I've had some revelations.
Bold statement, right? But a true one. I've been back in Bordeaux for about a week and a half now after a truly excellent two week vacation in England and Ireland, and for all intents and purposes [or is it intensive purposes? Does anyone actually know?] I am a changed woman. Je suis jeune fille changée.
Whenever I get my anthropologist mom on the phone and she indulges my desire to "philosophize," i.e. gripe, we always come back to the same topic: culture. Mostly French culture, but culture as a larger theme.
My questions for her remain the same: how much is culture, and how much is individual? Can the two ever be sufficiently separated to discover that ratio? Is an individual doomed to be nothing more than a piece of his/her social fabric? Can behavior, even deviant behavior, ever be divorced from the values and gestures reacting to and/or inspiring it? Not to be a total schmuck, but what is culture? And can we pretty please get beyond it?
Being a wise woman, my mom usually just lets me rant. We've uncovered no definitive answers, and I'm sure we would both fail at life if we thought we had. She sighs sympathetically and tells me that she'll always prefer the Italian zeal for life, regardless of its often 'inappropriate' volume, and that she's proud of me, her figlia. She's a nice lady.
For several months now - in fact, since I arrived in Bordeaux on September 27th - I've been confounded by an inner tension that just refuses to quit. On the one hand I have been trying to remain open to France, the French, and my complete foreignness in this country. This means for me personally that I attempt positivity when someone pushes me rudely with a "pardon" when they get off the tram. I attempt positivity when my colleague interrupts me to tell me that it's LE pouce instead of LA pouce in front of the entire class I am teaching. I attempt positivity when I am wholly ignored by the teachers with whom I work, when my landlady tells me that she's rifled through my belongings while I was away, when a guy magically forgets to inform me for four months that umm, yes, he does have a girlfriend. I try to find the drunk old men peeing on the sidewalk a part of the 'charm,' rather than disgusting. The dog shit everywhere is just another aspect of the scenery. Foie gras, a food I find morally (let alone culinarily) repugnant, is just a national dish. Deal with it, Anya. And accept it. I'm not here to judge. I'm here to observe and learn and grow. And as someone who prides herself on responsible and considerate travel, how can I possibly make these relatively small incidents with individuals into any kind of culturally prescriptive statement? How can I be that asshole American not only buying into stereotypes but forming my own? It's not who I am, and it's certainly not who I want to be.
My life is a case study, not a theory. Not a treatise.
And then, on the other hand, there's the reality of my feelings. A reality I have fought hard to hide, hard to ignore. I instinctively (or is it culturally?) abhor how French people manage to turn a polite statement like "pardon" or "excusez-moi" into something accusatory, something anything other than the apology of its literal translation. I feel insulted that my teacher feels either the need or the right to correct me, like a child, in front of my children. I feel hurt that I am so easily a part of the background here, that people I interact with every day don't seem to give a damn. My landlady's interference with my life is a constant source of frustration, and I will never forgive that bastard for what felt like his stringing me along.
I won't even comment on the piss, the shit, and the foie.
These are problems. Sure, they're honest. My irritations are genuine, the angry silences I so often weather are sincere. How do I reconcile these experiences with my quest to be open and fair and conscientious, though? Simply put, how do I differentiate between a bad day, a bad interaction, an unfortunate circumstance and the frequent urge to call out the window: Fuck You, France. ?
Answer:
I leave the country.
Yes. It really is that simple. Ok. No. It isn't. But it certainly helped me at my height of desperation, and once again Ministry of Education Shirts - I thank you for your ludicrous scheduling. Spending two weeks tramping around two islands inhabited by my cultural cousins, and hanging out with Americans to boot, not only eased the pressure of my cooker (sorry, terrible wording) but gave me some healthy perspective.
Some conclusions:
Some of it's France; some of it isn't. I don't intend to live here long enough to discover truly which is which, but for the remainder of my time here I suppose it matters little. Because rather than choose to benignly "overlook" that chilly snub as a mistranslation on my part, or upset my sensitive and delicate ego by accepting it as personal, I should probably refuse categorization to begin with. I should probably cease giving the whole business so much thought, effort, care, energy, heart. I should probably just let it go. It might sound absurd and maybe even the opposite of aforementioned "as someone who prides herself on responsible and considerate travel...", but I think it's the only feasible response for the moment. And, what's more, it brings this experience back into the realm of "travel" as opposed to "temporary emigration." Because I am not a French citizen; indeed, I am not emigrating or immigrating. I am a visitor. I am a traveler. And I am entitled to be such.
It's liberating, writing those three sentences, and truly feeling them. Truly embracing them. When this dawned on me somewhere between my friend's London flat and the highway in County Clare, the weight lifted. And walking in the sunshine from Place de la Victoire to my apartment, having flown in from England only an hour before, something else occurred to me: if I accept my status as a guilt-free outsider, I can also accept the beauty an outsider finds around them. I can take those indulgent touristy moments to admire the plaster faces on the buildings by the quai; I can enjoy the sketchy dude playing the kitschy accordion; I can pause to look at the scarves in the window by École G. while waiting for the tram, and I can think: How Beautiful, and How French. And as this new guilt-free outsider, and by that I mean a self-acknowledging outsider, I can accept that I do NOT accept many aspects of French culture.
And you know what? That’s okay.
ÇA VA. ET ÇA MARCHE.
2 comments:
Intents and purposes!!
What would "intensive purposes" mean, anyway? That drives me NUTS!
(Now that I've read beyond that...ahem...)
Hurrah! This is a wonderful post, and I applaud your ability to word it so well, even when things seem awkward -- I think it's because they are awkward, actually. Being a stranger in a strange land is awkward six ways from Wednesday, in the most minute ways as well as the more obvious ones, but you're so right that perspective counts for a lot.
In some ways, I think my experience has been the opposite of yours: it has only been by thinking of myself as an emigrée that I've been able to get over some of the things that might otherwise bother me. The expense of living here, for example, has bothered me less since I've developed habits to cope and let go of the constant comparison with prices "at home".
That said, though, accepting that some things will annoy the piss out of me has been difficult -- as you so very well articulated. Acceptance of that sort of thing is hard won, but I think invaluable during an experience like this. Being annoyed and being jaded are two immensely different things, but it took me six months to see the distinction.
Bravo for the fantastic post. Even if I'm your audience of one, please imagine my "hhhhhhhhhhah" to simulate the sound of a crowd cheering. Or, erm... don't.
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