How could you be so heartless?

Rejection hurts, man. I had a pretty good day overall -- a birthday brunch for a friend of mine involving pancakes followed by "Dear John," a Nicholas Sparks adaptation that was just bad. But in a good way. But here's the thing. My heart is broken. Not in the traditional way, but via email, letters that were lost in the mail, and -- most cruelly -- by some 18-year-old who said, rather bluntly, "Oh, but you didn't get in."  Over the phone. After butchering my address and kind of laughing about it. Rad.

What am I supposed to say? Unbreak my heart, NYU. I don't want to walk on broken glass, Michigan. You didn't stand by me, Iowa. No not at all. You oughta know, Madison. Irvine was not strong enough to be my man. I know this is my Paris blog, but I'm going to break out of Paris mode for just a moment, and while it may perhaps seem foolhardy to list every grad school that has rejected me for an MFA in fiction next fall, it's also cathartic. I'm still waiting on BU and Columbia, but my breath is no longer bated. It's time to figure out what the next step will be if all the snooty MFA programs I applied to don't deem my fiction worthy of perfecting.

Which, I just have to say, is kind of stupid. If it was truly terrible, a couple MFA rejections wouldn't stop me from writing it. But MFA rejections feel personal in a way that few other rejections are (well, aside from those of the actual interpersonal variety). But dude. That's ME in my work. More than it is in anything else I produce. Even when it's clearly not me. And no, I didn't base that character on you. What are you talking about?

But I digress. I'm going to make a cup of tea and ponder a couple other things for the moment. Freelance writing and photography. Law school. Writing the fucking Great American Novel sans MFA. Ha, that'll show 'em. An MFA in poetry. I know that it comes more naturally to me anyway. I know that there are more options and that I will figure this out in time. But for now it feels like getting dumped. I guess it's time to blast the Clash and reassess.

At least Paris will still be there in the morning.

Of haircuts, mistakes, travels, and nostalgia

It's about time I posted! I'm back in Paris, and my friend I was traveling with left on Monday, putting a stop to our shenanigans. Our trip was amazing. It was crazy and stressful, but we had a lot of fun and we saw a lot. We took massive amounts of pictures, stayed in an array of hostels ranging from amazing to scruffy (and Christian), met some interesting people, saw castles, rode trains, ate goulash, and drank a lot of coffee. I can't really describe it all, but here's how the itinerary turned out:

Paris --> Luxembourg --> Brussels --> Bruges (day trip) --> Brussels --> Amsterdam --> Berlin --> Prague --> Rome --> Paris

Meanwhile, back in Paris I'm realizing with a combination of glee and confusion that my contract ends in four weeks, and then it's no more fake teaching job for me. I'm also coming home pretty soon, and I am pretty excited about that too. I love Paris, but there are definitely people and things I am looking forward to returning to.

Among them:
-my family, my friends, and the great state of Washington
-being able to see mountains in the city
-driving (nothing like driving around Seattle at night listening to some choice tunes with a little drizzle pitter-pattering on the hood)
-drip coffee
-burritos
-bagels
-going out to breakfast (I'm dreaming of a stack of blueberry pancakes and a cup of coffee at Mae's as soon as I'm back -- who's with me?)
-not having to spend most of what I'm paid on rent (yay for being a twentysomething living with one's parents)
-being able to go running without being the only girl out there
-the video store
-the laid-back way people in Seattle dress; hello, Gor-Tex, oh, I am now allowed to look like a slob? Awesome.
-replacing my fake job with happily providing free labor at 826 (i.e., helping out with creative writing workshops for kids instead of repeatedly saying, "Hello! How. Are. You?")
-the San Juan Islands

And then there are things I'm going to miss about Paris:
-my friends
-reading on the metro
-people-watching everywhere
-lazy cafe cremes at cafes with a book, or not
-after-work pastries
-never having the feeling of being too dressed up
-living in a neighborhood that feels like downtown
-my two favorite boulangeries
-Notre Dame
-adventures in the city at a moment's notice
-seeing movies in French theatres
-crepes
-picnics
-close proximity to other European countries
-and though it feels impossible now, probably the free time and independence
-low-budget dinner parties
-French groceries. So cheap and so good.

Still, it's nice to be getting back into my Parisian routine of seeing old movies in little theatres in the Latin Quarter ("Strangers on a Train" is probably the most bizarrely cutesy Hitchcock movie I've ever seen), meeting my friends at the places we have made our own for espresso in tiny cups and chocolate-studded brioches, and making new discoveries all the time. Yesterday afternoon was spent browsing thrift stores in the Marais with one of my friends, and we made some crazy discoveries. Vintage dresses for ten euros, abandoned military jackets that probably once belonged to boys in a band, newsboy caps, buckets of scarves at 3 euros a pop, and enough people squeezed into the stores to make it a little like the metro at rush hour. This is where I'll be shopping when I get paid again. We also found a hot dog stand on Rue du Roi de Sicile, where we had a delicious carnivorous dinner on the sidewalk. They have chili dogs. I am not kidding.

Also, I cut off a lot of my hair. Or rather, paid someone else to. Why? Because I keep seeing Parisian women with these chic short haircuts, so I decided that I should probably get one. At first I hated it, and I was a little worried that my brother's uncharitable comparison to Justin Bieber was not unfounded. But I actually really, really like it. It takes five minutes to wash, and it makes me feel way more European. I'm glad I took the plunge. Because it turns out that hair grows back, and at a certain point, holding yourself back can be just as bad as making a mistake. I'm trying to remember that mistakes can sometimes be good. And informative. And useful. Living in an academic environment like Smith, where so much is based on achievement and doing things correctly and not making errors is not exactly good preparation for living in Paris. I've had to change my thinking from never make a mistake, to please go ahead, make some mistakes. It's taken me a long time to realize that perfection is out, and it's about time. As Neko Case puts it, "I try my best, but I'm made of mistakes."

Mistakes are what make us who we are. I've just begun to realize that this isn't a bad thing.

At Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin:

No hair! + steak frites on Michelle's last night in Paris:

Have a good night.

I returned to Paris on Thursday morning after an overnight train ride from Rome with Christian teenagers from America and the zenith of discomfort known as the "couchette" -- it's like a shelf, but for people, on European night trains. You're supposed to sleep on them. I don't know who thought of this, but it is probably someone on a par with whoever invented CD packaging. Because they are painful. We visited seven countries in two and a half weeks. Berlin was far and away my favorite place. We also saw Luxembourg, Brussels (don't go to Brussels), Bruges, Amsterdam, Prague, Rome, and Vatican City. I'm not counting anywhere we made train connections.

It's good to be back in Paris. I'm realizing that I speak French well now. Like, I'm sort of, you know, bilingual. I just find myself so much more comfortable speaking with people on a regular basis, joking around with strangers and waking up other passengers on the metro when they've fallen asleep at the terminus. It feels good to be able to do that. It's something I definitely wouldn't have had the balls to do when I first got here.

Tonight I went to a movie, thus getting back into my Paris hobby. I see a lot of movies here. The earlier showing I wanted to go to was sold out, so I found myself taking line 4 to Shakespeare and Company to peruse, then leaving because it was too overrun with tourists and people speaking English and this weirded me out, picking up a crepe at the stand I know at Odeon, and then wandering Montparnasse before my movie. And something strange happened. I was crossing the street away from Le Select, one of Ernest Hemingway's old haunts, when I saw a panhandler man wearing a giant wooden cross around his neck. I almost felt compelled to say, "Dude, that's some cross you got there," but I make a point of not talking to homeless men ever since one beamed me with a beer can when I first moved here. Then I noticed the restaurant he was standing in front of. It looked nice so I swooped into see how exorbitantly priced the drinks were, when a waiter came out with a plate of oysters and a tub full of water. As he balanced the plate of oysters on one hand, he used the other to dump the tub of water onto the homeless man. He then proceeded to yell at him. I guess they had asked him not to panhandle in front of the restaurant. This seemed like such a cruel, uncalled for thing to do. I mean, Paris is full of homeless people, but aside from that one experience I had, I don't usually see them as being dangerous. So I stood in front of the tabac next to the restaurant and pretended to look at postcards while I watched the homeless man hobble away from the restaurant. I looked to my left and spotted a homeless woman at the metro stop. She was packing up her bags for the night, and nestling a puppy into a little bag. I looked at her, and the man with the wooden cross, and remembered how many homeless people live in Paris. And then I did something that I never do. Knowing full well that my bank account has been hurting since my trip and that what I was about to do next might just help this man buy beer, I reached into my wallet, took out a euro coin, walked over to the man with the wooden cross and put it in the paper cup he was holding. My reservations didn't matter. After all, a euro can also buy you a baguette.

"Bonne soiree," I said. Have a good night.

It was a small, timid action, but it felt like the best I could do. Sometimes the right thing is really pretty obvious. The man inclined his head towards me, almost bowing. And as I walked away from him, feeling a little cowardly, a little better, and a little confused, something occurred to me. Seeing someone treated that way upset me because it's happened to me. Because in November, a homeless man threw a beer can at the back of my head, and it made me feel small and vulnerable and insignificant. I didn't realize it when I gave the guy a coin, but I felt some kind of understanding that I don't think I would have had otherwise. We are all small. I'm small. The man with the wooden cross was small. The waiter who threw water on him is small. The man who threw a beer can at me is small. Everyone is small. But no one is insignificant. As Unitarian cheeseball as it may sound, everyone matters. We all have the capacity to connect with other people in a way that isn't destructive. And I thought back to the night of the beer can incident. I was wearing the jacket I was wearing that night. And it felt so circular. I felt so far away from the girl who ran down Rue de Tolbiac in a state of shock and panic, already worried about the dry cleaning costs. I couldn't see beyond myself that night. A few months ago, the man with the wooden cross would have scared me. But I also know what it feels like to have someone you don't even know treat you cruelly for no reason. Somehow, that incident opened me up in a way I didn't realize until now. And, most likely not unrelatedly, Paris has become my home. And it feels fucking amazing.