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.