“Et au bout de chemin dis-moi ce qui va rester…..”
My sails are currently luffing. Do you know what that means? That means there is no wind in my sails, or not enough to keep the sails taut so they can propel the boat forward. I’m not moving anywhere. Not physically or spiritually. OK — spiritually sounds kind of hippie. I am not a hippie. What I mean to say is that I am not moving anywhere physically (that much is obvious — I’m currently at my parents’ house) and I’m also not moving anywhere mentally. I’m not progressing. I have no goals right now. I’m not working. I’m not writing. I’m not really even reading. I’m not really even hanging out with people, either. In fact, I don’t really know what I do. Today my brother asked me what I did today and I felt like a goddamn fool. “Well, I went to the skatepark. Then, like, I picked some blackberries.” Awesome day. You are 27.
But I can’t not be moving. Tomorrow I’m going to Vancouver. That’s slight movement. It’s like taking one pedal and getting the bike started. But I need to get pedaling fast. I need to be going at break neck speed. This doesn’t necessarily mean I have to go ANYWHERE. If I’m meeting people, or learning, or struggling, or crying, or SOMETHING, then it means I’m moving. But right now I’m stagnant. I walk to Safeway and buy Odwalla and then I walk downtown just to make the walk to my house longer and then I get home and lie on the couch and watch TV in Spanish. That’s not moving. That’s not moving at all.
So I’ve been looking for rides on Craigslist. To really get moving. My parents’ are going to kill me. There are other things I could be doing. I could be preparing for the class I’ll be teaching in a month. I could be reading for the exams I’ll be taking in two months. I could probably be doing something productive here. But I’m not, and I know that to get my ass in gear I have to move. To just get in a car and go somewhere. Go down to the road and put my thumb up. Pack some clothes in a backpack and a roast beef sandwich and go to the Greyhound station and buy a ticket to the one place that’s offering a student discount. Or something. Get. Moving.
Si vous voulez une explication pour laquelle ça fait longtemps que je n’écris pas, ce n’est pas ici. Mais, maintenant, ça fait presque cinq semaines que je suis au Québec. C’est bizarre, parce qu’en même temps j’ai l’impression que je viens d’arriver, mais aussi que ça fait deux ans que je suis ici. Dans n’importe quelle situation où beaucoup de monde se trouve dans le même bateau, il y aura des amnistiés que se forment très vite. C’est intéressant parce que d’habitude la première fois que tu parles avec quelqu’un c’est complètement impossible de savoir si cette personne va devenir ton ami. Puis d’autres fois tu le sais d’immédiatement.
Pendant les premières trois semaines, je parlais exclusivement en français. C’est bizarre, parce que je n’avais jamais fait quelque chose semblable. J’ai commencé vraiment à penser en français. Je me parlais en français. Je lisais en français. J’écoutais la télé en français. Et, la plus bizarre, je parlais avec tous mes amis en français, même s’ils étaient anglophones. J’étais vraiment engagé. Puis, après trois semaines, quelque chose a changé et tout le monde a commencé à parler en anglais. C’est bizarre, parce que c’était comme si tout le monde se réveillait un jour et décidait qu’ils avaient fini avec parler en français. Au début, je me sentais coupable. Je sentais que j’allais rien apprendre je ne parlais pas en français tout le temps. Mais après quelque jours je parlais anglais avec enthousiasme. C’était tellement facile. Je n’avais pas besoin de penser.
Une autre chose : j’ais pas de tout bu depuis que je suis arrivé au Québec. Pas une seule goutte. Les résultats? Je me sens crissement bien. Tous les jours je suis enthousiaste pour me réveiller. Pour marcher à l’école et pour faire des activités. J’ai jamais gueule de bois. Mes talons Achilles ont recommencé à fonctionner. Je joue au soccer. Je cours. Je cours plus vite que le vent. Je joue au volleyball. L’autre jour, j’étais sur la plage et il faisait tres beau et je me suis déshabillé pour courir dans l’eau froide d’une baie de la fleuve Saint Lawrence. Après ça je me suis monté une croisière pour voir de baleines. C’était parfait. Tout parfait.
Mais bien sur tout doit terminer dans un moment donné. Ici, tout le monde s’en va ce samedi. Tout le monde sauf moi. Moi, je reste ici à peu près une semaine extra pour prendre des classes particulières. Pour vraiment apprendre le français, et ne pas seulement le français sinon le français québécois. C’est une autre chose. C’est une chose magnifique. Et après ça, on va a New York. Et après ça, peut être Missouri. Et après ça, au Mexique. Et après ça…
The Quebec odyssey is beginning. In 13 minutes I get on a ferry which will take me to Seattle. After that it’s a flight to Minneapolis, a flight to Cleveland, and finally a flight to the beautiful castle-wall enclosed city of Quebec. But that’s not all. Upon arriving in Quebec City the next stop is Gare du Palais aka the local bus station, where I will board an Intercar that will (hopefully) take me to Chicoutimi at 6:30pm. At 9:00 Quebecois Standard Time, I will (hopefully) arrive in Chicoutimi, where I will be ferried (figuratively) to my host family’s house. That is, assuming I have a host family. As of now I still haven’t heard whether or not I have a host family, or who it is. I’m not even entirely sure I’m in the program. I paid $200 bucks (Canadian), and all they sent me was an email to the Program’s blog where there’s a video in French of a guy telling you what to wear in case it rains.
Anyway.
The adventure is beginning. French immersion. A part of North America I have never been to before. No cell phone. No computer. Lots and lots of…I have no idea.
T minus nine minutes.
The internet is rotting my brain. There are a few things I wish I could change about my life, and spending too much goddamn time on the internet is one of them. (A few of the others: I’m not married to a Colombian girl; I don’t speak Finnish; and I can’t play “La Campanella” by Franz Liszt on the piano).
I’m going to Quebec in a few days. More than a few days, but if a few is nine then it’s a few days. Then after that I’m going to Mexico City. Then after that Oaxaca. Then after that back to Seattle. Then after that, Omaha. That’s right: Omaha. I’ve decided to move to Omaha. I’ve decided I need a simpler life. I’ve decided to become a farmer.
I think I will be a soy bean farmer. There’s good money to be had in soy beans, especially in this economy with all the yoga crazed hippie assholes out there whole will only consume milk products if it’s soy milk. The dairy farmers are out of luck, but the soy farmers are really coming into their own. I don’t doubt that at the end of each day of tilling the fields they stand at the end of the rows and gaze down at the leafy providers of sustenance and think to themselves, “Hot damn, life is good.” I want my life to be like that. I want to look at the storm clouds mustering themselves over the Platte River and think to myself, “Best be gettin’ on in to dinner, now. Claira won’t like it if I seat at the table in wet clothes.” And then I will sit at the table and gaze at my two beautiful children, Todd and Marigold and wonder how I manged to turn my life around from the busy and frantic life in Seattle it was just a few years earlier. Ah, Middle America…
Or I might just go forward with my current plan, which is to teach English in China. Or my other plan, which is to join the Peace Corps and stop showering. Or my third plan, in which I become a topless bull rider. Or my fourth plan, in which I become a professional tree climber. I don’t know how I’d make money off this last one. Maybe I could find trees that were close together, climb to the top of one, and have people bet on whether or not I could jump to the other. I would hire a bookie and we’d get reach raking the bets. The house always wins.
If none of these work out, I’m screwed. I always imagined big things for myself, but maybe I’m just destined to be mediocre. Maybe I’m just destined to be that guy that people say about ten years down the road, “Yeah, I really thought he was going to do big stuff, but last I heard he’s got a town home in Woodinville and three snot-nosed kids.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just of course that there’s everything wrong with that. I don’t want to be mediocre. I would rather die than be mediocre. Die jumping from tree to tree.
