C'est Nice

no longer in nice, i've started another blog. writesomethingnew.blogspot.com, a bit different but hopefully just as fun. see you there.

charlie.

i won't sing for you, or even reprint further lyrics, but you get the gist. I'm about t-minus forty-five minutes from departure from Brenna Clarke's house. I know I've left the blog woefully unupdated, but hopefully that should surprise exactly none of you.

Anyway, a few long hours I'll be back with two feet on American soil, which makes me want to go burn a communist or something. just kidding. ireland's been quite lovely, despite the shitty weather, which really hasn't even been that shitty, given ireland's reputation. Of course, a more in-depth account of my travels, which I believe left off in York, of all places, will follow, once I'm back from outer space.

As to my future whereabouts, nothing (naturally) is set in stone as of yet. I have to be in SF for May 25th for a mandatory orientation for my summer park and rec job, but my parents and I are discussing having me return to NYC after that for a little more family time. I'll keep you all posted as things become ever clearer.

Other than that... I'll be seeing some of you soon! Strange! I hope everyone is alive and well, and I can't wait until our various and sundry paths cross. All the best.

hey.

if you're having trouble following me, welcome to the club.

I'm back in Edinburgh, which is a little strange. It's kind of like hanging out with someone you've just had a fight with (this reference will be lost on almost all of you except Jessica and Amalea, but it's almost exactly like having to go see The Two Towers with Abby after she tried to fire me the day before, because we had bought advance tickets several weeks before). Anyway, I feel like we're getting on well enough. Me and Edinburgh, that is (Abby's most likely totally hopeless).

The last few days have been tiring, but in a good way. I last posted from Charlotte's grandmother's house located square in the middle of bumblefuck, Lancashire, England. There was nothing quite so gratifying as pulling into the itsy bitsy little station of Hellifield and seeing Charlotte there with her lovely grandmother. I was whisked off (in a Jaguar, no less... her gparents are car enthusiasts) to their lovely home which is located in between some sheep (let's just take a moment here to say that if England has an abundance of one thing, it's fucking sheep) and seems to have been built yesterday, it's so clean and uncluttered and... well, really quite lovely. Moreover, in the middle of nowhere they had digital sattelite television and high speed internet. Wow. I walked into their beautiful spacious kitchen (you could have fit our kitchen in the lycee into it several times over) and immediately began cooking. Nothing fancy, but it was unbelievably soothing. Then we sat down to dinner, Charlotte flipped on... wait for it... The Daily Show! I was blown out of the water. It was like I had been ejected from the cold wet streets of Edinburgh straight into the warm lap of the US.

That evening, I decided to drastically reduce my trip, both for practicalities sake and for my own peace of mind. As it stands now, I'm not going to the super-north of Scotland, nor am I going to the West coast of Ireland... from here, it's going to be Glasgow either today or tomorrow, Belfast on Thursday, Dublin on Saturday and NYC on Tuesday. I felt a little crazy about changing things around like that, but then, I stop to think about how crazy I felt with the whole trip looming before me, and I'm fine.

So, after taking care of all the internet stuff, Charlotte and I watched an episode of the OC I had stored up on my computer, and then, having slept absolutely abominably the night before, I completly conked out and slept like a log in a way that no one before me has ever slept like a log.

The next day, Charlotte's grandmother proceeded to stuff me as chock full of food as she could possibly manage, starting with scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, and then taking us out to a restaurant just over the border in Yorkshire, where I got a giant Yorkshire pudding filled with Lamb stew. I left the restaurant feeling not a little plush (i.e., filled to bursting... does it work? maybe not).

Our next stop was the town of York, where Charlotte had gone to University. We took a train to Leeds then switched to the York train. We were met at the station by Charlotte's friend Liz, who earns super high marks for allowing some random friend of a friend crash at her place. We drove back to her flat, which I gather is on a very English street (brick houses puilt right up one against the other, no greenery at all), dropped off our stuff, and headed into the old town of York.

If any of you were ever hoping to visit Diagon Alley, go to York. The streets there are about as Dickensian (or whatever it is Rowling is shooting for) as you could want. Okay, fine, the one downside is that it is a bit shopping mall, replete with a borders, h&m, a gap (a Gap!), and several other huge chains. But still, absolutely lovely.

We had tea at Betty's Tea Shop, which, while not full tea, was rather proper (say what?); I had a scone called a fat rascal. It was tasty.

We ended up at Charlotte's favorite bar, the Evil Eye, where I made the insane discovery that in England, spirits and mixers are cheaper than cocktails, which is most definitely not the case in France (I once ordered a coke and vodka during happy hour, and it cost me 7 euros!). Anyway, I dove straight into the coke with vanilla stoli's, and found myself as happy as a clam. We were joined by Nick 4, another one of Charlotte's friends (she knew four of them, and they all got numbers; I've met Nick 1, he came down to Nice early on in the year). We all had a good time hanging, though Nick 4 and Charlotte seemed to be forever asking how people other people knew were, which, while annoying, was forgiveable (I guess). We ended up switching to a place called The Cellar or something like that, where I had a conversation with an Englishman who was incredibly(one might even say classically) drunk, and seemed fascinated by the fact that I was from San Francisco (that seems to be the answer that's coming out the most these days...). Anyway, it was a nice, solid night out, and afterwards, we trudged back to Liz's, stopping for some nice proper chips(!) and then conking out once again.

There's more to write, but my time at this internet cafe is up. I'll give you the rest of the story tomorrow. I haven't decided if I'm staying in Edinburgh tonight or not... There's a particular hostel I want to stay at in Glasgow, and I can't seem to reach them. If I can't, I might just stay here another night and book the glasgow hostel online. Anyway, we'll see.

Until next time...

(This was written earlier today on my train trip to Lancashire, England, where I am right now. I know. I can barely follow myself.)

There needs to be some adage along the lines of:

If you think things are shitty now, wait until you fall into that pile of crap.

I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Carlisle train station. Where is Carlisle? That’s a very good question. My answer is: who the fuck knows? It’s somewhere in between Leeds, Lancaster, Edinburgh and Glasgow. I don’t even know whether I’m in England or Scotland, though I guess it doesn’t much matter. “How did you get there?” you ask. I would say you are a very astute person, much more astute than I, for I cannot answer the question.

If we really want to point fingers, we can begin by pointing them directly at the internet. Last night, I got into Edinburgh, made it to my hostel to find that, lo and behold, my hostel has free wireless internet! What, ho! Bounty, abounding, and all that. So I plug in, and everything’s fine. I e-mail someone I’m supposed to meet up with there (late, to be fair), check out various and sundry activities that I’m thinking about taking part in, doing last minute checks of trains I’m supposed to take. It’s lovely.

I went out and had a bite at the Elephant Room, where J.K. Rowling supposedly began scribbling Harry Potter onto napkins (I must say, their napkins are quite good for writing, though not that great for wiping your face, but I digress). I had an excellent cup of chili. I went along to a bar recommended to me by a friend in Nice, the Brass Monkey (a pattern?), which was a classy bar. They have a backroom that has the general feeling of a harem, but has a large movie screen on which, supposedly, they often show movies. I had been hoping for a pint, a movie, and maybe striking up a conversation with someone. I got the first thing, but not the latter two. I drank half my pint in silence, and found no one to talk to. But it was okay, I chalked it up to fatigue.

But then, upon arriving back at the hostel, I made the mistake of going back to the e-mail. Literally just as I was getting ready to close down the machine, I got an e-mail from my contact in San Francisco with the Parks and Recreation department, who was answering some questions I’d e-mailed him, among them saying that all of the positions at the day camp I had been hoping to work for had been filled. Now, let me explain: I will still have a job in SF this summer, I just won’t have my ideal job description. The way I reacted, however, you’d think a close friend or relative had just died. I immediately began feeling oppressively lonely. I looked around the hostel for someone who I might be able to at the very least bitch to, but everyone there had a general feeling of into-themselves-ness. I had to work hard not to burst into tears right there at the table. It was, at the very least, trying.

And this isn’t even the part I really blame the internet for. Next, I started looking up the quickest way to get back to New York. I was in a state of panic, loneliness, and just slightly (half a pint’s worth, anyway) tipsiness. I didn’t do anything to rash, but I did text my friend Charlotte, who is currently visiting her Grandmother in the north of England, and asked her if I could go to hang with her for a while. She texted back, probably scared out of her mind that something dreadful had happened. I spent the next 13 hours going back in forth in my head what to do... stay on my original trip and risk possible extreme depression and loneliness in the highlands of Scotland? Or scrap the trip, go to Charlotte’s grandmother’s house, hang out with my friend, and then go home?

It was a pretty miserable 13 hours, let me tell you. I tried to go to some of the museums this morning, and almost ended up crying in the middle of the Scottish National Gallery. Quickly, I realized it was the indecision that was killing me, and I decided that, although things could turn out fine up in the highlands, there was no real need for me to be there, and it would be good to hang out with Charlotte a little more, especially if I got any other job rejections. I also realized that one of the reasons I was feeling so yucky was that I had had very high hopes for Edinburgh, and the fact that I was bailing on it made me feel... wussy? There is a machismo thing in here somewhere, a not-giving-up thing, but there’s also the idea that eventually you’ll stop touching the electrified cupcake. I rejected the machismo, and still feel like a little bit of a loser for doing so. But anyway. I wrote a letter to Edinburgh on a napkin, which I think I’ll reprint here.

Open Letter to the City of Edinburgh:

I wish I could say in my defense that I tried really hard to combat my lonliness. That I called in all my contacts, that I made a real attempt to meet people, new people, to connect, to make the most of a difficult situation. But I didn’t. I let the negative energy wash over like a tsunami, and didn’t try to swim to higher ground or to find shelter. And I gave up.

I have no defense, and all I can offer to you is that it’s me. Another time, we could have become great friends, inseparable perhaps. But I wasn’t here, wasn’t in it to win it. Perhaps I was ready to give up before I had reason to, and then mildly bad news (delivered parenthetically) showed me despair, and from there I found my own way out (the possessive pronoun is, at best, a courtesy).

It was a confluence of factors that conspired against you, but it was still up to me to bear the weight of them, not you. And maybe I couldn’t. Maybe my panic was my subconscious (or whatever) telling me that I had bitten off more than I could chew. I have no problem admitting that mistake. They say if you’re going to walk into walls you should run into them; but isn’t it better to be running, grazing walls, then either smacking into them or walking? A compromise to reduce the risk. But then, that’s always sparated me from those that seem to succeed: my unwillingness to shove myself out on a limb and hope it doesn’t snap, or that I get gobbled up by some bird of prey. But osme qualities are intrinsic. What if I’m just not a gutsy person? Again, not your fault, but I’ve managed to make you pay. Sorry about that.

Thankfully, you don’t seem bitter, having given me a free bottle of cider, part of a game I wasn’t even aware I was playing. Those are the best games, because if you win, you win, and if you lose, well, no harm done. Much unlike the incipient cause of my departure. No one would ever call it a game, besides our friends at Milton Bradley, but it is one. One we acknowledge has losers and winners. Keeping score is for all intents and purposes impossible. The sports pages filled with statistics don’t come close to the sheer largess of numbers that one uses to follow this game, and it’s pleasures. I meant to write players, and I have some trouble identifying the source of the slip.

Once when I was in high school, someone in a class of mine cheated on a standardized test. The company that writes the test asked us to give written testimonials. The instructions at the top told us to not cross out anything, but to explain why whatever we wrote was erroneous, why we think we wrote it. It was interrogation of the kind seen on cop dramas by paper proxy. It was wholly uneffective, owing to the inevitable nihilist or existentialist or whatever ist you subscribe to’s dialectic train crash of the mind. We all knew who did it, and none of us ratted him out, and I’m doubtful if he ever got caught.

So was he the risk taker? Is he living the life that flits into my mind whenever the phrase “happily ever after” is mentioned? Would this guy even find himself here, friendless, lonely, and entirely unmotivated to rectify the situation? It’s a useless question; one can’t plug two different people into the same social/circumstantial formula and hope that the two results mean anything, especially when placed next to each other.

But, none of this matters particularly. I am taking responsibility for my train crash, for you being spurned. I flew into it like a mosquito released in the general vicinity of a bug lamp. I went Zap, and after that there was nothing left to do but go somewhere else. To change the formula. I may regret it greatly, I already do, but know that I’d also regret it if I made the opposite decision. There it is and none of it matters, because I’m sorry.

All right, so maybe a little corny. But hey, it was therapeutic.

When the shit got deeper, however, was when, attempting to change trains in Carlisle from my train in Edinburgh to my train to Long Preston, near where Charlotte’s grandmother lives. The lady at the Edinburgh station told me the wrong transfer station. I don’t know still which one I should have gotten off at, just that I got off and found myself stuck in Carlisle for about ninety minutes. I’m finally on a train that’s going where I need to go, but I feel even crazier now than I did yesterday, and that, my friends, is saying something.

Anyway, now my plan is to spend the weekend with Charlotte, go up to Glasgow when she goes back to Nice to see another Niçois friend who lives near Glasgow, Gillian. Spend a couple of days with her, take the ferry to Belfast, where I’ll be staying with Irish Claire’s parents and hopefully hanging out with her friend Fra who I met in Nice a week or so ago, then return to Dublin to stay with Brena Clark and family, who made me feel extremely welcome when I was there before. And then go home, perhaps May 9^th, if I can change the flight. I have to work out a few other things before, but I’ll keep everyone posted.

Until then, I’ll be writing on napkins.

in a mental/emotional sense. I know where i am geographically... edinburgh. I should be very excited. Which I am, in a way. But... I don't know. I misunderestimated this whole traveling alone thing. What happened is, I (perhaps rather unfortunately) checked my e-mail last night to find that I had been rejected from one of my more promising job prospects in San Francisco, and that my summer job prospect, while still prospectful, is actually not what I was hoping it would be (day camp counselor... now... who knows?). And all of a sudden, i felt overcome with a huge desire not to be alone anymore. The idea of my four-day sojourn to the edge of the world by myself was all of a sudden more than I could bear, and I immediately began restrategizing and rescheduling things to get back home earlier. Not directly back home, certainly, but a good week earlier or something like that. Mostly, I would forgo my four days on the edge of the world, go spend the next few days with Charlotte, who is visiting her grandmothers in the north of england, then somehow get back to Dublin for a few days before I fly back home. I told myself I would sleep on the decision, and, after falling asleep at around 1 am, woke up at 4:40 unable to fall back asleep, and, more disturbingly, no inclination to do one thing over the other. The dual instincts to 1) not be alone and depressed, but 2) to not give up on something just because I'm bummed (why, I don't exactly know... misplaced machismo?) seem to be head and head now, but only in terms of motivation, not in terms of making me not feel crummy.

Part of me wants to have someone make the decision for me, although part of me is vaguely happy that i have to gut it out on my own. I'm going to go to try and sleep for a few more hours, and pray that things start making sense. Wish me luck.

Hey guys. It's been forever and a day, but what can I say? I'm a terrible blogger.

I leave Nice tomorrow. You might all be scratching your heads saying "Wha?" because I haven't said anything about how soon I'm going to see all of you, and that's because I'm going on my trip to Scotland and Ireland. Of course, I'm further proving the very well-supported thesis that I'm entirely out of my mind, because I'm going home via my 19 day trip to Scotland and Ireland. No, I'm not bringing all of my stuff with me on the whole trip (I'm leaving it with a friend of my parents in Dulin), but nevertheless... what was I thinking? Right now, I would like either to stay in Nice for a week or two more or fly straight home. Of course, that's right now, while I'm packing everything I own into not-so-small suitcases.

Actually, the suitcases are giving me a headache, because I'm not sure if I'm going to make it under the baggage limit. I'm flying Aer Lingus from Nice to Dublin, and even though they've told me I can have the transatlantic luggage limit (which is about twice the European luggage limit), I still think I'm pushing it a wee bit. I was going to borrow my friend's bathroom scale, but that plan fell through, mostly because I forgot to ask for it. The biggest problem is books, which is sad, because I want all the books I have here, but might end up leaving them at the airport. Other things that might get left at the airport if the bags are too heavy include: my winter jacket that is pretty much in tatters, but I still love it; several pairs of socks that are serviceable but really can be replaced; the (now empty) box set of Buffy Season 3... again, it would be nice to have, but in the end, is superfluous.

The real killer is my guitar, not because of its weight, but because of itself... I don't know whether it will count as a carry-on, or if I will have to check it, or, as they say on the AerLingus web site, if I will have to buy a seat for it (say WHAT?). Anyway, I'm planning on arriving at the airport super early, with my most charming face on. I'll be wearing two or three jackets, because I can't pack them, and praying that they let me take everything I'm trying to take on.

The past week has been pretty wet, and I ain't talking about the weather, if you catch my driftola. Irish Claire's birthday was on Wednesday, and she managed to have two nights out for it, one on the day and one on Saturday, when her friend Fra from Belfast was visiting. Though I didn't dive off of the drinking board on Wednesday (to be fair, it was Passover, so beer wasn't an option), Claire did state that I was "properly steamin'" on Saturday, as I was last night, after my own going-away party.

It was an awesome party, and as soon as the several million people who took pictures e-mail them to me, I'll put them up. I had it at Johnny's, the Canadian wine bar in Vieux Nice that has easily earned its place as my favorite place to drink here. It's small and chill, and there's a guy from Louisiana who looks like he's pretty much always three sheets to the wind, but he plays the guitar and sings with a voice that is the result of several thousand cigarettes. Anyway, bunches of people came, and we pretty much filled the bar. Johnny, the owner, opened it specially for me (he's usually closed on Monday, though I didn't know that when I arranged it with him), and also threw in a voucher for a free pitcher of Sangria (which is my favorite thing there). I decided I wanted to use the free pitcher to give everyone a half-glass of sangria for a toast, and Johnny went ahead and gave everyone a full glass! I got a little teary during my toast... to be fair, I've been teary all week, and the fact that I'm at the end of the fifth season of Six Feet Under isn't helping things neither.

So I got pretty wasted, though it was mostly on Sangria, which apparently doesn't leave me with a god-awful hangover. One of the teachers I worked with came, Odile, which was lovely; and one of my students came, Cyril, who's probably the best English speaker of all my students.

Johnny's closed at 12:30 (as per), and somehow we were moved to Paddy's, an Irish pub I've only just started going to and have decided is rather lovely. We continued to drink, with me doing a shot (with Fra and Jon, Charlotte's boyfriend) of something that involved tabasco sauce and something that tasted like licorice. It was amazingly rancid, and I had to follow it with some Bailey's on ice. Whatever downward slope of drunkenness we were on, the ground dropped out from under us, and before I knew it Jon had doused Scottish Claire and I with wine (I think it was wine... I hope it was wine). Jon got so thoroughly trashed (and I guess I should mention that Charlotte had gone home) that the bouncer eventually asked him to leave (he wasn't properly thrown out... it was a very polite affair). He hugged me about seven times, being very nice about how sad he was that I was going. I don't think I've written about this before, but I had my wee little suspicions that Jon might be a switch-hitter, if you know what I mean. It's something I always stayed about twenty feet away from, him being one of my best friend's boyfriend, but... well, c'mon, seven hugs. He was pretty wasted, to be fair.

Apparently (I just found this out today) he got beat up on his way home (why would you worry about a guy walking home alone?) and spent the night in the hospital. he's out now, and supposedly fine (though I haven't seen him yet), but... man. Crazy.

Listen folks, I know I'm right in the swing of things, but I'm going to have to jet... more packing to do. Anyways, this will probably be the last post from Nice... so I guess I'll have to change the name of the blog. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it... tomorrow. I hope you've enjoyed Nice vicariously through me. I miss you all, and will see a smattering of you soon!!!!!!

AU REVOIR!

I'm just sitting here in the fnac café, when all of a sudden, there are tons of babies! At first I thought maybe it was some sort of baby convention, but no, they just all happened to show up at the same time. It's kind of strange, though they're all very adorable.

I had had grand visions of doing some sort of really literary artsy type account of my time in Paris, but, boy, did that ever not work out. Maybe some day I'll get to it, but for now I'll give you the express version.

I got into the apartment fine; my jitters were unnecessary. It was a cool little place, very space efficient, which I like. The mattress was tucked underneat an eave of the place, and the table/desk folded down (though I personally left it alone). If you leaned out the window you could see the antenna of the Eiffel Tower, and from the bathroom you could see the little top platform part, so that was pretty cool. I was right near the M° Ecole Militaire, off of the ligne 8, which brought back fond memories of my study abroad stint there two years before.

I spent most of my time on the TGV down poring over the Pariscope (which I found I was able to buy in Nice! How exciting!) figuring out which movies I wanted to go see. In the end, I was able to do seven movies in three days, which I was quite proud of, considering that some of them were rather long. Here they are: Sat: Strangers on a Train, Sabrina; Sun: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Paris Texas, The Long Goodbye; Mon: Shooting Dogs, The Deer Hunter. The best was probably either Paris Texas or Shooting Dogs, followed closely by The Long Goodbye. My least favorite were either Sabrina or The Deer Hunter; I know that's going to be a bit of a blow to all the Audrey Hepburn fans, but the flick was a little too saccharine for my tastes. Besides, I couldn't buy Bogart and Hepburn together. The Deer Hunter was interesting, but seemed overly ambitious, and the script was too disjointed (though I imagine that was intentional). A bonus, however, was a healthy dose of a very young Christopher Walken, and recalled fond memories of one Greg Burke.

On Saturday, (Nice) Jessica's friend Richard came down to Paris from Rouen to hang out with me. I'd met him briefly just after I'd gotten back from Morocco, though we didn't talk a lot then. Anyway, he's quite nice, rather English in his own way. He's a homo, too, and I had had visions of, you know, something happenning. But I think both of us were too tentative, and felt a little too much like we were treading in foreign waters for anything to have happened. It's also possible that he could have felt nothing at all towards me, but that prospect is too depressing for me to contemplate seriously.

Anyway, we went over to the Latin Quarter, got a crepe/panini at the little stand right near the Cluny Metro stop ([NYC] Jessica will know what I'm talking about), and then went to the Hepburn movie. I had suggested a movie to Richard, and he acquiesced, but left the decision up to me, offering only that "he didn't like suspenseful or stressful movies." Well, I definitely found one that was neither suspenseful nor stressful. I'm not blaming him, I'm just... observing how two gay guys ended up at at Hepburn movie.

After that we bought a couple cans of beer and headed down to the Seine for one of my favorite parisian pasttimes, drinking in public on a body of water. It was quite nice, rife with chat about nothing in particular. Once it got too cold to stay on the riverbank we went back to the flat I was staying at, where we had some more beer, and where nothing happened. A quick meal by Gare St. Lazare, and he was back on the train, and I was back home.

Sunday was pretty much entirely devoted to movies, which was fine by me.

Monday, I had made an appointment to meet a guy named Gerard Bekerman, who my dad had been e-mailing with. He seemed rather excited that there existed (yet) another branch of the Be(c)kerman family tree. I rolled around to his apartment, which was beautiful, and about two blocks away from the NYU in Paris center. There was a vague sense of chaos that reminded me of my dad's brother's house, with people shouting from one end of the house to the other. I ate lunch with Gerard, his wife (briefly; she had a bowl of soup and then am-scrayed) and the best friend of one of his sons, Tibo (it's not actually spelled like that, but I don't know how to spell it, so there) who was helping Gerard do some internet stuff. Everyone was lovely, and they all tried to speak English to the best of their ability, spurning my french (though I think it was more about them practicing their English than me hurting their ears with my French). The best line of the entire lunch came amidst a discussion of the strikes in France; I was bitching about how I wasn't sure I would make it to the station in time for my train, and Tibo said "Yes, but revolution is a great place to meet girls." Ah, the French. Gotta love 'em!

The lunch was rather brief, as Gerard had to bustle back to work. I squeezed in my last movie and made it an early night, though not before finally buckling and getting a frappuccino at one of the madly multiplying starbucks now strewn across paris.

The next day, getting to the Gare de Lyon was a cinch; that strike didn't seem to be as severe as the one the week before. Beofre I knew it was TGV-ing it back to Nice.

Since then, things have been pretty normal, besides the fact that it's my last week of school. Joy ended up in the hospital for a few days because a piercing she got on her cartilage got infected and she had to get IV antibiotics. I visited her at her way-the-hell-and-gone hospital a bunch of times, more motivated by fear of what would happen kharmically if I didn't than anything else. Just kidding. Sort of.

Other than that, I'm just trying to delay the inevitable shock of my impending trip. Oy vey! I'll have to write more later, though, cause the battery is dying. Until then!