les reves en francais

recently I've been dreaming in french. I've been thinking in it too... this morning I made pancakes (a new recipe that was quite delicious, perhaps I'll post it) but as I was moving through the quiet morning kitchen, I found myself thinking my sentences in french.

I'll tell you about the dream.
It concerned the boy I was in love with for a solid two years.
I was walking through the halls of my elementary school- a hundred year old brick building with secrets only children could discover- it had a beautiful library. Circular, with a dome and tall french doors that looked out into a circular patio and courtyard. It was autumn and I was wearing a white dress with a blue ribbon in my hair, like I would have when I was 5, but I was older. It was afternoon and the sun came through the red and yellow leaves and through the french doors to me on my window seat with my book. Boxes and bookshelves were all around me, tall and crowding over me comfortably. I was alone. And I was safe.

Then he came out of nowhere and I jumped up. I told him it was time for me to move on and his eyes turned down at the edges. He told me "Mais, je t'aime maintenent. Comment pouvais-tu ne voir pas?" and he held me. But I didn't look at him. Only at the sun through the window through the leaves and how the whole world was yellow and warm. And then he left.

this song was playing

if only time

While wasting what time I have by trying to put off unpleasant things that must be done (like applying for scholarships and writing supplemental essays) my mind wandered as it does now and then... Googled "if only time" and here's what I got:

if only time could stand still and embrace the day

if only time were more like plasticine

if only time flew like a dove

"it’s a great pity that time is not more like plasticine, where one could gather up all the little bits and pieces — the leftover minutes and hours that were spent waiting for meetings to start, standing in queues, sitting in traffic, watching someone else’s food go round and round in the microwave — and squash them together into usable hours, like one big ball that gradually turns the colour of mud."

~ Sarah Britten

I think this is a wonderful thought (and plus, plasticine is a much nicer word for the stuff than Play-Doh, which has become its name) If we could use all that wasted time and bunch it together like leftover cookie dough once you cut out the shapes, you would get so much more delicious pastry out of life.

However, this is not the case, unfortunately, and I must stop wasting my plasticine lest it harden into unusable clumps that crumble and scatter all over the floor when you pick them up.

(pictures from when I went to Paris last winter)

la france

So, here's the only deal:

I adore France to the absolute bottom of my heart- I love visiting, I love reading about it, I love seeing pictures, I love the food and the art and the atmosphere- and yet, I am going to fail AP French in school parce-que je ne peux pas parler francaise (because I can't speak it). I wish I could just open my mind and my heart and the culture would flow in through my pores.

My mother grew up in France. What a life that musts have been... Paris in the '60s...

To live in the twists and turns and secret corners of this city

And spend summers in these fields by the sea in Normandy

To lie in these fragrant fields for hours...

And when you tired of that, to lose yourself in a place where no one knows you, but the city itself accepts you...

To drive this car along endless roads when you needed to get away...

To come here and picnic with family (she has four brothers) and read poety on a blanket...

And to come home and curl up in a window seat and watch winter strike Paris with all his strength, but never conquer...

Photos via here, and here

The one story that stuck with me out of all the Paris stories was this:

One morning when my mumma and her twin brother were just two years old, they got up before anyone else and (god knows what possessed them) picked up their mother's huge old Underwood typewriter between them and proceeded to shove it out a third story window of their appartment at the Place Vendome (here). My grandmother was awakened by a knock from a kindly, albiet slightly apprehensive, Parisian holding her mutilated typewriter. By that time the twins, having acomplished their goal, were back in bed like little angels.

Aren't children delightful?