stds could build up mind-maps

The other day I missed Heath Ledger so I decided to celebrate Australia’s fête nationale, which marks not the independence but rather the colonization of Australia...my kind of party. On my way home the denizens of the poor immigrant neighborhood of Noailles (I prefer to think of it as “vivant”) started pointing at me in glee, the way we usually objectify and aestheticize them, and I was like yeah yeah I know franchement je suis ravissante but then I remembered I had Australian flag tattoos plastered on my face.

The next day, hungover and overcome with nausea, I skipped my private lesson, which considering my stated state should garner near-catholic sympathy; I duly protested when John questioned my work ethic. I'm really out of ideas for lesson plans. The ESL website I most frequent abbreviates "students" as "stds"...why?? The truth is the only thing I can stand to do with my students is teach them bad words, so they think I'm cool, or make them write and perform skits in which the sexual dynamics of the class will inevitably play out. For example, even after a casting announcement on the board titled RECHERCHE: BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, with fields for NAME, HEIGHT, POUNDS, SEXY OR NO?, and PRETE A AVOIR DES ENFANTS?, Yannick and Medy were forced to modify their script about UFOs:

Humain: Why you come in Earth?
Alien: For meet beautiful girls and make babies and some films.
Humain: OK, but only if I come too!!!
[...]
Humain: I am sorry, there are no beautiful girls. You want candys?

Meanwhile Manon, to help put that je ne sais quoi back in our relationship, has been leaving me little notes on my desk:




The messages warrant re-writing, literally, as they are not quite à la lettre:

“Nettoyer le bol de MANON! Ce n’est pas un cendrier”
“Faire la vaiselle [sic], tu n’est [sic] pas toute seule!”

I washed the stupid bowl, and am debating whether, risking sounding like an old gramaphonemanon, to re-post the notes with corrections and/or point out that the second note is doubly redundant: she's already told me to do the dishes, and evidently I don't live alone; see, the leaving of notes in and of itself establishes that. For revenge I ate one of her precious manondarines...when I peeled it the flesh was flecked with red striations, a veritable mandarine sanguine, which if not for my sanguine disposition might have struck me as ominous.

epiphony

Newly branchée, the ethernet cord queuing from the living room to mine, I came home to find my cord curled up, forlorn, under the stairs…this happened several times. I prepared a speech to Manon, undoubtedly the architect of my unhappiness: “Je sais que ça te derange, mais…” Before I had a chance she explained that the WiFi didn’t work when I was plugged in, which sounded suspiciously impossible but I believed her like an idiot, though I mumbled “Mais je comprends pas…” just like my idiot students. Then Romain revealed that it was, in fact, a weird lie, and we gossiped about how chiante she is becoming…she is, he agrees, probably just hungry.

My salad days with Hannah were super cool, riche en noix and lubricated with Klonopin that may or may not have been lubricated with lube (sick!). After our daily salad we ate anana after hananah and fearfully used Manon’s hair straightener behind huis clos. In Paris we partied with Jennie and her set of diplomats’ sons, and Josh and Josh, homonymic if not homologous, shared a strawberry mojito and giggled over Josh K’s musical masterpieces (no homophony). Now Hannah’s gone, along with the rest of my ananas, and life is lacking in puns, palindromes, and antioccidental antioxidants. I bore some gâteau des rois from my school’s epiphenomenal Epiphany party and ate it on Rue des Trois Mages just for the sake of synchrony.

I’ve suffered an epitarsal injury and I can't even marcher to the marché, so I’ve been reading Ulysse gramophone with Manon’s frozen aubergines draped over my ankle, which would upset her so much if she knew. Derrida, though not nearly as good at puns as Hannah, or at nicknames as Liz, has indirectly inspired the surnom Phonemanon, for while Manon is only arguably le phénomène comme phonème, she is certainly on the phone a lot, and this excerpt from Finnegans Wake seems to aptly describe her babelistic, paralinguistic reign of terror in our once-happy home:

…and, moguphonoised by that phonemanon, the unhappitents of [12 bd Paul Claudel] have terrerumbled from firmament unto fundament and from tweedledeedumms down to twiddledeedees...

Mais non, she really is just hungry…I should offer her a Luna Bar, except I want them all for myself.

zeitlos

Lately the Light is back in Provence but I, having adopted certain conceits of the 19th-century English novel, am still misty-eyed and of dampened spirits. I’ve been suffering from a general fever of the nerves, as if Schubert’s mother’s ghost had come back from the grave and told me to stop being so relaxed. Last week in class I attained such an appalling pallor as to faint, I’m told, at the blackboard; today I wore my hair in peasant braids. I can’t help thinking I was the only one uninvited to the Facebook event of the season, “Feting Corie’s Anniversaire,” because my tainted history makes me unfit for such society…I would have made her a bomb-ass cake too, but for my delicate constitution.

I’m getting better at transliterating fragments of speech, but my character is still as graven as writing. The Mistral has lent my days a lyrical bent. I sleep at odd hours, even ones too...most of them, really. The infirmière at the lycée, perilously infirm herself, asked, “Tu t’es couchée de bonne heure?” and in my time-addled delirium I could only reply, “Longtemps…”

Meanwhile je me brouille avec mes brouillons brouillés…I can’t seem to get my stories straight. I spent my weekly arugula allowance on Stendhal’s De l’amour, so I’ll be living on love for a while. I can’t wait till Hannah comes so we can roast rabbit with the flavors of Provence and discuss the particulars of the Schengen states with Liz.

confessions (remix)

My holiday was of Barthesian proportions. Every Christmas Eve Norwegians indulge in the same meta-text, a 1920s British sketch of which the premise is ridiculous repetition. My Norwegian friends were dismissive of its aesthetic value...I was like "Those who only read a text once are condemned to read the same text over and over," they were like "Please, have some more Munchkügel."

In Vienna, keine kleine Eisbär, for that matter keine Kleine; but I'll have her soon enough. BA and I drank my favorite young grünern Veltlinern...ummm beautiful. And I learned to appreciate classical music; so relaxing! After not seeing the sun for a week, my seasonal affective and social anxiety disorders in full sad swing, I landed in the literally littoral Nice airport, the snow-capped Alps in crystalline view...then it started to rain.

Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville, so I've been reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles to the point of abstract distraction. It's slowly killing me with vague waves of guilt. Why must we confess?

witchiewoman_4 asks: Do you believe that a confession frees your soul from guilt?
thugsta_c199313 asks: it makes you feel better
thugsta_c199313 asks: i think its called guilt
Peter Brooks: A confession CAN free you from guilt-- it depends on the situation, and who it's made to.



girl_of_your_dreams_16 asks: hey what kind of confessions are we making in this room??
squishyboobies69696969 asks: i must confess i'm 11 and is pregnant cz i have been sexually raped
Sexycoolchic asks: I am in love with a man... he has a wife.
ctv_will: It seems people are almost eager to confess to some things. Do you agree? To what do you attribute this eagerness?
Peter Brooks: People are eager to confess. Confessions of all kinds now take place in public situations-- on TV, for instance.
Why? I think it's linked to that question of individual personality-- we don't feel we're real, authentic beings unless we have some secrets to confess.
In this sense, our modern culture of confessions develops from Rousseau and the Romantics, who first claimed that they had to expose their souls in order for us to know them fully.


In this spirit I asked my 13-year-olds for their New Year's Resolutions, which included to get married, to drive a Porsche, to get a good beautiful boyfriends, to smak [kiss] Zac Efron, to get in touch with my avocats...I was like good, great source of monounsaturated fats. My pathos was stirred by one little girl who wished for the New Year that her boyfriend would stop calling her "duck in sugar"..."He trouves it funny," she explained, pained, "but I do not."

I'm going to California in a month because I miss Starbucks...not even the baller 'bucks in Vienna could offer me Silk vanilla soymilk specially formulated to complement hot beverages. And Mom can't wait to take me to lunch in Culver City, that quartier is so hip right now!