Thanks for supporting the US Postal Service; ou L’insupportable bureaucratie française; or Interwebz 2.0

[Find yourself!]

A handful of cards and pictures are arranged my wall in an almost random, overlapping pattern so as to use the least amount tacks as possible (I only have one hundred, you know). Forming an ever-growing mass of vertical and horizontal rectangles, it is slightly oval, overall. Under all this, on my desk, there sits a tiny golden box of matches, a drinking glass clinging to a decaying harvest of mid-Fall's last wildflowers, pages of notes on geometric area formulas or strategies for essay responses and an owl made of wax, whose fate as of right now is not yet determined--he may yet suffer a beautifully slow death which, with the help of combustion, emanates from the nature his very being, something that flows straight through his core! (Get it? Candle-related humor: a genre of slow burners whose hilarity only waxes with time!) Needless to say, I love all the mail. The cards, letters and postcards have been a saving grace for me in terms of feeling connected with faraway friends and family.

Someday in the distant future, though, I may have to take down the beautiful collage that is the proof of my friends' and family's support of the failing US Postal Service and reassemble it on the wall of my new room, in my newly renovated apartment in Building E of la Cité Scolaire Brocéliande, where I can enjoy the pleasures of unbridled internet access. However this day, my friends, is far from being near as there are still holes in the ceiling of this elusive Building E apartment, since renovation work at the school is everything but fast (e.g. loud, long-lasting, a large physical presence, very glassy, not-too-impressive, etc.), and because this collage is just too damn fabulous to see the destruction of its present form.

Translation: I won't be getting internet of my own any time soon here in Guer—clearly not until after the New Year, if that's even a reasonable estimate after the latest discussion with a supportive, but not really catalytic M. le Proviseur (headmaster). All is lost, Skype users.

And so, we need a change in perspective (lest I go crazy). Let us rather believe, friends and family, that one day in the middle of this ever-approaching foggy and rainy Breton winter, the clouds will weaken their miserly hold on the sky’s coveted daytime hours, and the sun, in his not-quite-pale-enough-yellow-to-be-considered-eggshell yellow track suit, will peak out his head and reveal to us Language Assistants the splendor of a standard of living in which one can find outlandish and often humorous stories of fictional encounters with Bill Murray at the tip of one’s fingers. That day will be a glorious day, friends. And full of pictures of kittens.

So keep up the postcards, the letters and stamps, and I will keep up with the replies. I have regular email access five days a week, so feel free to use that if you feel disconnected from good ol’ me in the meantime.

Until then, with love and international postage,

Adam

A not so American Thanksgiving: Lyon

I spent this past Thanksgiving weekend in the wonderful city of Lyon, France’s third largest city, but second largest cultural center. Known for its gastronomic prowess, for its racial diversity and racial tension and its two parallel rivers, whose confluence sits on the city’s southwest corner, Lyon is also the current home of two of my best friends from college, Robert and Alexis. I arrived in Lyon on Friday at noon and spent the long weekend there, leaving by 5pm on Monday and returning to Guer in time for work on Tuesday morning. Another friend, Meghan, from the 2009-10 Evergreen program “Dark Romantics” (through which I traveled to France that Spring, with Robert and Alexis), came down from Paris to join us for the festivities.

The not-so-American Thanksgiving feast occurred on Friday evening, and consisted of a roasted chicken for the others, mashed potatoes, a lentils-greens-tortellini-etc. thing I made, a jar of wonderful Ocean’s Spray Cranberry Smooth Sauce which Robbie found at an English grocery, pumpkin pie and many bottles of wine to go around. Two friends of Robbie and Alexis from the Alliance française, a Columbian gal and an Argentinean guy, (both amazingly nice and interesting people) joined us for the meal, making for a cozily crowded evening in the cute little apartment on the first floor of a building whose goddamn front door opens with a 5-inch long skeleton key, notshittingyouitisthatcute. With a proper giving-thanks ritual performed by each person before the meal, with much wine consumed, and with a heated debate about OccupyWallSt. in English (whoops!) somewhere in between, all can fairly say it was a successful evening.

On Saturday, us four Americans slept off our food comas (sleeping off a coma, say whaaaaaat?) and then spent the entire afternoon (I’m talking four or five hours) at La Sucrière, a converted former sugar factory located at the confluence of Lyon’s two rivers, and now home to one of four sites making up the city’s Biennale d’Art Contemporain, a (you guessed it) biennial festival of contemporary art. In short, it was incredible. Containing paintings, three-dimensional pieces of many media, short films and performance pieces, the factory’s three stories made for a perfect venue. As evidence of the building’s former life, even the spiral metal supply chutes, cutting vertically through all three floors in tight, aging corkscrews, seemed an appropriate part of atmosphere. There, among many, many other pieces, we saw a staging of possibly the shortest play ever written (I’m talking ten seconds), Samuel Beckett’s Breath, as well as an amazing modern choreography/theater piece, set to occasional classical music performed by a live string quartet, in a cave-like artificial pond-fountain installation.

Later that evening, after aperitifs with a neighbor, we went out on the town. Drinking in the delights of early winter until the early morning hours, we walked the wintry streets back to the apartment, arms linked six across. The next day and a half was spent less busily, over many small cups of coffee: Robbie cut my hair, he and I arranged a guitar and two-voice version of the opening track off our album EVES (it’s a capella on the record), we said goodbye to Meghan on Sunday afternoon, we made vin chaud (a mulled wine concoction sold by bars and street venders throughout France during the winter months), and I somehow acquired 18 hours of brand new, never-before-heard music. After making plans to celebrate New Years Eve together, I said goodbye to my two fellow Americans and found myself back in Guer, back to work in the high school. And somehow, it’s already been a week since I was in Lyon. Funny how that works.

Speaking of holiday plans, I’m definitely looking forward to my brother coming to visit for ten days over the holidays—it’s his first time in France, wooooooo! He arrives the same day that I take the GRE in Paris (bon courage); we will spend Christmas in England with a friend from camp, Cheryl, and then travel throughout Europe or France, before he leaves just short of the New Year. In addition, for one week at the end January, my two roommates and I will be chaperones for a 6^th grade snow trip to the French Alps, and plans for serious travel are a-brewing for this coming spring with both Robbie and another best friend Everett, who will be studying abroad in southern Germany.

And now, some self-directed words of encouragement:

Dear Adam, study harder for the GRE, you asshole. It’s in three weeks!

Fancy hats and well-worn shoes,

Adam

P.S.