will lead. I tell myself pragmatism, pragmatism. But what does that even mean? I guess it means that I should find a job and live one of those lives of quiet desperation. Every time I feel that sense of déjà vu I also feel the passing fear that this is the life I will choose, that this is the life I will be given a second chance to escape.
The moment passes and I remember to breathe. Just as it did today when I pushed the memory of pencil bag and earbuds away in favor of the more pressing issue of counting down the last few minutes of class in my head.

FIELD NOTE 3.70 - An invitation.

Today Ziming invited me to Paris with her over break to stay with her at her friend's apartment. Truthfully she invited me 2 weeks ago, but I told her then that I would have to think about it before I deciding what my plans were going to be for the 2 weeks of spring break.
In that time I have not thought of the vacation past the dread of being alone and having no classes or friends to occupy my time. So why then do I feel such hesitancy with this offer? I worry that sometimes I'm going to great lengths to keep myself from connecting with people here - an effort to spare myself the pain of parting? Or maybe it's simpler and it's just fear on my part - fear of the unknown.
Whatever it is, I decided to swallow it and send Ziming an email saying that I would love to go and talk with her about it tomorrow - the message is sent and I can't take it back. I can only break the shell of this hesitancy and expand past it.

FIELD NOTE 3.69 - Sentences.

Today Annick, my French writing prof, said something that I found to be truly beautiful: At this point in your French, you can all put sentences together easily. You know what you want to say and how to say it. But now you also realize that some sentences only make sense according to their context and without it the meaning is lost.
Beautiful, but annoying. I've come to hate this word: context. Some days I want to scream that I want no context, I want only to learn the words I don't know and to say all the things that I cannot verbalize. But even this would not make sense without the context of what I don't know. Ironic, this.

FIELD NOTE 3.68 - Strange dreams.

My dreams have been growing stranger lately. I'm not sure whether or not I should blame this on my erratic sleeping patterns or just mark it as just another part of studying abroad.
Last night's dream was particularly strange and extremely vivid: I was on a boat in the Amazon with other about 8 other 20-somethings and - in the fashion typical of strange dreams - had no idea why I was on this boat or how I had gotten there. I was just about to say something to this effect when suddenly a blond man went overboard alongside a yellow Rubbermaid garden table and those of us on the boat set about looking for something to throw this man. A rope was soon discovered and just as another man was about to throw it to the blond man paddling water beside the floating table, a huge dolphin/shark hybrid-looking creature surfaced and ate both the blond and the table in one bite. Then cut to the boat being run aground on an island in the Amazon River after the captain made a too-abrupt attempt to flee from the creature, forcing us all to brave the water between island and shore. I, of course, chose two places behind the lead in the line, knowing this position would offer me maximum protection if the horror movies I've watched were any indication. All too soon this shark man had swam up and was beginning to attack some of the people in line. When he finally looked at me and was about to charge, I put my hand out and said, "Whoa, who are you?" to which he replied that he was the son of a human woman and a male shark who had forced her into his pack. I thought this silly since sharks don't travel in packs and was just about to tell him that when...my iPod's annoying alarm went off, ripping me from the dream with what I'm sure could only be described as a "What the heck?" look on my face.
Like I said, strange dreams. Strange, strange dreams.

FIELD NOTE 3.67 - A little success.

I have been here for 2 months and 14 days. In that time I have been making attempt after attempt at getting to know the French students on my floor but every time the conversation progresses past "Bonjour" or "Bonsoir" I am met with stony silence.

Tonight I wasn't expecting anything different as I walked in a little bit later than normal to brew my nightly tea water. There was a girl at the sink washing her dishes and I, having to use the sink to get water to boil, apologized as I moved the faucet and turned on the water. Pardon turned into thank you and soon she asked me where I was from.
A conversation sprouted and soon I found her name is Flora and I found myself agreeing to help her edit an email she had written in English. She came to my room 10 minutes later and I edited her letter as I waited for my tea to steep. I told her that if she wanted to practice English I would be more than happy to help and she said if I ever wanted to chat or drink that she lives in room 101. Then she gave me a cup of pudding she had made, a simple gesture.
It was a small thing, but it was a small success to me - a mark that if I stayed here long enough I could quite possibly carve a life for myself.

FIELD NOTE 3.66 - What was once lost...

I broke down 2 weeks ago and finally asked my mom to send my favorite pair of jeans to me here in Nantes. Originally I didn't pack them with me because I was afraid that the faded denim would appear out-of-place next to the dark denim the French prefer. Now I find that I really couldn't care any less.
I have come to accept that I will never look "French" in any sense of the word - my shirts are too bright and my pants are too light. In fact today as I walked out of the fac and made my way back to the dorm I couldn't help but to notice how my light trench coat stood out in comparison to all the French students around me flocking to the restaurants for lunch who were all dressed in their dark jackets in varying shades of black, charcoal and navy.
So if I can't assimilate, I will stand out. And what better way to do this than in a pair of old jeans?
This was my reasoning, at least. Only last week when I received a package from my parents that was sent the same day as my jeans I was told that there was no other package for me. Strange.
That was Tuesday. I was beginning to lose hope that my jeans would ever come to me, that they were perhaps lost somewhere in the great in-between between Virginia and Nantes. But today there was a slip in my mailbox informing me that I have a package at La Poste that I can pick up at 9h00 tomorrow.
So there will be jeans after all. And I will be wearing them, a streak of light amidst the dark colors of the French.

FIELD NOTE 3.65 - Admit it, boy: you're lost.

I have no idea what's going on in French culture class. I walked in today, sat down, and the professor immediately began asking us all questions about the results from the past election and what hypotheses we could think of to explain them. While all I wanted to yell at him was that I have no idea about the results of the election and that I am in this class in order to learn about them, I responded with something that was the equivalent of "response to the present government" - a response which rewarded me with a blank stare from the professor. All I get from this professor is blank stares. Okay, that's not completely true - once I got a blank stare and a head tilt.
This class has become my weekly gauntlet and I tell myself that if I can just sit through these two hours every Monday morning that I can get through every other class during the class with no difficulty. Still, it is a true test of endurance, sitting there and realizing how little I know and how little I've learned.
This week the time passed more quickly than normal as I lost myself in the differences between the American governmental system and the French governmental system and how the terms "liberal" and "conservative" can be applied to a single person in France depending on their political views. Before I knew it my bag was packed and I was out the door with my iPod on and my spirit still happy.

FIELD NOTE 3.64 - Rainy days.

Today was a gloomy Sunday in Nantes and I spent most of the afternoon looking out my window, a glass of hot English tea in my hand. I told myself I was working on my expression écrite for French writing class, formulating the next sentence in my head when in reality my mind was many miles and years away.
Having talked with Bonnie earlier today, my head was filled with thoughts of the future, which is growing cloudier by the day. She told me how incredibly lucky I am to have parents who will support me no matter what I do and where I choose to go. And she is right; they would. So why has this been haunting me all afternoon?

FIELD NOTE 3.63 - Small miracles.

This morning Darryl and I agreed to meet at her room around 10h30 to take the tram to Sharon's apartment where she had left her laptop to download a movie overnight.
Since it takes less an hour for me to eat breakfast and get ready and I haven't once slept past 9h40 since arriving in France, I didn't even bother to set the alarm on my iPod. So this morning when I finally managed to drag myself out of bed and open my blind, I was shocked to discover my iPod read 10h08.
An hour later I was knocking on Darryl's door and apologizing for being late as soon as I walked in only to find Darryl still in her pajamas and asking me why I was so early. We stood there for a second, both confused. Then understanding crept into the room - Darryl had forgotten to set her clock ahead last night for Daylight Savings while my iPod had corrected itself overnight without my knowing it.
A little later we were walking out of the dorm and towards the tram to go get Darryl's laptop and I was thinking how thankful I was that my Apple products had adjusted the times on their own, saving me from what would have surely been a very awkward Monday morning, which are already hard enough as it is.

FIELD NOTE 3.62 - We are international.

After many weeks of "We should make dinner together!" followed by many weeks of failing to follow through because of the general craziness of life, I was surprised to receive a message from Sharon earlier in the week inviting me over this Saturday night to make tacos for dinner.
After a day full of shopping for various Mexican staples for the taco parties in several French grocery stores, I finally came to the following realizations: Mexican ingredients tend to be expensive and, when compared to what I am familiar with at home, tend to be lacking in both quality and appearance. But still I ended up finding enough to bring with me to Sharon's apartment.
Soon I found myself chopping onions, tomatoes, lettuce and a red pepper while Sharon, Darryl, Mel and I fell into a comfortable conversation. After eating tacos and sampling three different types of French "Mexican" beer - that is, beer with tequila flavoring added - we decided to make some spur-of-the-moment chocolate chip and walnut cookies. And I, of course, was selected as the honorary bowl stirrer.
Oh, how I've forgotten how comfortable these little moments can be!

FIELD NOTE 3.61 - Train tickets and turmoil.

Following the advice I received from a vendor at Marché Gloriette in late January or early February - I can't remember now that so much time has passed and all the days have begun to blur together - I went to the SNCF yesterday to purchase my ticket to Paris.
Such a strange thing, buying a ticket for 27 May when it is only 27 March. But the advantages of buying the ticket as early as possible means paying an unbeatable price: 22,50 euro. Still even knowing this couldn't fully manage to quell the sudden rush of panic I felt as the machine told me to wait as it printed out my ticket - panic at the thought of leaving Nantes, panic at the thought of the unknown that lays ahead in Paris.
I've grown comfortable here and it wasn't until I was faced with the realization that I will be leaving soon that I truly realized this. I have settled into a schedule, a pattern, a life. I am finally beginning to recognize faces of people I have seen around Nantes before and at times even share with them a brief glimpse of recognition. In classes I am finally beginning to get to know the other students, to make friendships.
And all too soon this will be over, I will see these faces no more and those friendships may end up proving too fragile to resist the tension of the international distance. I realize now that whatever it was I hoped to accomplish in coming here for 6 months will never come to fruition - it was too ambitious and the time does not agree.
But still I've begun something, a process of change in myself. I realize now that some of my fears and hesitancy have been worn away and replaced by a sense of - what? I wouldn't call it courage, for I am nothing close to that. But I am no longer as afraid of striking out or traveling to a place where I know no one and everything is strange. Whatever you call that feeling, it is now growing inside me and I didn't even realize it until a piece of printed paper that will take me from Nantes to Paris was in my hands.

FIELD NOTE 3.60 - Bradford pears.

I don't know what made me do it but this afternoon I found myself typing my home address into Google Maps. A few minutes later I found myself clicking on the "Street View" for Smokey Road and clicking my way down the street I have always known and past the familiar houses and driveways. When I finally reached my own driveway I couldn't quite make out my house for all the pine trees in the way, but the front yard was enough.
Those 10 Bradford pear trees lining the front yard are as familiar to me as the house itself and I found myself sitting there in my dorm room looking at the one to the left of the driveway whose branches had practically all be ripped down by Hurricane Isabel, the one we weren't sure would survive or not. But we had painted its scars with spraypaint and prayed for the best. It's still there, its scars visible but blooming.
I hadn't really realized until that moment just how much I had missed the comforting sight of those Bradford pear trees - even missed the sight and horrible smell of their white blossoms. But here there are no Bradford pears. The residence's parking lot is filled with cherry trees that are now blooming, their pink blossoms and perfume filling the mornings. And I think how funny it is that I would trade all their color and delicate scent for a single horribly-scented Bradford pear blossom.

FIELD NOTE 3.59 - Correction about the wind.

It was windy again today, more than yesterday. Walking to class, I was actually pushed along a time or two and even once my scarf was blown right into the face of a passing French girl.
So I guess I should correct my post from yesterday and say that reasonably windy days are the best. But even still, a horribly windy day every once in a while is still a wonderful thing to experience even if it does make having good hair an impossibility.

FIELD NOTE 3.58 - Sleep is important.

Lately it hasn't seemed as if I've been getting enough sleep and people have begun to notice my incessant yawning and the slight bags under my eyes. And it's really no small wonder why when the days here seem so short - I wake up every morning and in no time it seems like it's time to get ready for bed again.
So I've begun to try to stretch the days, going to bed later and later while at the same time waking up earlier and earlier. I keep telling myself that on Sunday I will catch up on all my lost sleep, but even on Sunday I always seem to be woken up early by either the sunlight that works its way around my curtain or by the cries of the pies in the parking lot.
Today I slept in a little later than normal and remembered how wonderful sleep is. Important, too. When I finally woke up and talked myself into stepping out of bed and rolling up the curtain, it seemed that single additional hour of sleep had brought with it a new sense of quiet contentment.
There still don't seem to be enough hours in the day, but still the same I think I'll be going to bed a little earlier than normal tonight.

FIELD NOTE 3.57 - Optimism, optimism.

This week has been a hard one, une mauvaise semaine. I have gotten caught up in a strange headspace somewhere between Nantes and Virginia that has left me feeling torn between two countries but a part of neither.
And so, instead of waiting to see if I will somehow be freed of this or torn in two, I have decided to take it upon myself to change the situation. I have decided that I will no longer be using negative sentences, that I will only be positive. Yes, right now all of those positives might be forced from my lips, but if I do this long enough I hope that my optimism will become real and I will finally be able to leave this strange funk behind.

FIELD NOTE 3.56 - Windy days are the best.

I have a tram pass. I paid 30 euro for it. I tell myself these two things every morning, but these last few weeks the weather has been so nice that I have taken to walking to class, a route that takes only slightly longer than it would take by tram and a route that is free of any forsythia.
Today the wind was blowing far stronger than it normally does and at points it actually pushed me along the sidewalk. By the time I finally made it into the classroom for French writing I was almost out of breath and both my scarf and hair were in complete disarray. But still even so, the wind was wonderful and I still believe that windy days are the best.

FIELD NOTE 3.55 - Open windows are dangerous.

Today the weather was caught somewhere between spring and winter but still it was warm enough to allow for the windows to be opened.
Normally this would just result in a few minor glimpses out the window when the random peals of laughter from passing students were loud enough to catch my attention. But today the construction workers radio was loud enough to enter into our classroom and still be understood. And when Nancy Sinatra's voice began filling the room, I gave up any semblance of listening to the prof and let my head bob in time to "These Boots Were Made for Walking." It wasn't all that bad since the prof laughed at me, but still the same I foresee the open windows that spring brings will be a dangerous thing for my attention in class.

FIELD NOTE 3.54 - The search.

She worries about me, my mother. I think she worries that I am lost, that I don't know the name of the thing that I seek. I think she worries that I am constantly trying to outrun my shadow or forget my past. I think she worries that I won't know the way back to Virginia when the time comes.
When she asks me how I am, I can only answer, "I don't know." I. Don't. Know. These three words have become my lifeline and I cling to them every day in class when the words become too many or I venture too far into the unknown. And then they bring clarity, understanding. So why then when I say them to her do I feel as if I've somehow given the most horrible non-answer?
I thought maybe in coming here I would suddenly find all the answers. Instead I have only found only more questions, more non-answers.
I still don't know what I want but I do know that every time I am asked again the question weighs a little heavier on my chest, but still it presses out the same three words: I don't know. I don't even think I was ever even meant to know what it is I want or the reason I run from my shadows, but I know the way back is written on my skin and for the first time in a long time I am starting to enjoy the search.

FIELD NOTE 3.53 - Just once.

I would like a simple answer.

FIELD NOTE 3.52 - Something's missing.

Last night I ended up going with some friends over to Ziming's apartment to help her finish the leftovers from her party last Saturday night and as the salad was being passed around, Ziming looked at me and asked, "So what have you lost, Cole?" She must have read my face because she immediately clarified that at the beginning of the semester she had found me very energetic and interested in classes but now I was neither of those.
So I guess it's that obvious.
But I didn't know how to explain this to her, didn't want to explain this to her. I settled for an uneasy truth: I'm just really tired; I haven't been sleeping well. The topic was quickly abandoned in favor of another and I began to breathe a little bit easier.
In truth, I have been thinking about that question ever since it was first asked at last night's party: Just what have I lost? And every time I ask myself this question I feel a dull ache in my chest.
I fear I have lost many somethings since first arriving here. But I am good at living without parts of myself; I see no reason why now that should be any different.

FIELD NOTE 3.51 - Smells take me back.

France smells like King William tonight.
I opened the kitchen window as I was waiting for my tea to boil on the stove and inhaled the March night air. It was wonderful, cold and slightly woodsmoke-scented, and all I could think to do was to close my eyes and picture the view outside my kitchen window.
I realize that I say I hate King William a lot - it seemed like a cage in high school and another world away in Richmond - but it's really as bad as all that. Growing up in that world, I grew up differently that almost all the people I meet in my daily life - it seems I learned to view the world differently from everyone else from the behind the protective shell of my backroad upbringing. It used to be a mark of shame and of difference, but now I have come to love that difference. Whatever shame there was is now gone. It has been replaced by something else - pride?
And here I am now, half a world away in Nantes. I've gone further than I ever thought I would from that rural world and yet I still carry it with me - it's like an old letter in my pocket, constantly folded and refolded. It is a silent comfort on cold spring nights like these when the world seems unspeakably large and the tea water seems to take forever to boil.

FIELD NOTE 3.50 - Things my mother gave me.

In all our time apart I've finally grown to realize all the things my mother has given me that I've always taken for granted or else completed overlooked: my will-not-be-tamed hair, my pale skin, my overly prominent wristbones.

But of all the things she's given me, the one that I am the most proud of is also one of the strangest: an abject hatred of the forsythia plant. Every spring and fall when we would see the forsythia plants growing in my grandmother's neighbor's yard my mother would tell me of how she always attributed the plants to the end of things: the end of school in the spring, the end of summer in the fall. She grew to hate the plant. And so the hatred passed to me, an unintentional legacy.
The forsythia here has begun to bloom in the past week and I must pass a bed of the plants every morning to make my way to the tram - and every morning I feel the slight tensing of my shoulderblades as I hurry past the delicate yellow flowers. I tell myself it's silly to hold such a strong aversion for a flower, but still it remains. Every morning that I see the flower my thoughts automatically go to the ends of things. Just as they did for my mother, the flowers now stand for the impending end of the school year here in Nantes.
This has become too much for me to even think about and so I have started walking from my residence to my classes - a much longer way, but one that doesn't force me to see a single forsythia.

FIELD NOTE 3.49 - Cutting ties.

Sunday evening normally entails writing emails to people back in Richmond. I would write about my week and all the things I didn't fully understand and all the new things I discovered. And I would wait for the responses to come back to me, bolded messages in my inbox each morning.
But over the weeks the responses have been growing shorter, growing fewer. Where once you wrote about your life and the weather in Richmond, you now only write "I miss you" as if that explains it all, as if it's that simple.
This week there was only silence. I wonder if the distance between us has grown too large or if your lives have just grown too busy for a response, either way the result is the same. I never told you how your letters were lifelines for me or how I reread them daily to remind myself that there are really people that miss me. And now that lifeline is gone.
This week I couldn't bring myself to send out any emails.

FIELD NOTE 3.48 - Crisis, 1PM.

After a week of emails and planning, I have finally chosen my fall courses at VCU. Or had chosen, that is, until approximately 13h00 this afternoon when I discovered that every Women's Studies course I had planned on taking was suddenly either no longer being offered or being offered at a time that conflicted with another necessary class.
In a past life this would have resulted in an instantaneous explosion of expletives and angry emails, but this afternoon the discovery only resulted in a resigned "Well this sucks" as I began to try to piece together a new schedule and send out emails to verify the choices were sound.
It wasn't until 2 hours later as I was navigating my way through Bouffay on my way to the Jardin des Plantes that I realized this reaction had been atypical.
I will not lie to you, the only solution I could find is one that scares me - I will be forced to take 2 senior capstones in the fall and turn out 2 intensive research papers. It will mean my return to the constant cycle of work that I've managed a brief escape from this semester. But I remind myself that this is necessary. And still there is this lingering fear that I will somehow be unable to return back to the cycle, that when I try to go back that I will no longer fit into it. But it's necessary to go back, necessary to finish. Necessary is the word used. Necessary. I hold onto it like a prayer.

FIELD NOTE 3.47 - Dreams.

I've lost track of the number of times I've told myself that I need to start over again.
It's such a beautiful image: the shedding of everything I hate about myself and fulfillment of self-creation. A beautiful image, an ugly process.
I thought that in coming here I would finally be able to recreate myself, to start over in a place where no one knows me and I know no attachment. Yet I have fallen back into my old patterns of silence and hesitancy. And even still, I wake up each morning hoping that some great change has wrought itself in me during the night.
And every morning I wake up the same.
Some days I think that change is impossible, that it is my destiny to be the same person and that my patterns are written in my bones. And there are days when I feel like I don't even know the face in the mirror.
So which is it - change or stasis?
Last night I dreamed that I wanted to go swimming in a river and as soon as I stepped into it, I melted. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't make myself transform back into something solid. In my dreams I was completed changed.
And dreams do not lie.

FIELD NOTE 3.46 - Cigarettes and secret wishes.

The cigarette in my hand was burning down and I was on the balcony talking to Ziming and Jagna. Up until this point I hadn't really talked to either of them beyond the ebb and flow of causal classroom conversation but this Saturday night we were talking about hopes and regrets - the two things that inevitably draw people together - as I stood there trying to hide my shivers.
I received an invitation to Ziming's apartment this Thursday for a small get together for IRFFLE students. My immediate response was to seek out some valid reason why I couldn't come - my habit, still strong after even 2 months here - and sent back a quick confirmation to stop me from backing down. I don't know why I feel this hesitancy to leave my room and forge connections with people - I suppose a part of this is habit and the other half is just the knowledge that whatever roots I lay will just have to be ripped away in a few months anyway.
But standing there out on that balcony in the cold night air with a cigarette in hand, I forgot all this. I became - for a minute - just a person sharing a smoke and casual chit chat with friends. I was not foreign, I was not a bad speaker. I merely was. And I realized just how easily it could be to push myself a little further into the lives of these people, to lay down roots.
But is this what I want...what do I want?
I want this weight that hangs heavy around my neck to disappear. I want the voices that haunt me to disappear. I want to walk away from Nantes knowing that I am not completely forgotten, that I have made some small mark upon a life there.
This is what I want - and it is all selfish. Selfish but true.

FIELD NOTE 3.45 - Nights like this.

I think nights like this are going to be what I miss most about Nantes when I am gone. Meeting at Fées for beers and conversation while outside the rain hits the cobblestones. I don't remember everything that was said and I drank one too many beers, paid for one too many beers. What I do remember is that Ge told me I have a room at her apartment any time I want it and that she knows she doesn't have to tell me this, that I should know it - this makes me want to cry.

FIELD NOTE 3.44 - I should stop putting myself down.

But voices linger, making it nearly impossible.

FIELD NOTE 3.43 - Time relations.

French grammatical structures are very matter-of-fact. I've come to rely on this as a constant in life as I try to find my footing and slowly make my way in this world. Still there are many things I still can't say and many words I cannot say.
Today we learned in French writing class that there must always exist a link between the past and the present, the present and the future. Logically this makes complete sense - nothing can happen in relation to another event unless one of those events is firmly grounded in our understanding. I suppose the same can be said of English, only in English the link between events seems to be more of a tacit thing, not always stated but implied.
And then I thought of all the times I've purposely hidden this link in my constant rush to do things, make lists, plan. I am often teased here for living too far in the future and for already making plans for May in March. I would like to say that this isn't true, that I live in both the future and the present...I would like to say this, but it would be a lie. I am constantly planning my tomorrows and overlooking the todays - it's a problem, it's a way of life. Sometimes I worry that my link to the present is the same as my language's: tacit, not there but implied.
I like to think that is changing, that I am slowly drawing myself back from the future and into the now. But whether that's true or not is another thing entirely and for the moment I prefer the comfort of illusion.

FIELD NOTE 3.42 - Familiar faces.

This week has already been quite eventful. Yesterday I somehow managed to not only successfully deliver a 15 minute presentation to my oral French class with some semblance of grace, but also the unconscious body gestures I used during the presentation also managed to make my classmates and professor laugh a little bit - and humor, I've learned, can go a great way in helping to ease tension and raise grades. And then there also came an email yesterday night from CEA informing me that I have officially been accepted into their summer program in Paris, something I have been waiting to hear about since January.
So with those two huge events behind me and me still riding in the euphoria of their passing, I decided on a whim to that I deserved a little self congratulatory present and the cute white and blue striped shirt I had my eye on yesterday in Zara seemed like the perfect fit. Soon the shirt was in my possession and a few minutes later I found myself in the H&M next to Zara with Darryl looking at a display of garden-themed t-shirts when I thought I heard my name.
I had heard my name. A guy I remember from my FREN 300 class approached me and practically screamed "Cole!" We exchanged a few seconds of casual conversation before he left with the two friends he is traveling with on Spring Break and I was left standing there in front of the badly-themed t-shirts feeling a little strange.
I realize I've only been here for a short time, but still it seems that Richmond was a past life and that the person I was there doesn't exist anymore. So to have someone from Richmond see me and scream my name was a bit unsettling, as if all the peace I have come to know here was suddenly shattered with the realization that life back in Richmond hasn't stopped with me no longer there.
I never expected it to. But lately there has been more silence from Richmond from my friends there. It's silly to be upset by such a small thing. I realize that life is busy and that sometimes things like emails and phonecalls slip the mind quite easily, but still the silence is deafening. Sometimes I even wonder if they will even remember me now that they can't see me anymore.
But hearing my name today, knowing that even after all this time I still look the same, I was reminded that either way life goes on. I still exist - I just exist here now.

FIELD NOTE 3.41 - My body is foreign.

I no longer know my body. It has begun to move on its own, flinging out gestures and sounds that I was never trained to make. Words like futur, passé, d'ailleurs now all have their own actions and the overused "I don't know" has now become just a purse of the lips and a puff of air.
My body is trapped between cultures.
And I am loving this in-between, this mix of habit and imitation that is all my own. I feel that with every day that passes my lines are all growing blurry - as if I am steadily moving closer to something. But what is that something?
I have learned all too well this can be a dangerous thing and yet still I came to France hoping that all my old habits and manners would suddenly disappear and be replaced with new ones. That wasn't so, but even still they are changing. And change is something more potent than replacement. Or it seems so, at least.

FIELD NOTE 3.40 - Scheduling.

The schedule of classes is online for the fall, which means it is once again time to begin the process of selecting courses, praying they will line up and lead to a degree.
Normally I look forward to the problem-solving process of putting together my schedule and weeding through all the different courses but for some reason it seems just like a huge hassle - the courses aren't lining up and it seems like nothing will work out. And this all seems doubly impossible to bear after having lived in the relaxed French air for all this time.
But the classes will fit, must fit, or else...what? Or else I fear I might not be able to talk myself into returning.

FIELD NOTE 3.39 - The end is in sight.

Today in class a question was asked about final exams for our classes and the prof told us that the schedule for exams had just been made. It's strange to think that even counting down the days as I am in my notebook that I somehow lost track of the time and didn't really realize that there are only 4.5 weeks of classes left after this week.
I don't feel like I've really been here that long - it seems like only yesterday I was being told that I would have to stay in a hostel for the weekend because my dorm wasn't ready. And my French still isn't anywhere close to where I had hoped it would be. It doesn't seem like that will suddenly correct itself in the short span of time left.
But what remains is still enough. It's still enough time to learn some new things and hopefully leave a slight impression on the people I've grown to love here, even if they quickly forget me after I am gone and even if I never speak another word of French.

FIELD NOTE 3.38 - Spring.

Springtime in Nantes is going to be a beautiful thing. Today was the first day of truly springlike weather with sunshine and a high of almost 60. Hopefully this weather is here to stay.

FIELD NOTE 3.37 - Extract.

On the plane ride here I only brought one book with me: David Leavitt's The Lost Language of Cranes. After I read it and moved into Fresche Blanc, the book was put on a shelf and practically forgotten except when I had to reach around it to grab my cellphone. But this weekend I offered to lend it to Ge since she lent me her copy of Michel Tremblay's Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tôle and it has since been sitting on my desk, waiting.
There is one particular passage in the book that I remember better than all the others and last night I picked up the book and found it:

Silently they moved on toward Brad's building, Philip remembering that uncomfortable night back when it had still been winter. Now a warm breeze blew. They walked ungloved, unhatted, without umbrellas. And Philip thought how nice it must be to be able, like Eliot, just to take off from a place you've come to call home, to eject yourself from the complext and dangerous network of friends, lovers, apartments, to sever all ties and leap into the starling newness of the unknown. Sometimes he tried to imagine doing it, just buying a ticket somewhere, say, to Paris, and going there, and he could almost feel that shock, the relief of knowing no one, smelling strange smells, feeling new breezes. But then he would remember that he hardly knew the language, that he had no friends to stay with in Paris; he would realize that once there, he'd have to begin again a ceaseless cycle of worrying - about laundry, about eating out alone and being mistreated by the waiters, about finding a boyfriend. Such concerns apparently didn't faze Eliot. He knew people everywhere, always had places to stay. And once again Philip envisioned Eliot in a trenchcoat, riding on a fast-moving train through some unspeakably beautiful landscape, with no luggage; he was standing on a sort of old-fashioned caboose balcony, the wind blowing through his hair. Probably he was going to Venice. Philip imagined Eliot and his lover, Thierry, riding a gondola through a jade-colored canal, strange, barnacle-caked towers rising above them on all sides. Some people left, some were left; it seemd the world requred the two extremes, for balance. There would be no refuge in travel for Philip; he was too much of a coward for adventure, too yoked to routine and familiar comforts. Doomed, Eliot had said. Perhaps that was what he meant, as he sat writing in that dusty room in the Fifth, smelling "that Paris smell." Perhaps he was simply thinking of his own good fortune, and had written "doomed," and added "to happiness" to cut the cruelty.

Just as I did when I first arrived, I find myself wondering which I am: an Eliot or a Philip. And just as I did then, I still have no answer.

FIELD NOTE 3.36 - A new perspective.

On Mondays there is always a 1-hour break between French culture and my economy and society class. Typically I spend this hour running back to my dorm to eat a hasty lunch and then running back but today I was invited to lunch at one of the school restos by Ziming, a girl who I share many classes with but don't talk to nearly as much as I should.
As we were making our way over to a stone wall with our lunches in hand I finally asked her the question that's been burning inside me for these past six weeks: So what's your story? I don't have a special gift for writing - most stories seem to slip from my grasp before I can ever write them down - but still it seemed important at the time to ask for hers.
It wasn't what I expected, but it was beautiful nonetheless. And then she asked me for mine, certainly far less beautiful than her own. I don't know why this surprised me as much as it did, after all, I had just asked her for hers and it only seemed fair. But still, my story is nothing special and even so, I told it to her. We filled this hour with conversation as our stories spread between us until it was time to go to our economy and society class.

* * *

Somewhere in this hour Ziming told me that I should really consider staying in Nantes for a year for she believed in that time I could reach full fluency. My response was automatic and prompt: I can't, I have to get back to VCU to finish my degrees. There just isn't time.
There just isn't time. I tell myself this at least a dozen times as I fight to suppress the urge to write an email to my parents saying that I won't be back as soon as I expected and that I will be sure to write. Every time pragmatism wins and the moment passes.
But still my resistance is becoming threadbare. I'm no longer sure what I want and what I need. I miss the days when life was a path of certainty. Now the path is forking and I don't know what my next step should be.

FIELD NOTE 3.35 - Today.

Today is 15 March, the day that marks my having been in France for 2 calendar months now. I still count the days, but not in the same way. Now they are marks of completion where they were once of obligation.

FIELD NOTE 3.34 - A walk among the dead.

15h00. With the internet connection still not reestablished and the realization that I could not attempt to pretend to do homework any longer, I decided to see if Darryl wanted to "take a wander" for a while to a cemetery I had visited my first weekend in Nantes but hadn't taken any pictures of.

I remembered the cemetery and parts of the journey there but little else and so our trip there was filled with wrong turns and a few "I don't remember this" exclamations. But eventually we found it, that nameless cemetery and found a plaque that gave it a name: Cimetière Miséricorde.
And here we wandered for more than 2 hours among the rows of tombs and gravestones while around us solemn French adults and bored-looking French children tended the tombs of their family and readjusted the mementos piled atop the granite surfaces. And there we stood with our cameras in hand - out of place amongst the others. Even the pie birds seemed to sense our difference and screamed at us from their perches atop crosses and on tree branches.
I could speak of the immensity of the place, but to be honest, I don't think my words could ever do it justice. It's hard to try to find words to explain death, only an abstract until it is a reality.
The tombs and graves were all in various states - some were pristine and well-tended while others were completely collapsed and broken. And yet even still, each bore the story of the person covered with effaced symbols and gaudy ornamentation. I stood for a while in front of the tomb of a past French general, a monstrosity of granite and oxidized copper trying to place what it was I felt.
It wasn't death, for I was still breathing. No, it was the realization that in looking at the tomb of this general with all its ornamentation of military pomp, I was also reading the story of his life. Strange to think that I know more about the dead man lying there than I do about the people I pass on the street every day here on my way to class. Strange, but not quite sad.
As we left the cemetery I wondered about those families I had seen there - the solemn adults and bored children. Did the adults only come to tend the graves out of duty and the knowledge that one day they, too, will lie there or do they indeed believe in resurrection? And the children. Would the children grow out of their bored faces and into the solemn faces of adults? Would they come and tend the graves of their ancestors as their parents had? Or would it all be forgotten?
There are some moments that I am glad I will be leaving in a few months. When I am gone, I will never have to see the answer to any of these questions. And for that I am infinitely grateful.

FIELD NOTE 3.33 - Connection issues.

I had just pressed the "Envoyer" button on my Facebook message to respond to Ge when the little loading wheel on the left corner of my Firefox tab halted for a second before resuming.
Not good.
That little halt can only mean one thing - the network is either lost or the connection needs to be reset. Taking a deep breath, I quit the application and restarted it. And nothing.
The connection was completely lost.
This happens fairly often here, normally lasting somewhere between an hour and 13 hours. Since there is no sense in complaining to the man working at the residence's welcome desk, I just had to go with it - and, since it was Saturday and no one works here on Sunday, get used to living without the internet until Monday.
I say this as if it is an easy thing to do. It's not. My oral French teacher often teases me for my addiction to the internet, to which I always reply that I am not addicted - my feelings are completely normal for the average American.
So Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning passed with me trying and failing to get my homework done while sporadically checking to see if the network had been reestablished. And somewhere between then and now I began to realize that perhaps I am indeed addicted. Not good.

FIELD NOTE 3.32 - Awareness.

Saturday is errand day for all of Nantes. It is a day of full tramcars and heavy bags - and even so it has become my favorite day as I run the same route as the week before for the food that will get me through the week.
This weekend though E. Leclerc seemed more busy than usual, due perhaps to the nice weather or perhaps just because Darryl and I decided to come an hour later than usual. People were crowding the store, sometimes abandoning their carts in the middle of an aisle or blocking it entirely as they walked off to collect something they had forgotten in a previous aisle.
After about an hour of this Darryl said to me, "You know, I don't think that French people have the same awareness as we do. I think as Americans we're trained to be constantly aware of our surroundings." And, as a woman who was trying to maneuver her full grocery cart and two struggling children suddenly stopped in front of us and we were forced to veer to the left to avoid crashing into her, I ceded the point.
Being constantly aware of my surroundings has become habit and, like any habit, I no realize when I take stock of a strange situation or listen to the people around me. It's just something done without thought.
I don't know where or when this was instilled in me - perhaps by American culture or, more likely, by the only-child mentality of my parents. But still, how strange it is to think that not everyone grows up learning this skill.

FIELD NOTE 3.31 - A funk.

This week has been a strange one and for the majority of it I have been in a funk. My emotions have run across the board to the point where I wanted to call the whole trip over. My calendar with its marked off days, weeks, and months became a lifeline, a countdown, a prayer.
I have avoided looking too closely at the cause of this rut, feeling objectivity impossible in light of my unstable changes in mood. But tonight, whether through by actual clarity or the sort of clarity that can only come after a little too much beer, I finally think I've located the source of my inquietude.
When I first came here I was just an American - an American in France, an American student in a French university, an American student brushing his teeth. But now I don't feel that anymore. It's not that I'm somehow no longer American or anything so extreme. It's just that now in the streets, on campus, and in the dorm I am approached and spoken to in French. And when people find out I'm foreign I almost never pegged as an American.
Now I just feel caught between two cultures, a part of both but belonging to neither. And at the same time I feel that I am at a point where I can make a choice about which culture I ultimately live in. I could just as easily carve a life for myself here in France as in the United States. But which do I want? Which is to be my path?
Every day my mind screams out for America when I wait for the tram at Rector Schmit, surrounded by polished French people and their fluid language. But all I want to see are the rough edges of Americans and hear the broken syllables and heavy Southern accents. When I get back, I know my mind will call out for the opposite.
What I have now is the moment and little else.

FIELD NOTE 3.30 - Memories.

This morning as I was pulling my French grammar book down from the shelf I keep it on a coaster came falling down with it. I had somehow completely forgotten about the coaster I slipped in my bag a few weeks ago at Fées that was filled with grammar questions - some of which I remember, some of which I don't and I blame both of these on the beer.

But it was enough to make me smile. Little things, little things.

FIELD NOTE 3.29 - One of those days.

There are some days when I just can't seem to put the words together or muster up the energy to even properly conjugate the verbs. Today was one of those days.

FIELD NOTE 3.28 - A compliment.

It's such a small thing in the course of the day, perhaps even said with no real thought behind it. And yet even the tiniest of compliments can redirect the entire course of my day and make it seem suddenly brighter.
Compliments are important. Even more so here in France where every footstep careful and entirely uncertain - each compliment becomes a medal, a badge of having successfully navigated some narrow cultural corridor.
This morning I had some difficulty with my contact lenses and, feeling it would be easier to forgo the discomfort completely, opted instead for my wearing my glasses. It wasn't a big decision in the grand scheme of the day, but it was one that caused my oral teacher a brief moment of pause this morning as she walked in and placed her patent leather bag on the desk in front of the class.
She said that the glasses were quite a change and I tried to tell her of my contact lens troubles this morning, which she apparently took to be some sort of apology for glasses and assured me that they looked quite good. I just smiled, not really knowing what to say.
I have had the most difficult time trying to read my oral prof this semester and, for lack of any evidence to the contrary, have settled upon the idea that I, the worst speaker in the entire class, must be very low in her esteem. So today's compliment seemed doubly important - not only did it make me feel a little better, but it also made me realize that perhaps I'm looking at some situations in the completely wrong way.

FIELD NOTE 3.27 - Extrait du jour.

Il y avait bien l'écriture, mais écrire des choses qu'on n'ose pas montrer était devenu pour moi avec le temps la dénégation même de l'acte d'écrire. Le postcoïtus était trop difficile : après la petite mort et son soulangement bien temporaire, la grande, la définitive, celle du fond de tiroir, m'était devenue intolérable. Je n'en pouvais plus de tout garder pour moi. J'en avais déjà trop, de ces manuscripts que j'étais seul à connaître, le troisième tiroir de ma table de travail en était plein jusqu'à ras bord. J'étais frustré de ne pas pouvour partager ceux que j'avais, je ne voulais pas en ajouter un autre, drôle en plus!
Mais, mes amis étaient-ils prêts pour la vérité ? Une vérité, cependant, qu'ils avaient devinée depuis longtemps, bien sûr (j'avais toujours refusé de ne montrer au bras d'une jeune fille parce que ç'aurait été lui mentir à elle, me mentir à moi, mentir aux autres ; alors, un gars de dix-huit ans à qui on n'a jamais connu de blonde, c'est quoi, pensez-vous ?), un secret de polichinelle dont ils se parlaient peut-être entre eux à mots couverts, trop pudiques, comme moi, pour l'affronter carrément. Mon soulangement serait probablement aussi le leur. En fin de compte, c'était peut-être moi qui n'étais pas prêt.

Oh, this story is getting good! The narrator is now on a bus torn between his desires and even so he writes in a way that rends the heart.

FIELD NOTE 3.26 - The fears.

I have this fear that people at home have already begun to forget my name and my face. I have this fear that when I come back that no one will be able to recognize me. I have this fear that I will end up uprooting myself, tearing myself from all those people I have known but grown distant from. I have this fear that I will have no name, that I won't remember the way back. And I have this fear that none of this is new to me.
Even now the voices and the faces of the people in Richmond are beginning to fade from my memory. What remains is the knowledge of how easily I could tear myself away from all this and pretend like it never existed. Sure, it would be painful at first but eventually that pain would pass and I would be able to...what exactly?
I don't have an answer.
A friend told me tonight that he noticed this eagerness to tear myself away, too. He told me that it seems to him whenever I feel that I've grown too close to people or have opened myself up too much, I feel the need to uproot myself, go somewhere else, and start the cycle again.
He's right. This is my cycle and unfortunately it's a strong one. And on nights like this when all I can think about are the things I fear, I also have this fear that I will be forever stuck in my pattern of uprooting, moving, and starting over...

FIELD NOTE 3.25 - Elsewhere.

It's been happening more frequently lately - the prof will begin talking to the class about the proper format for a French argumentation and suddenly my mind will be elsewhere, focused on something else. Trivial things: the possibility of ever seeing a thunderstorm, in Nantes, whether or not it will finally feel like spring the day after tomorrow, whether or not I really need those Frye cowboy boots I've been lusting after for more than a year. And then just as quickly as it came, the thought will be gone and I will be back to listening about writing a French argumentation and I won't understand a thing.

FIELD NOTE 3.24 - Ready to run.

Sitting in my classroom this morning waiting for class to start my eyes were drawn to the exit sign just over the door.
Funny to think it's been there this entire time and I only just noticed it today. And sitting there in my chair looking up at the figure of a running man, I was struck with the sudden desire to stand up, put my coat back on and run. To where, I have absolutely no idea.

FIELD NOTE 3.23 - I am (not) a machine.

The topic came up again in French writing class of the differences between the various IRFFLE levels., specifically what students who had been in level 4 last semester thought of it in comparison to level 5 this semester I know the very basics about these differences beyond the fact that I needed to be placed in level 4 or above to receive credit at VCU and that on the first day at the Université of Nantes I somehow managed to do this when a man pointed at me and said "niveau 5" - thus is my knowledge of IRFFLE levels 4 and 5.
But today the distinction the professor gave us was beautiful: At level 4 in the program a student is basically a machine. They can only understand French as a machine where they put in words and verbs and make sentences. But you in the level 5 have a strong understanding of grammar - you are no longer just plugging in words like a machine. And this is important because language is not a machine.
It may have just been a simple thought at the beginning of a 2-hour class at 9h00 on a Tuesday morning and most of us probably won't even remember it in a few weeks or even days, but at the moment it seemed important. It made me feel like like a person again.
It's okay that I don't understand all the words and grammar rules. It's okay that I still make errors every time I try to speak or write. It's okay - I am no machine.

FIELD NOTE 3.22 - Extrait du jour.

"P'tit prétentieux ! V'nir me gâcher mon fun comme ça, voir si ça a du bon sens ! Pourquoi tu me dis ça, là, tout d'un coup ? Juste pour être méchate ? Hein ? Juste pour me gâcher mon plaisir ?"
Elle avait bien raison, qu'est-ce que j'avais à la déranger dans son plaisir, comme ça ? De quoi je me mêlais ? Elle avait payé sa place, elle avait bien le droit d'aimer ce qu'elle avait sous les yeux ! J'eus hot de ma méchanceté et me réfugiai à mon tour dans mon programme, en rougissant. Mais quelque part, très loin au fond de moi, mes dix-huit ans bouillonnants me suggéraient que j'avais raison de penser ce que je pensais même si j'avais eu tort de le dire à quelqu'un qui ne pouvait pas me comprendre, et je me disais que je réfléchirais à tout ça à tête reposée quand je reviendrais à la maison...

I sometimes think that life would be impossible to struggle through were it not for the illusions we let ourselves believe, the little things that get us through the day and let us believe that tomorrow will somehow be better.
Being here, being constantly surrounded by foreign faces and words, I have been forced to give up many of the illusions I used to hold - either because in France they were unnecessary or just because I outgrew them.
What remains when all the illusions have been stripped away?
I do not have the answer to this. I still feel the featherlight presence of illusions occasionally. Like this morning when the sun was shining into my room and I told myself, "Today will be better than yesterday." And I believe that, even if it doesn't end up being true.

FIELD NOTE 3.21 - My handicap.

Apparently, according to my French culture prof, the inability to be able to write an entire sentence in French without committing an error in orthography is considered a true handicap.
If that is indeed true, then I am certainly handicapped.
What's more than that, I still have problems with the orthography of my own language - words like "banana," "receive," and "apartment" still make me pause. But I've never really considered that a handicap so much as my tendency to type faster than I can think and my penchant for adding extra letters.
Come to think of it, I feel that how I am perceived in classes here is completely different than how I am seen at VCU. There I am always seen as a "smart" student, a "good" student. Secretly I have always hated these titles, feeling as if I somehow never quite measured up to them. But here I am not smart, I am not good - I am not even average.
No, I am just seen as a foreign student and given no labels beyond that. Truth be told, it's perhaps the most enjoyable thing about coming here. Even if at the end of this I leave Nantes knowing little more than what I came knowing, I will have lived for a brief time without the constant presence of these American labels hanging over my head. And maybe, with just a little luck, I won't find myself with those labels after my return to Richmond.

FIELD NOTE 3.20 - The secret to a good presentation.

I'm just going to say it: I have absolutely no clue what's going on in my French culture class. I know I say that about all my classes, but in no class is this more true than in culture where in the span of a single conversation we are given information about poetic forms and how the Germanic invasions helped to shape the French language. It's enough to make anyone confused and, if looks are anything to go by, being lost as I am, I am not in the minority in that class.
To make matters worse we each have to make a presentation in front of the class on a topic related to French culture that's given to us a week before. This wouldn't be a bad thing were it not for three things: 1) I absolutely hate speaking before a class, 2) oral French is the area I am the weakest in and 3) the requirements that accompany these presentations are equally confusing as the class itself.
Last week's presentation topic: francophone authors.
Having taken an entire course on francophone women writers my second semester at VCU, I decided that it was as good a time as any to get my presentation over with.
That was last Monday.
The time between then and now has mainly been spent either actively avoiding preparing the presentation or completely dreading it. But this morning as I was reading the information one last time I suddenly stopped caring about whether or not the presentation was horrible - actually my thoughts were a little more explicit than that, but in the interest of time and language I prefer the generic.
I raised my hand first when it was time to present and walked to the front of the class. Ten minutes later I sat back down. And I remember little about what happened between those two points. I know the presentation wasn't perfect or probably even good. I remember hearing mistakes come out of my mouth even as I was speaking, but the prof didn't correct anything more than a few lapses in diction.
And now the presentation is over. I don't feel like a weight has been lifted or that I've suddenly overcome some insurmountable obstacle. No, what I feel is far simpler than all that. What I feel right now is the quiet contentment of having made it through the day and being able to once again prepare myself to start all over again tomorrow.

FIELD NOTE 3.19 - Truths.

This kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it.

FIELD NOTE 3.18 - Moths.

Since my first week here at Fresche Blanc I have sometimes noticed little light brown moths flying around my room or hiding on the back of my shower curtain.
They don't annoy me. Normally I just cup my hands around them and take them over to the window and set them outside.
I'm afraid I've always been this way. I don't get creeped out finding moths flying around the hallway of my house, ladybugs climbing all over the kitchen counters, or spiders building webs in the corners of my bathroom. I let them stay or else take them outside in an overturned glass with a piece of paper under it.
If I looked deeper I might want to say that I actually kind of like finding animals inside my house or that I find their presence a comfort. I might say a lot of things if I looked deep enough. But the truth is I don't want to look deep enough - I'm at the point where all I want to do is sleep.
The moths are here and I do not kill them. That is enough for now.

FIELD NOTE 3.17 - Don't ask, don't tell.

1h32. Tram ligne 1 avant l'arrêt de Bouffay.

The tram was surprisingly packed given the time and the fact that the past few weeks the early morning trams have been somewhat less so. But my friends and I have mostly been sticking to the line 2 route that passes right by our dorm. This was line 1.
At the tram stop in front of the Château des Ducs de Bretagne a man stepped aboard the tram talking loudly and immediately gained the attention of nearly every passenger and all the TAN agent security guards, one of whom actually followed the man as he made his way from the back of the tram to the place just in front of where Darryl, Carla, and I were conveniently located.
And just like that the man lost his footing and was sent falling backwards, directly onto my lap. After realizing he had fallen - something that took a few more seconds longer than was comfortable to occur - the man managed to pull himself back into a standing position with the aid of a hand rail while Darryl and the female TAN agent asked me if I was alright. I nodded and tried to appear as if nothing had happened.
The man turned around and looked at me, his eyes unfocused, and told me that if I didn't ask him what happened, he wouldn't tell anybody. Thank goodness for small comforts, I thought and began counting down the seconds to Commerce.

FIELD NOTE 3.16 - Crêpes and conversation.

Last night at Fées brought about an invitation to an impromptu pancake party at Ge and Ben's apartment tonight and at 20h00 tonight Darryl and I arrived, on time and with bottles of orange juice and Riesling in our bags.

Since we are in France, the "pancake party" ended up being a crêpe party and we were joined by a one of Ge's classmates from Spain, Carla. Wine began to be mixed with cassis syrup, beers were opened, and two glasses later I found myself speaking French - and not just French, but actually speaking not-that-horrible French and at a kind of quick rate. I mean, it wasn't the best and any respectable French professor would still probably cringe hearing it, but at least I was speaking it. And more than that, I was actually comfortable.
In the apartment there was no one to overhear my mistakes or corrections and there were no judgments - only wine, crêpes, and conversation.

FIELD NOTE 3.15 - Extrait du jour.

Je ne m'étais pas encore fait d'amis à cette école où, de toute façon, je me sentais un élément extérieur, un corps étranger qui n'as pas sa place, et je passais mes heures de lunch seul, debout devant une fenêtre, à grignoter mon sandwich au jambon, au poulet ou, le vendredi, aux olives farcies en morceaux et au Cheez Whiz, délice des délices qui venait de faire son apparition dans ma vie et qui me fait encore saliver aujourd'hui quand j'y pense. Je ne sirtais pas de l'école parce qu'il faisait trop froit - en fait, je n'ai pas mis une seule fois le pied dans la cour d'école pendant mes tois ans à l'institut, même quand le temps était clément ! -, je lisais des romans, je faisais mes devoirs, je bayais aux corneilles... Cette heure et demie de liberté me paraissait presque plus longue que les cours pourtant interminables qui l'encadraient.

We are growing closer, this narrator and I. I, too, feel as if I am a stranger in this place, a foreign body whose place is not entirely fixed yet. I begin to feel as if I am living between countries, at home in both but belonging to none. I could just as easily forge a home here in France or I could return to Virginia and carve out a life there.
I always forget that I don't have to decide which I will choose today, but it does lie in the imminent future. I do not look forward to that day. But for the moment je baie aux corneilles - daydreaming of all the possibilities. And even if all of these possiblities never come to pass, just the knowledge that they exist is awe-inspiring all on its own.

FIELD NOTE 3.14 - Free samples.

Every weekend we go to E. Leclerc and every weekend I wander the same aisles over and over again looking for things that may have changed in price or position.
On Saturdays there are women who give out free samples of products on sale - pistachios, cookies, tea. Today in the tea and coffee and coffee aisle there was a stand for instant cappuccinos because there was a promotion offering 1 euro off to people who bought 2 packages. After about 2 minutes of looking at the cappuccino products, the woman whose job it was to offer samples came back from talking at the end of the aisle with a coworker and said "Bonjour."
At first I didn't think this was directed at me after having been to E. Leclerc for the past 5 weekends and never having once been approached by a saleswoman but I looked up anyway and made eye contact. Realizing I was the object of the welcome, I said "bonjour" back and soon was being handed a sample of instant cappuccino in a cute plastic cup as Darryl's was being prepared. The woman moved past the cappuccino and asked me why we were visiting Nantes, taking care not to speak too fast or use difficult words. I was touched and told her we were international students and wanted to learn French. I've learned that this phrase carries a lot of meaning for the French and can immediately make them more welcoming - it worked with the woman. She smiled and began telling us to buy 2 smaller packages of instant cappuccino because it was more economical than buying 2 bigger boxes and would give us the same amount of servings. She also gave us 2 more of the plastic glasses and 2 more samples to take with us, telling us to hide them in our personal bags and giving us a wink before we went on our way.

* * *

During our conversation the woman asked us whether Darryl and I were English, Irish, Scottish, or German. I've gotten asked if I'm English a lot while I've been here but hardly ever American. This always makes me smile and at the same time makes me sad.
I love feeling like I'm not a stereotypical American in their eyes but at the same time never being given this label makes me feel as if I am walking around without a country. It's bittersweet.

FIELD NOTE 3.13 - Tramline realizations.

This is the pattern: the tram stops at every arrêt and people get on and off, sometimes sitting next to you and sometimes choosing to stand.
This afternoon the pattern was the same. At Bossière two older women got on the tram and elected to sit in the vacant seats next to myself and Darryl. All during the ride from Bossière to Orvault Grand Val, I looked out the window to my left while listening intently to the five-minute conversation going on to my right and breathing in the scent of perfume cloying with muscle ointment.
The conversation was short and light, but the subject matter broke my heart. I didn't know all the words or who the people in the conversation were, but I picked up enough to know that the woman beside me knew people in Senegal who had just arrived there after a visit with her and that the woman beside Darryl's had a daughter also in Africa who hadn't called in over 6 months. This, apparently, is the norm. Both women talked about how their children don't call as much as they would both like and how the visits are becoming fewer and fewer.
Sitting there just to their left I thought about my own parents. We've grown distant with these continents between us. I don't call as much as I could or should. I tell myself that this is my push for independence before I come back and graduate from college and venture forth into the real world - but is this the truth? Or have I perhaps started to become like the children of these women?
I should call more. My cell phone has grown a layer of dust since I last used it.

FIELD NOTE 3.12 - Breaking the habits.

This morning Darryl and I abandoned our habits and did not venture down to Marché Gloriette to buy eggrolls and cheap scarves. Instead we wandered around Commerce, walking into a beautiful bookstore and touching all the covers of the Edward Gorey books. Afterward we walked to les Galleries Lafayette where I had to talk myself out of buying 15euro scarves and a 200euro briefcase - both of which I will probably end up going back for before I leave Nantes.
But even so it was so much fun to just abandon all plans and see where we ended up. I should do this more often...

FIELD NOTE 3.11 - Niche?

Fées Maison has now become a bi-weekly event. I go there to meet Ge and Ben and practice my French and their English and I go there with Darryl and Mel to just relax in the calm ambiance of the bar.

I normally just nurse a demi-pint of a blond beer for the entire time I am there. But this week I decided to change and go for the dark beer la Bête - and I'll even admit that I chose to change because I liked the color and the name. It ended up being a lot stronger than I expected but somehow I ended up drinking 2 demi-pints last night and found myself giggling a little more than was absolutely necessary.
While I always enjoy going out with friends, last night I found it almost impossible to speak correctly in either French or English. I was always choosing the wrong words, always conjugating incorrectly. But such is life and there are no judgments between friends so I kept going.
Midway through our visit to Fées one of the owners, Maurice, came over with a knife and sausage and sat it down on our table. We must have looked confused, but he told Ge that it was for us and that it was on the house. We hastily said thank you as he walked off.
I only ate one slice of the sausage because I found it a little too potent for my palate, but I was touched by the gesture. It was simple: a 4 euro sausage on the house. It may not have meant much to him to have given it to us, but to me it meant a great deal. I've been to Fées 5 times in the past 3 weeks and always felt comfortable there, exchanging nods and smiles with Maurice and Ione and sipping my beer. This always felt somewhat one-sided. But last night I finally felt that I was welcomed there - that sausage on the table was a gesture, a sign that perhaps I've finally found my place in Nantes.

FIELD NOTE 3.10 - Here it comes, my second wind.

This entire week I've been in a funk. I blame it on the fact that last week was vacation and that breaking back into the schedule of classes is just entirely too hard a task. Add to that a small bought of nostalgia and the mantra "I understand nothing, I don't know what I'm doing, why am I even here again" and you will have the headspace I've been in all week.
So that being said, I wasn't really looking forward to my Friday classes: phonetics and French history. In the former I never be able to say a single sentence without making some huge error in pronunciation and in the latter I am always shocked by just how much my knowledge of history has managed to entropy since high school.
But this week when my phonetics professor asked if anyone would like to redo an exercise from last week to get more pointers, I was shocked to feel my hand rise. So, too, was the professor from her facial expression. I chose a read a simple passage from an old French poem:

Et la mer et l'amour ont l'amer pour partage,
Et la mer est amère et l'amour est amer,
L'on s'abîme en l'amour aussi bien qu'en la mer,
Car la mer et l'amour ne sont point sans orage.

It's a beautiful excerpt about the bitterness and dangers of both the sea and love, but apparently when I said it "amour" became "mort" because the inflection upon my "ou" came out more of an "o" than anything else. The teacher tried to help me correct this even though my mouth seemed to be incapable of forming the sound. I assured her that the poem worked better being about the sea and death. So not a triumph, but a learning experience.
In history this week the topic was "les années folles" entre deux guerres and featured a very long tangent about the origins of French feminism and first-wave feminism. I just sat back enthralled as the professor talked about all the things women began doing in France during WWI and in the years between the two world wars.
So I left the université Friday afternoon not completely in a different headspace, but Nantes did seem a little better, a little brighter.

FIELD NOTE 3.9 - Extrait du jour.

La honte n'est pas un sentiment qu'on ressent uniquement dans les grandes humiliations de la vie ; elle surgit souvent, cuisante, oppressante, dans des moments plutôt sans conséquence, imprévus, alors que votre vulnérabilité, désarmée, est la plus sensible et votre combativité à son point zéro. Elle vous paralyse alors, vous laisse sans voix, sans pensée, vide et malheureux.

I am beginning to think that we are more alike than I had originally thought, this narrator and I...

FIELD NOTE 3.8 - Ache.

Today there was no picture, no thought. Just the dull ache beneath my ribcage where it hangs heavy - the same ache I can always place but never name.

FIELD NOTE 3.7 - Extrait du jour.

J'avais dix-huit ans, j'étais vierge et j'en avais assez de sublimer en rêvent dans mon lit à des êtres inacessibles ou en tripotant dans l'ombre des parcs publics des corps fugitifs qui n'étaient pas là pour l'amour mais pour la petite mort qui dure si peu longtemps et qui peut être si triste quand elle n'est agrémentée d'aucun sentiment. Je n'avais pas encore connu l'amour dans ses autours classiques - le lit qui craque, les longs ahanements, les draps froissés l'odeur des corps avant, pendants, après, la cigarette postcoïtus, le prochain rendez-vous sollicité en tremblant de peur de se faire refuser - et je me disais qu'il était grand temps que je me décide à sauter le pas.

These are the first words of the first section of the book, "Le prince charmant existe-t-il?", and they break my heart every time I read them. At only 18 years old, I find it shocking that the narrator of this novel can be at once so innocent and so disillusioned. And then I wonder for which of these does my heart break: the innocence or the disillusionment?
I don't want the answer. All that matters is that my heart breaks open. That is enough.

FIELD NOTE 3.6 - An idea.

Another night of reading La nuit des princes charmants, another night of underlining and defining all the words I don't know, another idea.
The original purpose of reading this book by Michel Tremblay was to work on bettering my French reading skills and vocabulary, but I keep coming across passages that just take my breath away so I thought it would only be appropriate to share them as I come across them, little windows into the words that fill my days.

FIELD NOTE 3.5 - Gone.

All the fliers for the missing girl were gone this morning. I do not know what happened.
I think I prefer it this way. Finding out she was returned to her family safe and sound would restore my old view of France, but anything else might damage it beyond repair. So I choose this state of not knowing, this blissful ignorance.

FIELD NOTE 3.4 - Reality.

I've been here since January and honestly since then have not thought about crime past those times when I can't remember whether or not I locked my door and when someone brushes me on the tram.

But today that changed. Waiting for the tram I noticed a flier taped to the ticket machine. I didn't need to read the words, just the smiling picture was enough to let me know that this was a flier for a missing girl.
And the world shattered.
France as I viewed it ceased to exist - there was crime here, there were sad endings.
As I rode the tram with my friend Darryl to Commerce there were men on board taping the same fliers to every door, their faces heavy and their hands unskilled. I thought only of how their taping wouldn't be able to resist the opening and closing of the doors for long. I guess it's just my training at home to ignore pain in favor of the practical - and when reality here becomes the same I just fall into old habits again...

FIELD NOTE 3.3 - First days back are hard, even harder in French.

It's always hard to fall back into the routine of classes after a week of vacation. This morning I learned that it is even harder to do in France, especially since returning to class means returning to a class where the teacher tends to speak with a pen in his mouth at all time and whose lessons seem to have no rhyme or reason to them. I'll admit that I also made it a little bit harder on myself after having spent most of the week speaking more English than was necessary.

But still the culture class wasn't at all fun or easy. And somewhere in the midst of discussing French agriculture's importance to the people of France and the changes wrought upon the French language by the Visigoths, I was somehow signed up to give a presentation on a francophone writer next Monday.
By the time class let out and I had my one hour break between classes, I was so frazzled that I did the only thing I could think of: I rushed to the nearest restaurant and bought a pain au chocolat.

FIELD NOTE 3.2 - Lions, lambs, and trams.

France has been pummeled this weekend by severe storms that have left many without power and has led the French government to mobilize workers to restore power and clean up the damage done by water.
Thankfully these bad storms did not touch Nantes. Or perhaps they did for a while and I've just become so desensitized by all the daily rain that I didn't really think anything about this weekend's heavy rain. But this morning as I walked to La Poste to mail a letter home, I did begin to notice the rain.
It began slowly. Just a few drops on my new coat - not enough to pull the umbrella from my bag but enough to annoy me. By the time my letter had been sent and I had managed to completely the euro monetary system, the rain had reached the point where an umbrella was no longer an option.
Today also happens to mark the first day of March - the day when my tram pass from last month is no longer valid. I've been wavering between buying the 30 euro tram pass that's good for the entire month and just buying discounted tickets (12 euro for 10) as I need them. I've been trying to save money in every way I can but travel is a difficult thing to foresee.
"If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb." Or so the saying goes.
I have no time for lions and lambs. I bought the tram pass.

FIELD NOTE 3.1 - Some things need no translation to be felt.

Last week I picked up a roman at the Marché des bouquinistes de la place de la Bourse called La nuit des princes charmants - "The Night of the Charming Princes." I'll be honest, after reading the synopsis on the back cover I still wasn't entirely certain what the book was about but I was intrigued enough to pay 4 euro for it.
This was last Tuesday. It is only today that I have actually started reading the book in a slow process of reading, underlining and defining unknown words, and then rereading. It actually came to a shock to me to realize that I understood more than I thought I would and, at those points when the unknown words became too many, the feelings of the words carried me along well enough so that the story never became threadbare.
I have only read as far as the end of the préamble, but already I have encountered a passage that struck me as impossibly beautiful that took my breath away:

Je n'ai pas encore aimé - j'ai failli mourir d'amour quand Marlon Brando s'est déchiré le t-shirt sale en hurlant: " Stella! Stella!" et j'ai eu une flambée pour Burt Lancaster dans Trapeze, mais je n'ai pas encore vraiment aimé - et je me demande souvent, sourcils froncés et le trac au coeur, quand ça va se déclencher, où est-ce que je serai, avec qui se sera et comment ça va se passer...
Comme je suis le seul homosexuel de mon groupe, je ne sais pas où aller pour en rencontrer d'autres et ma grande timidité m'empêche de m'informer. Je me dis souvent que ce n'est pas en restant écrasé dans le fauteuil rouge à écouter Leonie Rysanek chanter la Chanson du saule que je risque de trouver l'âme soeur. Il y a bien le parc Lafontaine pour faire exulter le corps, mais ça ne rest que des attouchements impersonnels qui n'ont rien à voir avec quelque sentiment que ce soit. Mais je ne me décide pas à faire le grand saut, à partir à l'adventure ou, du moins, à la recherche de mes semblables, je me content de sublimer depuis déjà trop longtemps, j'en suis parfaitement conscient et je n'y peux rien.
C'est bien beau sublimer, mais je commence à être pas mal vieux pour rêver que Jean Besré se meurt d'amour pour moi ou que Guy Provost m'enterre sous des tonnes de fleurs coupées parmi les plus rares et les plus odorantes. Ce petit théâtre ne suffit pas à remplir ma vie ni à combler mon besoin d'amour.

As I was reading it, I realized the words in my head were still in French. It was a passage that required no translation, the words themselves were powerful enough to deliver their message déchirant.