Stranger

I have been taking a French class at the University of Avignon for a couple weeks now, hammering out the finer points of using the subjunctive tense (far be it from me to use it in an English sentence) but most importantly, finding people that I can call my own group of friends in this new (and very old) place. Over the past few years I have traveled to a number of countries foreign to my own, trying my best to meet people and get immersed in cultures that can open my eyes to different ways of life. Nearly without fail, though, I find myself surrounded with strangers from all over the globe, though not from the country where we all have chosen to install ourselves.

In India two years ago while walking through a market, my roommate Alicia overheard a group of Mexicans speaking her mother tongue. Instantly, we were surrounded by more Mexicans than Indians, sampling the nightlife with the rest of their international community. Americans training engineers, Germans working in NGOs, and a whole host of other nations plying their trades in the developing hotspot that is Hyderabad.

Today when I'm not surrounded by David's family and friends, how lucky I am to have been welcomed by all of them, I find myself in a French world made up of a bunch of Americans, Brits, Germans, Spaniards, South Africans, Canadians, and South Koreans, and many of the minute variations within those worldly classifications. I am picking myself through a foreign language riddled with accents from the four corners. Amid the explosive laughter of our Korean classmate and the Andalucian French of another (on parle franthais), not to forget the underarticulating American English speakers, somehow we manage to communicate and get along.

No matter where, we are all seeking how to get along with a place that is totally strange to us, our common bond. In India we discussed bartering tactics, “What is a good first offer?” and “I’m always better at bartering for underwear than pretty things that I really want, try practicing on underwear,” and we sought to become local, understanding the different neighborhoods and all they had to offer. Banjara Hills is a beautiful neighborhood with no reason to visit, Charminar is crowded and dangerous but follow your nose through the flower market to the alleyways of glittering bangles and you’ll forget about time and have to hire a rickshaw back to your rural apartment (a situation that usually ends in a shouting match because now he can’t find a fare to take back to town). Here in France we discuss the completely arbitrary opening and closing hours of administrative offices so as not to look like tourists, waiting outside a closed office all afternoon. We carry baguettes under our arms like they were flags proclaiming to the people we pass in the city, “Look! I’m like you!” Though we can’t help but consume too many pains au chocolate and speak too loud, our voices echoing off the walls of narrow streets when we conglomerate in herds of Americans.

Culture shock does not come from without, it is what happens when you get to a different place and realize you have lost all of your survival skills... or rather, that those you brought with you are no longer compatible. What is left is a big, ambulatory, and capable baby wandering around frustrated, but not powerless thanks to other people just the same. It is an experience shared by, I think, all the travelers I have met as we seek to glean understanding and experience from each other. How do I? Where do I? Why is it? We are flooded with questions like kids again, trying to understand a world that, though it has welcomed and cared for us, still gives no answers as to what it is or why. As we grow up in these new places, perhaps we get cynical, or perhaps we grow to love these new places even more. Already, my disdain for French office hours has taken a new turn, two hours for lunch is something I can get used to. It’s nice to be able to experience the people you are eating with, not the work you’ve gotten food stains all over because you are in a hurry to do it all at once. No matter what we learn or how we value our experiences I feel like I have experienced many times what it was like to be a child, to form my ideas about the world. The more this happens, the more I find myself in a twentysomething’s conundrum of “Gee! What do I know for sure? Do I only know what I don’t know!?” While this question could fascinate for hours, here is one thing I know: The world has many vistas, some that are welcome, some that are horrifying, some that spoil, and some that illuminate. No one person can have them all, but we are blessed to be humans with the ability to consider these different regards, to hold and weigh my world against yours is a powerful tool of communication and understanding. However pidgin-creole it turns out, however accented, it can only help to see more of each other, to become better neighbors.

Danger: Manifestation Taurine en Ville

I've been reading Pico Iyer's book The Lady and the Monk where he encounters a character who "treats words as if they were thorny roses." I love this description and feel like it fits me pretty well. Sorry for the long pause, I'm working on a regular regimen to keep writing to get over the "thorny" part of my fascination with writing, so stay tuned.

“All festivals, of course, are acts of collective myth-making, chances for a nation to advertise its idealized image of itself,” writes Pico Iyer. It is interesting how a piece of writing can open up your mind to something that has been spinning around in there for a while.

When I arrived in St-Rémy de Provence in the middle of August, I was just in time to see the Féria, a week long local festival that brings together the late summer harvest, a Catholic celebration of the BVM, and the thrill of taureaumachia. The festival started on a Sunday as all the bells tolled the end of mass and the church spilled its congregation out onto the main square of town. A bomb was fired into the air and I stood behind the metal barrier with my heart beating hard from the explosion, waiting for the bulls to come thundering through the town. What first came by though, was a long progression of people in costume. Women with long dresses and shawls and hair twisted and piled on their heads like geishas, men in black suits in antique style towing their families, all dressed alike, in carriages the likes of which I’ve only seen in BBC movies. At the end of the Provençal parade came a bigger carriage towed by a dozen white horses and decorated with all the bounty of the summer harvest, including toddlers, dressed up in fancy dress just like their parents. The polite applause from the crowd congratulated the finish of this antique parade and I knew the people were waiting patiently for the real parade, the bulls.

As David tried to convince me to taste some locally raised snails that were ground up crackers, “They really have no taste though,” another bomb exploded above our heads and the crowd pressed toward the barrier again to see the abrivado. Soon, a phalanx of horseback riders, cavaliers armed with tridents came galloping by with half a dozen bulls herded behind them. The bulls, tractionless on the paved road slipped and scraped through the town as gangs of young men and boys chased after them and tried to grab them by the tail, or even jumping in front of the charging line of horses to disturb their tight flank. Once they trapped the bull, it took six or seven full sized adults to separate him from the herd and steer it around by the horns as the crowd cheered them on and cried, “Ils ont attrapé un! Ils ont attrapé un!” They got one! They got one! Shaking his horns, grunting, and bucking, the bull finally escaped the clutches of the gang and charged around after the people inside the barriers, titillating the crowd until a herder arrived with his horse and long trident to herd him back to the rest. All the excitement came not from the horses and bulls galloping through town, but from the possibility of chaos that presented when the chasers tested the tight control of the herders over their charges. What surprised me most was the calm, dutiful acceptance of the cavaliers in the face of such wild interference. This was not just a tradition, born from the need to transfer the bulls from one field to another, it was a game between control and chaos.

Later that night we went back to the main square, normally a parking lot presided over by a lacy looking crucifix, to watch the Encierro. The town square was barricaded and heaped with islands of hay bales to give some refuge to those inside the barriers. The whole place had a sense of lawlessness; police sat on the church steps eating ice cream, flawlessly made up girls tottered into harm’s way to impress their boyfriends, and brave boys dangled from trees and lamp posts, and perched on the barricades to tempt the bulls that would run loose through town. As I climbed up on the announcer’s booth to get a better view, the bomb exploded above the town and the crowd cheered to welcome the first bull into the crowd. Waves of excitement followed wherever the bull charged. Perturbed and angry, the bull became more reckless, charging in every direction as the people slipped away through the barriers like phantoms passing through walls. As the bull became tired and annoyed, his handlers would take him out of the square and give the crowd another dangerous animal to play with. Finally, a particularly fiery bull stepped into the arena, grunting as a warning to all the audience. Unlike the other bulls, he avoided the people who wanted to be chased and charged straight at a stack of hay bales where a dozen people sat, supposedly safe. They were suddenly launched from their perches by the shockwave of his charge into the hay bales and they quickly tried to regain their safety. Running to the other side, the bull grunted in frustration as they all climbed out of reach.

The amazing thing about a one ton, beefcake of a bull running around a town square at nighttime is how it can disappear for minutes at a time, leaving only traces of excitement at the other side of the square. The bull had deserted our side of the square by the church, tormenting the crowds on the other side of the carousel in the center. With the bull so far away, the less daring but still anxious to test themselves crossed the square away from the bull’s horns, then there came one girl. She walked sanssouci, looking only where she was going, perhaps she was even on her phone. Like the signs say when entering the center of St-Rémy de Provence, “Danger: Manifestation Taurine”, the taureau suddenly appeared, charging down on the girl who was walking like she was in the mall. The crowd exploded in shouts as the bull lowered his head to the ground. She turned and saw, tried to run from the bull but before she took another step, she was between his horns like a doll, then tumbling through the air. She hit the ground, bringing a hush to the crowd and the bull, satisfied, walked back to the trailer that would take him back to the pasture.

As the crowd engulfed the girl, surrounding her with metal barriers for protection, I thought what would happen if my hometown, Capitola, let bulls run through the streets after its citizens. Oh the city council meetings that would ensue, how many people would try to mount the bull, rodeo style? How many people would file lawsuits? Would we all stand back and look on from afar not daring to touch something foreign like a bull on our doorstep? Southern France takes its bull games seriously, awarding even the bulls for their outstanding rage and bravery. Apart from the corrida in Nîmes, no bulls are killed in the sport, though some have truly and sadly been annoyed to death. The games with the bulls at once celebrate the beauty of the wild animal (of which there are hardly any left in thoroughly settled, cultivated, and hunted France) and the danger it presents. It proved to me that this is a culture that cares more for self reliance than America, which preaches it so loudly. If you get gored by the bull, it is only your fault for crossing the barrier into danger, yet an American in the same position would seek to place the blame on somebody else. The city put me in danger, how could they plan such a dangerous sport? The police didn’t protect me! Are we a nursery nation, incapable of protecting ourselves?

To circle back on my opening thought, what is the myth that is born from the bull games? There is of course some bravado in messing around with a dangerous animal, but there is more behind it. A bull can be a juggernaut, unstoppable in its charge through the town and beautiful to watch from behind the barriers, but when you tug on the tail of danger and invite chaos right into town, it is a good reminder that things can change quickly and dangerously. Are we responsible enough to handle the storm when it is charging for us? The people here tend to honor human ability and talent, I am nor sure if more or less than any other place, but the great works of art and historical relics on nearly every corner are testament to that. Yet, at the same time there is a consciousness of the world and its movements. Here people are not simply dreamers, Disney children who can wish upon a star and watch their dreams come true. To really impress the crowd, to impress yourself on the world, you have to challenge what might be unpredictable and dangerous.

And on one final note, thank god France has socialized health care, because that girl got scooped up right away for medical treatment… she didn’t even have bull goring insurance.