I’ll expound:
Late May has finally reared its humid and hot head and I find myself in severely dwindling company. Which is to say that come Tuesday morning, I’ll be the last monkey in this Bordeaux Bed. If I could even remotely conceive of this, I might be hopping on a train to Paris Montparnasse this afternoon. For my emotional/psychic protection and the honor of my job contract, though, my brain has decided to put that inevitability in a box of “Shhh!”
This week is going to be AWE.SOME.
Having said that, my brother and occasional motivation coach has presented an alternative prospective to my raincloud of suck. He argues that without the distraction of, say, friends, without the business of social obligations, I will have five long and lovely weeks to really explore the city on my own. To find the back alleys, to sample a baguette from each boulangerie, to find space to breathe and think and feel. (Okay Emil, I know I’m elaborating.) This brings me to my point. [Or at least closer.]
This past Friday afternoon, school-free due to l’Ascension, I was hanging out with my friend P-O. I’ve mentioned him several times on this blog, though hopefully most of you haven’t noticed. He’s a teacher I work with at École G., (aka “le maître” of a few posts ago) and one of the few French people I really know here. Twenty-six. Fluent in German and English. Wears a lot of sweaters. After we finished our respective beer and espresso, he asked me if I would accompany him to FNAC, a store kind of like Best Buy at home. He explained why he needed to go there, I’m sure, but I might not have been listening. So I got up to start walking, and took maybe two steps when I realized that he was not only not following, but was indeed laughing at me.
“Quoi?” I asked.
“Tu connais pas bien Bordeaux! Même maintenant!” He snickered.
[“You don’t know Bordeaux very well. Even now.”]
He gestured, and led us in the opposite direction.
My denial of this statement only led to more smirking on his part and a volley of “si!” I know Pierre was just teasing me, but he raised an interesting question. Do I know Bordeaux? What would I need to do/need to have done to really know this city? And does he, with his back streets and short cuts and native French tongue, know Bordeaux better than I? [I should add here that he’s originally from Orléans.] Hell, what does it mean to really know a city to begin with? The names of the streets, or how they connect, or the best cafés, or the cheapest ones, or the public transportation, or the history, or the local crazies, or the locations of all public bathrooms? The churches? The markets? The bars?
I started this blog a little less than a year ago thinking I would explore this question in some depth. And yet, having been in BDX for eight months now, I find myself, if nothing else, less equipped to come to any conclusions. Maybe because Bordeaux isn’t a constant for me. To stick it with a pronoun, “she” has changed in my perceptions so many times since I arrived that unpleasant afternoon of September 27th. The city even looks different – smaller, more beautiful, less strange, brighter, grittier. I’ve looked at my map once in the last seven months, and could probably find my way home without much trouble from just about anywhere in Bordeaux proper. I have a “bread place,” and a supermarket I frequent, and a produce market, and could even be called a regular at one bar. I recognize both the bus drivers and the passengers on lines 20 and 21. I know which cafés have free WiFi. (And which Laundromats!) I know which streets I like walking down and which I don’t, where sculpture studios and ateliers are. I even know where the Carhartt store is, [Pierre, if for some god-forsaken reason you’ve discovered this].
I might venture to say that I know Bordeaux better than I know Portland, and certainly better than I know Los Angeles. But what does that mean?
Is there ever an “end” to “connaissance”? Limits? Definitions? Is there ever a point in time when someone can truly say “I know this city”? Or, for that matter, “I know this person”? Different questions. But. Aide-moi, Italo Calvino. T’as les réponses, je suis sûre…
Comments from my small but fierce readership?
I’m not above calling you out on your anonymity: Lauren, Guillaume, Katie, Robin, Emil, Sarah, Randall!
3 comments:
What a question!
It recalls L'Auberge Espagnole, that epitomic film. Somewhere in time, the streets with funny names and the places that seem so foreign become "mine": my café, my street, my station, my stop, my park.
I think there is perhaps a threshold for connaissance but no ceiling, no end. Cities, like people, are infinitely changeable and changing; if we can never fully know ourselves how can we hope to fully know an organism teeming with other unknowables?
But isn't that the pleasure of life? If one feels one truly knows a place, it seems to me it must cease to hold any interest, all its secrets exposed, all its treasures excavated.. "Qu'est-ce que le point?" as Georgia Nicholson would say.
On one of my last days, I got lost somewhere between Jill's and the amphitheater. It made me realize how huge Bordeaux really is. It was nice to know that there was something filling the void between the tram lines. Mostly rows of apartments, boulangeries, and the like; nothing worth visiting. I highly recommend it!
Please let me know what you've been up to since I left. I've been spending a lot of time seeing family and friends, and not enough writing you a proper response!
I can't believe you've been there in France for eight months! Enjoy your time alone, listen to your brother! maybe you could uninterruptedly read a super long book.
I like your question and I wonder the same thing, but I think BDX and IST have sort of different scales and so different definitions. Yours would be more subtle and particular and, well, French. Mine are more sort of "which line goes to to Ataşehir' and 'does the denizbus stop running from beşiktaş after nine." I feel competent even if I can shave a half hour from my commute by taking a different form of public transportation rather than just retracing my steps. I have my special neighborhood pastry shop that I go to, but nothing as charming as your list of connaissances. You've probably done better than you realize, plus, that P-O guy sounds like a con.
enjoy the rest of your trip! What the hell are you going to do afterwards (maybe I just haven't read on long enough)
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