homeward bound

an old message from my mom that i never erased, a song that my dad used to sing while playing his guitar when i was young, a smell that reminds me of my mom and dad's closet...a photo of my brothers and i when we were young, or just thinking of the layout of our old house, my african bedspread and a book that i've taken with me everywhere i've lived since 1999. i am needing home. memories and nostalgia, seeing photos of jenna's new baby and getting an email from a teacher who i worked with at LE who now lives in Vegas...my old friend Sheila is leaving Milwaukee. nothing remains unaltered. and yet some things remain untouched in my memory, triggered by just the right stimulus. change, it's the natural order of the universe. of course, this is what is supposed to happen, and thank goodness that it does...but sometimes it just feels like a lot (not too much, just a lot) going in so many directions, like nothing is as simple as it used to be. and yet it never felt simple at that time either. the isolation of memory is both beautiful and detrimental, allowing me to think that a different time and place could be recovered, that just singing "be not afraid" to my brothers at night would bring me back to a time when getting my pony to stop eating grass when i led her to the pasture would be my biggest challenge. so i need to go home, to be back in plymouth, to be surrounded by my family, to recuperate a bit of that which i am missing. it's not the same. nothing is, in fact. but i can take the bits and pieces and forge a new memory which will carry me back to paris and sustain me until the next time i fly across the atlantic.

La grève

This is the 4th day in the past month now that the public transportation workers have gone on strike. I can't make sweeping judgments about how ridiculous their demands are (though they ARE ridiculous!)...but I can make sweeping statements about how absolutely annoying this situation is! At first I was amused. "Snow days"...a great excuse to have a day to do whatever I want. Since my school is in the northern banlieu of Paris, there are no trains to take me there. Okay, cool. But now it's just too much. Maybe it's because of the truly frigid weather that we're now experiencing...or maybe it's because I really do like my classes (and I know we are going to have to make them up anyhow...usually on Saturdays!)...or maybe because, like today, we are all fighting each other...because collectively "we" have become hoards of people who are actually getting in massive lines to access the "1 train out of 6" that is actually running (not to mention that you'd be squashed like a sardine if you actually waited in that crazy line to get into one of those train cars!). I'm not clausterphobic, but I decided to walk. And it is cold. And I'm carrying my computer, and even in the metro stops the escalators aren't running. Like they're trying to find every cruel way to make people suffer. (So we pick up a banner and strike with them!?) So here we are...those of us who rely on public transportation....cutting our losses so that the train workers can maintain their retirement and enormous benefits package after 37 years of governmental service. (The bulk of the other "fonctionnaires" have to work 40 years...but running the trains is more taxing. Clearly.)
On top of that, even if i COULD have gotten to my school today, it was blocked by students! I would not have been allowed in. Why? What are they objecting to? Not sure on this one...because it seems to me they are just jumping the gun on ANOTHER strike already planned for Tuesday...a strike for ALL state employees...And oh yes, all professors are state employees. So class has already been canceled, in advance, for Tuesday. My professor will not be there. But the rental bikes are in full action. Everybody is getting more exercise. Or like my friend who has been stuck in Paris since Tuesday night and finally had to get home today, he had to shell out 45€ to get home by taxi. So, who am I to say that nobody is profiting!?