a thought from rilke.

"Do not observe yourself too much Do not draw hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen." - Rilke

pense.

I haven't been without experiences these past few weeks; I have simply been missing the words to describe them. The winter has been a little more bleak than usual for no reason at all. It seems the absence of the sun took a toll on me more than I'd like to admit; I spent much of the end of January sleeping late and ignoring my blog, my writing, my personal goals in France. January was an insane month. I flew back to France for a week after the holidays to teach only to find myself on a plane the week after, flying to Boston for a job interview. The week in Boston was fantastic. I got to spend an entire week with Clare, explore Boston, and had a very successful job interview. I am looking forward to the upcoming life experiences, the program and the move to Boston. But afterwards, it took me a few weeks to recover from 3 transatlantic flights in 3 weeks and to find the sun again.

The number of weeks that are left for me abroad can be counted on two hands, a number still large enough to feel like "I have time" but small enough to feel "There is so much left to be done." The sun has been out the past two days and I am grateful for it. This city can be so sad when it is all gray and rainy. There are adventures left that are planned (first a trip to Antwerp, then a trip to Budapest) and adventures left to be discovered (I'm learning how easy it is to get out of the city, to breathe some country air, and there's still a play I want to see, a new Joseph Mallord William Turner exhibit opening, parts of the city that I would still like to wander, and Monet's garden! I want to go!). What I've discovered most about the past month of not writing is that I miss it when I don't do it but forcing it brings little happiness. While I pay attention and I stay astonished as those seem to be natural actions for me, the telling takes time. Life takes time.

"I want to pense!" Andy declared at the end of a long school day.

"You want to think?" I replied, a little startled. He had curled up against me, under his oversized zip-up sweater and had been reading aloud to me from his favorite series, The Magic Tree House.

"Yes! I want to pense!" He declared again and put his book down. "Let me explique. All day that I am in school I want to pense of these histoires, but I can't! You know, I have to do my maths and my mots and my blah blah blah. But I have all of these histoires that I want to think of and I can't. So now I want to pense. So I will sit now and pense. Do you want to pense with me?"

"Yes," I reply, trying to hold back my smile. "I would love to think with you."

The silence lasts about a minute.

"Ok! Now I am going to tell you my histoire!"

"Your story, Andy?" He still prefers to speak in Frenglish, but I am working on it.

"Yes. Okay, so there is this boy in my class and he is a VAMPIRE."

"He is?"

"Yes! He has ...has..." and he gestures towards his teeth.

"He has fangs?"

"Yes, he has fangs and he tries to eat his classmates but I save them!"

"How do you save them?"

"I will finish the histoire later. Let's play with the Wii."

The next day, he wanted to pense again and told me stories starring the actor and actress from Un Gars/Une Fille, a favorite show of mine that isn't really age appropriate but his brother lets him watch it anyways since he doesn't really understand the sexual overtones. The story is more complicated, more involved, and lasts longer than a minute. The simple fact that he is so interested in "pensing" (as he calls it) amazes me.

A few weeks later, playing in the garden, Andy has just finished acting out his own made-up version of "George of the Jungle 3" for me (in this version, George is also a pirate), he asks, "When are you leaving?"

"April 21st."

"Oh." He pauses. "So then I will act out my last movie for on April 20th."

A plan is made.

And each day that I am here, I hear the countdown clock ticking a little louder, I feel the pull to get outside and love the city and the country more, and I feel, too, the excitement building for my next adventures in Boston. Each day, each opportunity to pense feels like a gift, even when I don't have the words to describe it yet.

Seugy, February 14th, 2010

Royaumont, February 14th, 2010

A 13th century abbey an hour outside of Paris.

This was the dining hall.

falling in love.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a crier. Not of the town crier sort, but of the "something is about to happen, here comes a rapid change of emotions" sort, leaving those who know me well nodding and smiling and waiting it out, while those who have just met me wondering if I am ridiculously unstable.

As far as I'm concerned, I am not.

I am the daughter of not one but two therapists. I have a lot of feelings. I've always had a lot of feelings. Not only do I have a lot of them, but I tend to express them, to revel in them, and whenever something funny or sweet or sad or serious or exciting or traumatic happens, my tear ducts make their grand entrance and I simply let my heart and eyes sort things out.

This was something that I was teased about greatly when I was little; it is something that I have learned to embrace now that I am not. Yes, I cry, but yes, I know it, and no it doesn't bother me much and no you shouldn't take it so seriously.

So when I headed to the airport yesterday to fly back to Paris, I was in tears. Just as I was in September. And just as I will be in April. No, that flight won't be leaving Philadelphia, it will be leaving Paris, it will be the end of this experiment in international living, and I am certain it will come with a host of emotions that will manifest themselves in a small salty flood.

Because if there is one thing that I have learned from having all of these emotions, it is this: I am very good at falling in love with wherever I am. As a twelve year old, I cried and cried and cried the day my parents dropped me off for my first stint at overnight camp. Two weeks later, when they came to pick me up, I cried and cried and cried. As a twenty year old, I cried and cried and cried when my parents dropped me off at the airport for my semester abroad; four months later, I was crying about leaving Paris. So yesterday, leaving Philadelphia after a two-week stay at home, I cried because I had fallen in love all over again with being home with my family, and though I knew I had a lot to look forward to in France, it is that simple transition of one place to another that gets me every time. Once I bury myself back in Paris (I've been back for twelve hours and I've already seen two of my friends), I know that I will fall in love with this place all over again and months from now I'll be thinking, "How did I ever think that I didn't want to be here?"

On Christmas Day, I was unreasonably unhappy because of a week-long stomach flu that was testing my patience and my intestines. I felt this enormous sadness creeping in while playing board games with my family and I realized that I wasn't so unhappy about being sick as I was about feeling that my time with my family is so limited. Now that all four of us children are done with our undergrads, we must bid farewell to the 4-6 week long winter vacations, the long afternoons in pajamas and the restless feelings of, "When will school start again?" The questions now are, "When will vacation start again?" "When will we find ourselves together again?" "When did we start getting too old for family game time?"

I hope that we never get too old to sit around the fireplace and laugh because we're bad at following directions and because Ian is attempting to train Nora's dog Eloise by barking at her. I hope that we never get too old to play board games and tell stories and have Dad come down the stairs wearing an Elvis Presley mask to greet our guests. And I hope that I never get too young to let my cry-ability get the better of me again; that is to say, I'm just starting to get used to it.

new sights.

As I grow accustomed to the city, I stop looking at the little things around me. I walked past the woman that I rent from and babysit for yesterday without noticing; she stopped me, and only then did I realize that I had been staring straight ahead not taking in any of my surroundings, only trudging off to work without a second thought. On my daily Metro rides to work, too, I notice less and zone out more. I don't know if it's habituation of my situation or mere end-of-the-semester fatigue. But Sunday I saw this: a man on a bicycle, a normal sight in Paris, but wearing a white helmet covered in multi-colored polka dots. So rarely do cyclists wear helmets past the age of 10, especially in Paris, especially in the city. What most people call normal, I call insanity. How could you possibly think that it is safe to ride through the city where everyone drives like a maniac? You vs. car, who do you think will win that one? How could you possibly stand a chance? No matter, this was a young man, probably just a few years my elder, and he was sporting his helmet with a serious Parisian look and it made me want to hug him. I would have all but forgotten it, yet twenty minutes later, riding the bus, staring out the window, I saw it again. This time, hanging in the window of a bicycle shop, the exact same white helmet covered in multi-colored polka dots. A sign, I decided. To keep paying attention. To keep seeking new sights and new ways of seeing.

This weekend, as long as the strikes don't stop me, I will go to Chartres for a day to see somewhere new. I am thinking of registering for a drawing and painting class next semester, a way to speak French more often and to learn a new skill. More than anything, it'd be a new way of seeing, perhaps something I need these days when it is just so easy to walk, eyes towards the ground, trying to ignore the gray skies and thus missing the blue ones (for when they appear, they are brilliant but how little we look when how rarely they occur!).

It is strike season in France. The taxi cab drivers, the truck drivers, some of the trains, maybe soon all of the trains, the museums, these are all the ones that are on strike now. But more to come, it seems. The newspaper this morning had a headline, "Santa Claus is a striker." I am doubtful, but it seems that Christmas will be made more difficult if the trucks won't deliver presents, if travelers can't reach their families, and so on and so forth. Can the reindeer strike too, for hire wages, better hours? That is something I'd like to see.

hiatus.

The blog has been on hiatus. I will not feel guilty for it; I was not sent to France to blog but to live. And I have been doing just that. As for my writing guilt, I've been pouring my energy into a job application that is due Tuesday. Once it is finished, I will feel myself slowly coming back into my writing life, I am certain of it. For now, though, I will tell you this story.

In 2007, I tried to take a bus in Paris. Once. Just once. I ended up so dreadfully confused and painfully lost that I vowed not to take the bus again. If I couldn't walk somewhere, I'd take the Metro. And if I couldn't take the Metro somewhere, I'd walk. It worked well enough for my three months here.

A couple of months later, someone told me that they believe that you don't really know a city until you've learned to take the bus in it. That any meandering idiot can figure out a Metro map but that the bus map takes it to a whole other level.

If so, then I am no longer a meandering idiot. I have fallen in love with the bus system in Paris. It is not the fastest way to get anywhere, because driving in Paris is a mix of insanity and ...insanity. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen cars sitting in the middle of intersections at a supposedly red light just watching as cars speed past them, seemingly not noticing that a car is clearly stuck in the middle and simply trying to not die. The buses, though, are sturdy and clean and feel, for now, quite safe. And I've learned to take them.

It started a couple of weeks ago. My friends and I decided to go to Reims on a day trip. We wanted to see the famous cathedral and the Christmas village (I. love. Christmas. villages.). We were taking a train quite early in the morning and I looked online to see the fastest route to get there. According to the RATP website, it would be faster at the time of day for me to take a bus (one that left just outside of my house and went direct to the train station) than to take two Metros. I, Kate Fussner, surprise of all surprises, was nervous. The bus? I worried I was going to end up on the other side of Paris, miss my train, lose my friends, and somehow wind up canoeing myself home on the Seine. But instead of taking the long way on the Metro, I decided to take on the bus adventure and see what happened.

The truth is, that's the best part of the story. That I shoved my nervous worries out of the way and climbed onto the bus. Because the fact of the matter is that taking the bus was quite easy. Early on a Saturday morning, no one is out and so there's little traffic, fewer stops, and the city looks beautiful above ground. Below ground, the air feels more stale, the sun is further away, and the visions of Paris are non-existent. Above ground, I saw the neighborhoods coming and going, I saw how they piece together, and I started to recognize just how well I knew the landscape after all.

Reims was a beautiful but small and gray city. A one time visit that I am glad I had, to see the cathedral that I studied and to see a marching band made up entirely of men dressed in Santa suits.

Winter does feel as though it is beginning to settle in. It is grayer, it is colder, the days of sun feel short and the weeks of darkness feel long. But there is a warmth in the air this year that I can't quite pinpoint. It is a comfort, it is an awareness that, like me, many of the people I know are seeking ways to feel at home. I am constantly reminded of this transitionary state we are in. "Find a job." "Find a place to live." "Find a home." The seasons seem to ground me and say, "Just find a way to enjoy this. It'll change soon enough."

we are golden.

Le dimanche.

Sunday is my favorite day in Paris. It was this way when I lived here in 2007 and the trend continues now. It is a day without guilt, without responsibility, without the pressure to get out of bed or even the option of running most errands. Aside from a few pharmacies and local open air markets, things in Paris are closed. Forgot to buy a birthday present on Saturday? Too bad, it'll have to wait until Monday. Wanted to mail a letter? Sorry, it's not going to happen. Perhaps you thought you might finally remember to pick up that thing you've been wanting to buy but keep forgetting? Forget it again. You'll have to wait. Because on Sundays, everyone sleeps late and takes long walks and traffic slows down and even the trains run with less frequency. In America, I think this would drive me insane. In fact, I know that it does. WHY can't the post office be open on Sundays? Who do they think they are, those people at Staples, thinking that they can close early when I MUST have photocopies now? In America, there is the big expectation of NOW. Things must be done now. The deadline is now. In America, I am punctual to a fault. I've adopted my father's and my mother's senses of time: I am always on time, if not early. In Paris, I simply don't have the same sense of time, especially on Sundays. It doesn't mean that I won't make it to my appointments, that I won't make it to the places that I've said I'll be. But I do not need to stress about it the same way here and I am hoping that, in the coming weeks and dealing with more French bureaucracy to get my social security settled, I will let go more of my American sense of the immediate and give into the French sense of the "eventually."

I spent a lot of time this week, embarrassingly enough, being homesick. It is not something that I am proud to admit: I'm twenty-two years old and every time I get a cold all I want to do is be home. Clare and I finished up a fabulous vacation together here in Paris and, the moment she left, I was congested and miserable and wanted to spend the day in bed being some ridiculous version of Kate Fussner. This ridiculous Kate googled "chronic sinus problems" to see if I might have some foreign or rare disease that would allow me to fly home to America to be treated. Mind you, not by doctors, because I was not so homesick or actually sick that I wanted to see a doctor, but be treated to a bowl of matzoh ball soup by my parents who still spoil me and be welcomed to watch "The American President" over and over again until the VHS finally breaks. But the Kate Fussner crazy didn't end there. Finding no source for my chronic sinus hassles other than the fact that I had been sharing a small space with someone else who had a small cold and that I'd be babysitting a small child with a week-long cold (both of which are legitimate reasons to get sick), I succumbed to the emotional miseries of googling, "dealing with distance" and "missing home." Well, that does nothing for anyone with a third of a brain, and I realized this before the google search response had even had time to load. I know how to deal with distance. I know how to deal with missing home. And today my sister reminded me of this.

We were g-chatting and discussing my concerns with making the most of my time in Paris. I've been encouraged by many, and in some ways I feel almost expected, to travel around Europe while I'm in Paris. I have already come this far across the ocean. Shouldn't I see the sights? Shouldn't I be seeing all of Europe while I still can? I booked a plane ticket on Friday that decides when I will return to the US in the Spring and suddenly had second thoughts. Shouldn't I stay longer since I already have the visa? Shouldn't I be seeing Rome, Venice, Florence? Pop on over to Madrid and Barcelona? Head down to Marseille to enjoy warmer weather? Really take advantage of the time that I've got here? But the problem was that I didn't feel like these were my concerns at all. To me, these thoughts felt more like suggestions or expectations of others. No one specifically, but the general idea from those around me, and those crazy movies where everyone goes backpacking and couchsurfing and hostel-hopping, and those novels that jump from location to location as if that should be everyone's dream.

But being told that this should be what I want from my time here is not the same as it actually being what I want from my time here.

My sister said, in her wisest words,

"Don't do shit just because you think it's what gets done. It's your party, dude. Do whatever the fuck you want."

Perhaps not her most eloquent moment, but it was exactly what I needed.

I came to Paris to live in Paris.

That is exactly what I am doing.

And living means having bad days, it means blowing your nose over and over and over again, even though it is just as unattractive in Paris as it is in Narberth, it means having those insane moments where you google things just to see what happens (and I can only admit this here because I am certain that everyone else does this too...Except for those of you reading this who still only type with one finger at a time...you probably don't google things to try and solve your emotional/physical ailments, you probably read Sartre instead...), it means having those days where you're late for everything and you've once again misplaced your cellphone and you spent way too much time watching MTV Europe instead of writing a coherent story.

This forming of a post-college life abroad does not feel like an experiment in international living so much that it seems to be an experiment in living in general. What is this pressure to live everything right this moment, to see all of the sights now, to see everything, to take everything in all at once, to store store store as if I may never have the chance again to cross the ocean ever? It's not invited to my party. I think my party is going to take my time and live everything as it comes, stuffy nose and all, and to not applaud myself for googling my own miseries but to accept it and say: if I am truly trying to make this place my home for the year, I have to give myself days where I am just. living. Nothing more, nothing less.

Because without those pressures, without those worries that I am not doing every moment of this trip to Paris absolutely-perfectly-and-absolutely-on-time, I actually really like my life here.

(Photos below courtesy of Clare)

(where I live)

(female artist exhibit at the Centre Pompidou)

(post-picnic photo in the Luxembourg gardens)

(boat ride along the Seine)

en vacances

This was a week to play tour guide.

With a ten-day vacation ahead of me, I braced myself for a full day of babysitting Andy (he got dressed up in his Batman costume and acted out all of "The Dark Knight" for me) and then celebrated with an eight day visit from Clare. She's here now and is making me blog, knowing that she looks forward to Sunday updates and wouldn't want others to miss out on what we saw this week.

This was not the first time that I've played tour guide to this city, nor was it the first time that I was greeted by a visitor who could not stop saying, "I'm in Paris. I'm in Paris. I'm in Paris." Paris has this romanticized image that is perpetuated by every movie/book/tv show ever, and rightfully so. It is a beautiful city, a city to walk and to fall in love with, and I was prepared to show it off. This was not my first time up the Eiffel Tower, nor the first time up to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur, nor was it my first time persuading my visitor to try chocolat chaud from "Cacao et Chocolat" or dragging them onto a boat ride to see all of the major monuments along the Seine. This was not my first time negotiating in French with waiters and translating the suggestions of shopkeepers to save my visitor from having to make the "I'm sorry, I don't understand" face. (It's a quickly muttered, "I'm sorry" followed by an immediate, "Dammit. I spoke in English" finished off with a few rapid blinks and a slight shoulder shrug.)

But for me, this was the first visitor that I've had since I moved to France for the second time and what I noticed most was the change of routine. That is to say, I realized that I've been building a routine (go teach, go pick up Andy, watch Gremlins with Andy, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat) and that I hadn't noticed how settled my life here was becoming. Clare and I have had this great mixture of seeing monuments and catching up with each other, waiting in line at the Eiffel Tower but also escaping to cafes on side streets, sipping espresso in tiny cups and laughing about the bizarre European outfits/haircuts/the fact that rollerblading is still fashionable here. Something about the fact that I already got to show my life to someone means to me that I'm somewhat proud of the life that I am living here, I'm more at ease now than I was in the first couple of weeks...that somewhere within me I believe I have a life here that is worth sharing with the people I love.

Perhaps this is backwards of me to say but what shocked me most this week was the realization that I feel more like an adult here not when I am getting up and going to work but when I am given free time and can do what I please. Going to work, writing lesson plans, picking up Andy and making him wash his hands before his snack, these are the things that I am supposed to think make me an adult. I have a job, I have an income (maybe?) and I have a daily commute. But my daily commute does not make me feel like an adult.

This makes me feel like an adult:

That on a rainy Sunday, when the sky is heavy with water and the whole city seems to be mourning the looming departure of a flight to the US, that it really is okay to spend some downtime relaxing in bed, until grumbling stomachs call for a Sunday brunch, and that no adult is standing outside the bedroom door, telling me to stop being lazy. That the right to be sad, the right to relax, and the right to pick myself up again with an overpriced cup of coffee is something that I get to grant to myself now.