(Today college ended. FML)

Oenology and Oh-no-logy

I went wine tasting today with a couple of friends and was amused, as always, by the descriptions of the wines provided by the vineyard:

Luna Vineyard 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon
"The deep blackberry color carries through on the nose, mingled with cedar and tea leaves. On the palate, there are more black fruits and graphite combined with excellent intensity..."

Mmm graphite.... Then I figured, I can write that! Here goes...

2006 Pinot Grigio
Deep euchre with a few streaks of chartreuse, this wine looks like a Middle Eastern sunrise in the springtime. With the scent of a newborn golden retriever puppy, it approaches the tongue tentatively, tantalizing the tip with three or possibly four types of cherry, before dominating the palate with creme de cacao and cinnamon. It has a strong, dusty finish that leaves the mouth feeling both dehydrated and extremely satisfied. This wine peaked like two years ago and should no longer be consumed.

2007 Cabernet Sauvignon
With the somber carmine color of gingivitis-ravaged gums, this wine approaches the nose with verve and anticipation. It leaps into your nostrils with the scent of powdery old people and then softens into the chalky nostalgia of childhood. Upon the tongue it is a creamy rendition of eggnog gently mixed with crunchy under-ripe papaya. It ends on sour gummy bears and tears. Thirty seconds later, it restarts with a chewy coda of caramel and cotton candy, before once again descending into the bitter taste of despair. This wine continues to age despite its overstay and should peak around 2050 when you've forgotten you even have it.

2004 Merlot
Although deceptively quiet, when given a brisk swirl this wine has the legs of a Las Vegas showgirl. Its rich infrared color and thick syrupy texture make for a curious contradiction only matched by the juxtaposition of the scent of blueberry nectar and the stings of honeybees. The tongue appreciates this wine best with pie, especially rhubarb pie.

my favorite local band

When I was in high school I went to shows instead of going to see movies. My (only) three friends and I fell in love with this one-man band called Dave Smallen (later a real band called Street to Nowhere that got signed by Capitol Records and then broke up to become, once again, Dave Smallen.) We pretty much followed him around the bay watching him perform. So, in high school I wrote what I now know is called "flash fiction" (a short story usually fewer than 700 words.) Here goes:

You’d walk into the club and it’s stuffy and crowded and loud and Who’s playing right now? and What? and Let’s go to the back and They’re really good, you wanna check out their merch? Everyone would be bumping into each other and pushing and looking at the people pushing and bumping and Hey he’s cute and What? and Nevermind. Then the band you came to see would go on stage and the atmosphere would change. Expectation. Did he cut his hair? and Is the bass player new? and then More on the monitors, less on the violin and Check, check, cheeeeeeeck just to see what it sounds like while he’s singing. And then the he’d talk and say Hello and Thank you for coming out and the music would start and everyone would kinda mumble the words and then they’d say them louder and then, at the climax, One, two, three, one, two, three, Yeah! And for the first time, just for a moment, while everyone is jumping and singing at the top of their lungs and its hot and everyone’s bumping into each other and pushing and What? he’d open his eyes, just the once, just to take it all in and you’d see him open his eyes, only you’d notice and for that one moment you felt like you knew him.

Galway

I'm taking two poetry classes and, after over two months, I think I've finally cracked under the pressure. I'm officially in touch with my feelings and I want to write gushy romantic poems under trees while drinking black coffee and supporting socialism. Here's the first:

(Revised 12/10/10)

Galway

Fog stumbled in over the hills today.
I welcomed its chilly presence
because it reminded me of Galway,
whose weather had always been so immense.

For Galway couldn’t but be beautiful,
The sky is always grey,
The clouds are always full,
The sun beats but a ray,
And yet, the rain reminded me to be careful
of the area nearest a quay.

For it was there that I came upon a goose
and it was there that I heard the sweet songs
of a person on the street whose words were so damn loose
and beautiful and real and strong
that I couldn’t help but keep listening
and imagining myself in those songs
until the rain, the rain came glistening
and it had been too long,
and it was time, time to keep moving,
time to forget about those songs.

But Galway couldn’t but be beautiful
Its sky is always grey,
The clouds are always full,
The sun beats but a ray,
And yet, the rain reminded me to be careful
of that city by a bay.

For it was there that I walked beside the sands.
It was there I saw a woman with her dog.
And I saw a soccer game with no fans,
for it was being played, by locals, near the bay, in the fog.
And I kept walking, walking, and just by chance

I saw a convent, there, beyond a wall.
I wanted to reach it, to see it, to snap it, like such,
but I was afraid, afraid that I would fall,
and the height of the wall is too, too much.
So instead, I took a picture from where I stood tall
and as you can see, it’s just out of touch.

Yet Galway couldn’t but be beautiful.
Its sky is always grey,
The clouds are always full,
The sun beats but a ray,
And yet, the rain reminded me to be careful
of the darkness that comes at the end of the day.

We went into a pub when the evening was done,
where warmth overcame us. We sat at the bar,
and the bodies around us moved as if one
for a rugby game united the air.
The locals sang and they shouted, and enjoyed their beer.
We drank and we watched but we didn’t dare
join in, lest we muffle their great Irish cheer.

So back to the hostel, my friends and I
returned that evening, full heavy and tired.
But just outside, up in the strong Galway sky
the pregnant clouds released their great prize
and below, the one being that yet remained dry
was enveloped by this sorrowful cry.
The crowds leaked out and laughed in reply,
for they were no strangers to this moody goodbye
but when I looked up, a drop in my eye
led me to think, and then think, and then only to sigh:

That Galway couldn’t but be beautiful
Its sky is always grey,
The clouds are always full,
The sun beats but a ray,
And yet, the rain reminded me to be careful
of finding a city but losing my way.

Don't make fun of me. It's a work in progress.

Oh the people you'll meet

Now that my semester abroad is coming to an end, I've been reflecting back on the last 5 months. Since I have little else to do, the weather is crap, and I have half an hour before the old man re-opens his boulangerie, the revelations have been flooding in, one epiphanous moment at a time.

Epiphany #1: Living abroad is hard. Living abroad in France is harder.

Abroad: the euro
France: the euro plus 20% tax on everything that goes toward subsidies for farmers, national healthcare, cheap education, and other stuff that foreign students don't benefit from

Abroad: no peanut butter
France: no peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies, Mexican food, Chinese food, Thai food...but McDonald's is everywhere

Abroad: snooty people
France: really snooty people

Abroad: things are closed on Sunday
France: things are closed Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the occasional Tuesday and half a day on Friday

Abroad: everyday things are expensive, and there are no dryers
France: it costs 10 euros to do laundry.

There are, of course, some positive exceptions:

1. Berkeley means something, and it's impressive
2. Wine, bread, cheese
3. Really attractive people
4. Cheap, efficient, relatively reliable public transportation
5. The president is an idiot, but he's not Bush

Epiphany #2: You should say 'yes' to everything. OK, I stole this mantra from my boss at my last job, but it turned out to be true. Always say 'yes', to another shot, another scoop of gelato, or to Gaultier, the guy we met outside a bar who tried to get my friends and I to go over to his apartment.


Epiphany #3: People can be pretty cool. I know, I've fought against it for so long, resisting the urge to relate with others of my species, yet somehow in this state of selfish revelatory moments, I was struck by the realization that some people are pretty cool. And the type of person who studies abroad is really damn cool. That's not to say that I didn't meet people I didn't particularly like, but the most interesting, adventurous, and crazy people I've ever met were abroad. And I think I like those three qualities in a person. Moodiness aside, I had the most consistently social semester ever, and I don't think it's only due to the fact that I could legally buy alcohol.

I don't want to get too sentimental, or specific, but some of the cool people I met had the following peculiarities:

1. They cooked well, and sometimes fed me.
2. They didn't usually comment on the quantity or type of food I ate. (In fact, some of them disgustingly encouraged me.)
3. They were really funny, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not.
4. They drank. Frequently.
5. They went out with me, and stayed in with me.
6. They were worldly (a.k.a, read the New York Times and/or BBC, traveled with me even though they knew that I'm really grumpy in the morning, and spoke several languages.)
7. They were really smart.
8. They had a lot to say (usually about interesting stuff that I didn't even know existed.)
9. They said really inane things that actually turned about to be accurate or brilliant.
10. They put up with me (although this quality is debatable since they had nowhere to go, few others to speak English with, and some of them even had to live with me.)

I think I've really grown, inwardly and girth-wise. Well, it's 6:30, which means I can stop having revelations and eat dinner.

There once was a girl in Bordeaux...

A few limericks I found while going through my old French notebooks. My friends Rachel, Becca and I went on a trip to Ireland, and since we were planning to make a quick stop in Limerick, we all decided to write down some limericks of our own to recite when we got there. We never made it to Limerick, but we were quite successful at creating beautiful, romantic Irish poetry. These were all written during class:

In Ireland I'll look for a redhead.
One who's cute, tall and well-fed.
I can explain no tale
For why I like them so pale,
But with one I'd quickly to bed.

Rachel really has to pee.
I'm kind of glad it isn't me.
She's hoping to take,
A five minute break
But she's not gonna get one, tee-hee.

It's time to go home today.
After all, it's Valentine's Day.
I've got nothing to wear
And I have too much hair.
But I have no date, it's OK.

Limericks are really great fun.
Without them, from lectures I'd run.
They're something to do
And when I'm all through
The boring professor is done.

There once were three girls in Nice.
(The flights were 1 centime a piece.)
In Dublin they'd drank
And now they were tanked,
They could sleep for 3 days at least.

I once had a puffy jacket
It made quite a racket.
At least it was warm
And hid my form
It'd been worse had I lacked it.

Ronsard est un poète etrange (Ronsard is a strange poet)
En fait il me dérange (Actually he bothers me)
Il aime Hélène (He loves Helen)
Elle semble putaine (She seems like a bitch)
Dans l'amour il faut qu'il change. (He needs to change with respect to love.)

They say that it's currently spring,
And yet rain is all that it brings.
I hate this day.
I'll run away.
And leave behind all of my things.

I feel really quite nauseous.
I should be rather cautious
Of not throwing up
All over my stuff
While of my classmates watches.

In class we're writing scenarios,
The purpose of which no one knows.
They're reading aloud.
The prof is not wowed.
But that seems to be how it goes.

I'm wearing bright colors today,
The French people say "pourquoi fait?"
The sun's at my back,
I'm tired of black,
And I just feel like it, OK?

I'm sitting in scenario class,
I'm hoping these four hours will pass.
I can't understand
The topic at hand,
I want to be in Ireland at last!

Wow, some of those are real gems ("I once had a puffy jacket" is one I'm particularly proud of.) I'm so glad I spent class time writing them instead of doing something else like taking notes or paying attention.

La Confiance

When a non-native speaker asks a French person a question, the response is typically a pause, a smirk, and then a correction of the question with perfect and fully-confident pronunciation. Of course, they have something to be confident about; their language is relentless and they're masters of it, yet seems to be an inherently French thing. You rarely see an American feel so haughty about being able to speak their own language well...well, not a nice American. So where does this confidence come from?

The only place I can think of is from the depths of Hell: L'Université de Bordeaux (or any other French school.) Mais pourquoi? A little something they like to call "un zéro", or the lowest grade possible on their 20-point scale. In American schools, a completed assignment is likely to receive no lower than a B-, assuming it was turned in and not done by a rabbit. On a 20-point scale, that would be around a 16, or 80%. In French schools, a 10, or what they call "le moyen" is what students shoot for. Around half of them get this grade. And of the rest? A simple bell curve is incapable of drawing out the range typically doled out by professors. From stealing glances and hear-say, I'd conjecture that the vast majority of the rest of the students receive an 8 or a 9 with those fortunate enough to receive an 11 or 12 what we would call "curve-setters". Those who receive other grades are typically lower, often much lower. And what of "le zéro"? Well, I don't think it's given out much, but I have seen a 5, that's a mere 20%, and considering the entire assignment was completed, I thought a bit harsh. In fact, I had a professor say that as she could not give us foreign students less than a 1, because that would be cruel, so she opted to give us global grades, taking into consideration our inferior language skills. But what I think is more important even than the grade of 0 is the fact that the term can refer to the person who receives it. And boy do professors like to announce the grades out as they give them out. Each student has his or her grade stapled to their forehead while the professor tells them, in front of the class, what they did wrong.

So what does this have to do with confidence in oral communication skills? I think that the ruthless grading system in schools actually forces students, and as a result people, to shed their sensitivity about their shortcomings and to don thick skin. When they're right, they know it and are proud to show it. When they're wrong...well, they're so rarely wrong. The moral of this story? If you want confidence, you have to allow yourself to be cut down, demoralized, and humiliated in front of a classroom of your peers. Only then can you truly understand the thrilling sentiment of hearing an American butcher your language.