Nice Guy

Generally I think of myself as a nice person, opting out of controversy and those topics that make my ears turn red. Of course when certain issues come up, it's easy to be opinionated. Baby seals in the arctic, for example, just should not be clubbed to death to make fur hats for vodka swilling Russian aristocrats. They are hunted like one would hunt a garden snail, a hammer and a good eye are all you need. Plus they are an important part of a fragile ecosystem, one doesn't club baby seals. Beavers are the better choice (according to my former fur-selling sister) because they have caused (and will cause again!) the mass desertification of the great north, literally damned the place. Then there's the thrill of the hunt, beavers are clever buggers, or at least they have legs and they can run away from your swinging death-club, y'know, or rifle. Here the argument is as easy as a seal hunt. The boundaries are clear, the moral standpoints are easy to identify and there is little grey area. Perhaps the bit about beavers is less obvious, but still, better wear a beaver than a baby seal in by book.

I come from a family where it is important to get along. Conflict is internalized and any outward manifestation is understood to be an act of aggression. I don't know where this comes from, but I remember long ago there was a family polemic about the new video for Michael and Janet Jackson's duet Scream. Mom wanted it recorded, sister couldn't get the recorder to work and tensions rose. It all ended in a climactic shout from my sister, "It's a music video, they'll play it again!" of which the logic could not be denied and the argument was over. For days afterward I felt like I could take a stand like my admirable sister. "Popcorn is fine for lunch! Gaaawwwd!" I would plead with my mom in the car on the way home from a playdate at the movies. I tried feeble logic, "I can't practice piano today, the humidity makes the piano sound weird and it throws. Me. Off." She just didn't seem to buy my excuses. Maybe that was the problem, these were excuses, not arguments.

Whatever the reason, favored dinner table conversation was light, funny, and always searching for agreement. Even the Dalai Lama would sound contentious for defending the right to life of the bucktoothed manace of the North, but around the table with the Wilsons, it is much more common to hear with a slight tone of acquience, "Ok, then, I can see why we should be killing and skinning beavers, suuuure." To this day my mother ports proudly a beaver's pelt that's been cut to ribbons and knit into a fuzzy vest. Seal free and without a qualm from a family member. After 23 years of agreement and peace-making, I feel bit like China emerging from the middle ages up against a scrappy and belligerent Europe. Though the orient had all the expertise and know-how, it was the constant fighting of those smelly and imbred Europeans that primed them for a European age of empire. We may be cultivated and mutlticultured, we may be from a beautiful place, we may be well travelled and educated, we may be open minded, but we are not primed for battle.

Chez les Shabtai, the family that has been hosting me in St-Remy, things are entirely different. Every time I utter the phrases je suis d'accord or j'aime ça or c'est bon, I have the distinct impression that I'm letting them down. Expression of agreement or admiration is not always welcome as they are at home. Here, harmony is for the piano, not conversation. It was Christmas day and we had been sitting around the table for three hours, counting the aperitif we had been eating and drinking for four. At exactly the moment when the alcohol mixed with the fatigue of trying to keep the pace in French when David's mother turned to me with purpose.

"Alors, on sait que tu aimes la france, mais qu'est-ce qu'il y a que tu n'en aimes pas?" So, we know you like France, but what is there that you don't like about it?

I could have said one of many things, like I hate the way that the bank, the police station, and the post office are only open when you are guaranteed not to have the time to pay a visit. Perhaps I could have railed on about the bizarre things that the french like to eat like spreadable meats, or the liver of force-fed ducks and geese, or the tiny whole raw shrimp we were presently pretending to enjoy with homemade mayo. Or I could have picked on the the way that every frog is a licensed expert on everything from sheep shearing the subduction zone of the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. Or what really irks me is the way that only girls get to wear high boots, and fashion victims like me are left out of the trend.

Not really wanting to play into her game of argument baiting, I chose a banal topic: work. I told her that most of the teachers whose classes I give English lessons are stress cases. I chalk this up to the fact that unlike a great mass of the French functionary workforce, teachers are held responsible, not by their employers so much, but by twenty to thirty little bosses every day, their students. Teachers are influentual people and by osmosis, students pick up on their high concentrations of stress. When I give a simple direction in class like, "Color the Christmas tree green," I am confronted with twenty-five pairs of worried eyes. "Vert clair ou vert foncé !?" Light green or dark green!? Lequel! They look at me with their big eyes, worried to death that a Christmas Tree colored the wrong shade of green will mean the difference between a "well-done" and a tirade and lecture on the proper greeness of a particular domestic-festive conifer. I tell them dark-green to assuage their fears, but I can't help cringing as their maitresse berates them for hesitating to sound out the words to their explanation of the festival of Epiphany. Many six year olds are getting a better education in coping with stress and fear than they are in experiencing the reality that. I wonder if the little ones see the significance in the stuffed toy witch sitting behind their teacher's desk, I wonder if their teacher sees it.

After I gave my feeble attempt of criticism, I got a simple, "Je suis d'accord, parfois les enseignantsmettent trop de pression sur les eleves." Agreement. What a bummer. I tried to make up for my obvious French-less response by proclaiming my appreciation for the paring of the wine with the possibly rancid cheese we were devouring. It seemed to allay some of the disappointment. Tant mieux.

This has been a common experience of mine in France. This is a culture where strangers will jump down each other's throats in order to let them know they pronounced to-mah-to and not to-may-to. In the place where streets are paved with gold, do we fear to dig down to find some real dirt? At the expense of sounding like a meanie, I have decided to be more honest and let you in on some of my harsher views on life's controversies.

For one thing, I don't like Hemmingway. Also, a part of me feels that gay marriage shouldn't be a big issue since marriage shouldn't be a part of the government's business anway. The treatment of Palestine by Israel is an insult to the memory of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Don't go out of your way to make a baby if you have to, adopt one. I think the world is on a pathway to become a lot more like Delhi's Chandni Chowk neighborhood so we should all learn to deal with less stuff and more hardship. Finally, make love, art, and seek to grow the consciousness of the human race instead of all the other stuff, but while your at it, don't quit your day job, the place still needs someone to sweep the floors.

La Pastorale

Jesus, contrary to popular belief, was born in Bethlehem in Provence. Or at least according to the writer Yvan Audouard and actors of St-Rémy de Provence. In fact, much of the story of the Baby Jee you think you might know is completely wrong. Mel Gibson might have liked to know that the angels and the inhabitants of Bethlehem didn't speak Aramaic, but French with a Provençal accent.

The spectacle recounting the birth of Jesus was orignially scheduled to be played out in the ancient Roman ruins of Glanum nearby. Safety regulations, however (they do have safety regulations here!) stated that the stage erected in the ruins was not strong enough and might collapse under the wait of the good Christian audience. The thought of the miracle of Jesus' birth accompanied by a disasterous and possibly deadly catastrophy is deliciously sacreligious, but unfortunately, the scene was moved from Glanum to a square inside of town. The decidedly less dangerous Place Favier stood in for the ancient ruins and you might have even said that the Frenchy quaintness of it all was a bit charming. After a plump rendition of the angel Gabriel had ascended her way up a tree, the stage was set. Suddenly, the entire scene was plunged into a hellish fiery red by exploding flash powder set about the square. Surely the fireworks were meant to convey to us the audience a sense of divinity to the scene but to me red flames are less sent from above than below. I actually caught myself, good English major that I am, looking for significance in the director's choice to start out the story of the good shepherd in flames of an inferno. Apparently I was alone in my dark interpretation of the scene, the rest of the audience found it beautiful, I still hold that it was a sinister mise en scene.

After the fires of hell abated, the actors began their dumb-show as a CD recounted the story of the birth of l'enfant Jésus. As Saint Joseph chatted with the bull and the ass, Mary played midwife for herself on a bale of hay and suddenly a doll was born. Bulls and Assess make dangerous bedmates who despite their best intentions to warm the newborn, knocked the messiah from his humble cradle onto the more humble floor of the manger. Soon after, the happy family in the manger, the fires of hell keeping us all warm and the Virgin tending to the new wounds of the baby from his first fall, a veritable soap opera of miracles took place that blessed night. The lazy miller whose wife ran off with a dastardly Spaniard is suddenly taken with the urge to work hard. The fish lady, having nightmares of only having bad fish to sell the next day, finds some miraculous fish in her basket that smell practically alive! and her husband the hunter with a limp who never gets a good shot ends up with a plump stuffed rabbit, yum! The fun doesn't stop there for the police officer finally catches the serial poultry thief and all the little angels dance in joy around the happy, productive, and thankful people.

Suddenly, to the a melody of Bizet's Carmen, the three wise men arrive, draped in robes that any tasteful drag queen would covet and followed by a troop of children in minstrel show blackface. Everyone deposits their gifts, Mary obviously content to stay with the bulls and asses turns down some better lodgement and they all celebrate with a Madonna-worthy round of vogueing in the flashing disco lights of (thank God) white flash powder going gangbusters.

And that my friends, is the true story of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!

A Night (or five) in Tunisia Part 1

Orientations are always odious things full of awkward "get-to-know-you" games and nametags, especially when they involve early morning travel to a gigantic 2nd world city known as Marseille. But they are unavoidable and often yield welcome encounters.

Waking up early one September morning I was in no state to travel but more in a condition to hug the toilet. Missing my appointments with French immigration authorities, however, would be to risk Sisyphean mountains of bureaucracy, so I did my best to hold myself together and limp to Marseille powered by naught but apple juice.

Thankfully, my flu didn't bar me from a passing grade on my medical exam and with a fresh tuberculosis-free x-ray in hand, I met up with Annette and a slew of newly arrived Americans for some time with our hostess of honor: the consulate general of the United States. After some minutes of introduction to being an American in France we piled into a bus and headed over to her (well, on loan to her from the State Department) fabulous mansion on the Corniche of Marseille to enjoy some "Provençal specialties" and drink Napa Valley wine. Feasting on taxpayer dollars and drinking the sunset of Fitzgerald's opulent French Riviera, I noticed that Annette had disappeared and I went to seek her out. As I had expected, she was interrogating the consulate about her life in the Foreign Service, the conversation was going something like this when I arrived:

"Well, I'm not allowed to say if I've met them but let me tell you that Brad and Angelina are small potatoes compared to Saudi princes and their wives."
"Wow, how often do you have parties like that?"
"Well it's not always champagne and parties, much of my work has to do with helping travelers who have run into legal problems where I have to mediate communications between the states. Though, I do feel like they gave me this post to make up for two tours in Haiti and time in Saudi Arabia."
"Ooh! What's it like to be a woman working in a Muslim nation?"
"It's different, it depends on which nation it is, sometimes its a dress code, sometimes its how you communicate with the people you have, but it never really got in the way of me doing my job because I mostly worked with Americans anyway."
"Interesting. Tell me, I want to go to Tunisia, have you been there?"
Where is Tunisia, I caught myself thinking. Let's play a little random association: Tunisia, Indonesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, ooh, tropical islands!
"I have. If I were you I'd go to Morocco. Tunisia's like 'Arab-lite'."

Who knew? Tunisia is part of North Africa.

Fast forward about three weeks and one of many French holidays. Annette has a former professor in Tunisia who was willing to welcome us and although "Arab-lite" was its prognosis, we to the trip across the Med.

One word of advice: Don't take the ferry from Marsille to Tunis. If you do, bring toilet paper with you.

We arrived four hours late of a twenty hour trip on our 1980's pleasure cruise after snacking for dinner and lunch and sleeping on four seat cushions in a room the stank powerfully of feet and cigarette smoke. We made it through customs (despite having possibly cheated the rules of our French residency applications) and were met by Annette's professor Laura and her husband Karim, always excited to share the littlest slice of his country.

They took us to the Avenue Bourguiba, an interpretation of the Champs-Elysées, for mint tea with pine nuts floating in the mixture. Sitting there among the vestiges of a French colonial government, watching the people promenade down the boulevard, I felt like I had been launched into the future, global warming now an artifact of history, the economy of the world now changed, and the people still living to impress each other as they strut down the street. Paris sidewalks 75 years from now, "Have a little care exhaust and Islam with your coffee?"

After an excellent sleep, we went the next day to the Musée du Bardo in the former palace of the Bey (king) of Tunisia. The place looks like a bunker from the outside but the guilded and arabesque interiors are so spectacular that much of museum is the building itself. The true focus of the museum, however, is on the mosaics from the African reaches of the Roman empire. The expressions and subtle tones that are created from such an unweildy medium as squares of stone are truly amazing. A million little rocks put together in the right way take on a beauty far beyond the individual parts. The example here, intended for the Tunisisan villa of a wealthy Roman provincial, spent a millenium at the bottom of the sea.

I'll write the rest of the trip later, but for now take a look at this clip I found of a song that brings me back to my high school jazz band days and a close friend. It was playing through my head all through the week.