Ascension

The Holy Ascension occurs exactly 40 days after Easter Sunday. It's the day that Jesus Christ ascends forever into heaven. On this sacred day, he's not the only one floatin'. I'm floating right here, in France.

Every week in May has a holiday in France. Today is the third in a row. First, we have Mayday on May 1st, followed by Victory Day 1945 on May 8th, and today is the Ascension. Next week we've got Pentecost. Just by having a glance at any French calendar, the first thing that strikes you is that there are lots and lots of public holidays here, especially in the Spring time. Basically, in a nutshell, we celebrate the end of every war and every Catholic event, however important or not it may be. This is actually quite ironic, because if you stop any Frenchman and ask him what the holiday refers to or why it's celebrated, he'll give you that big Gallic shrug, roll back his eyes, and let you know one way or another that he doesn't know, nor care, but if anyone ever ever considered removing one, he'd be the first in the street to protest. By the way, as a side note, most French people nowadays are atheists. Look in one of those huge Gothic cathedrals that only exist for American tourists and Art students.

A previous government tried to get rid of Pentecost a few years ago. The logical reason was that millions of dollars are lost in May because no one works, and the country kind of comes to a standstill. Four public holidays in a row are an exaggeration and cause havok. This is particularly true because of the French custom called the "Bridge". This means... well.... I've got the perfect example at hand. The Ascension Holiday is on Thursday. A number of people, if not the majority, take Friday off too, and decide to make it a long weekend. And if... say they saved up some personal days and the next holiday is the following Monday... well, that means a public holiday or two bridged together turns into a 10-day vacation. I know a "civil servant" who by juggling around 6 or 7 personal days, a few sick days, and cheating here and there -- who will ever know? -- managed to get out of the whole month. Mind you, this doesn't include the real 8-week holiday which is coming up in July and August, or the 2-week Easter holiday we just had last month. You get the point, huh? Anyway, that government directive, well, it didn't happen. It turned into an option, then a theoretic possible for practicing Catholics, then everybody and finally became the so-called "Day of Solidarity" where you can work, if you really want, out of a personal desire to make money for the country so it can fund generous social programs. Now that's gone too! And by the way, that goverment fell!

For me, these public Catholic holidays are both a terrific Godsend and a cross to bear, and add quite a bit to my floating in France. Today, for instance, everything is closed except for a few restaurants and some North African kebab shops. The sky has turned grey again, this time apparently from Icelandic volcano ash, and it rains from time to time. So, here I am at home, in my own little world. It's great cause I can do any old thing I want... bad, cause I need structure... and money. But, I've listened to radio, watched tv, surfed internet. What did we do without it? I can listen to NPR, then France Info, Radio Catalunya.... read virtually any online newspaper, and as of yet, I love those internet word reference forums/fora (what is the plural?). I learn so much. Anyday can be a full language class in 5 languages. What could I have become if they had had this when I was 13 and had no exposure to foreign languages. Zilch. One activity rolls into another, one hour into the next, morning into evening. I feel so dizzy from spending so much time cooped up with myself, thinking....



Just before my offical blog writing time, I finished reading the novel, "La Mort Heureuse" (The Happy Death) by the awesome writer Albert Camus. It deals with the crazy life of Patrice, in French Algeria, in the 1950's. In this novel, no one works, they set around drinking pastisse, listening to bands play old French tunes, take excursions in cars, drive 500 miles per hour on small coastal roads, have love affaires, take sun baths on the beach, and above all, complain about the torture of life, the sheer boredom that weighs down their soul, the terrible existentionalism that occurs naturally when one has too much time to do nothing. I guess not much has changed today... Some love Camus for his ability to explain his reality in such beautiful eloquent French. It's true... I read it out loud... Others complain because his Algeria shows no Algerians at all. Yes, living in a bubble is so typically French. Oh la la!

Rontay

Spring floating

If you have been following my blog (probably not) there has been a lot of negativity lately, so much negativity I have even amazed myself. It'll be weird for me to look at these posts years with the so-called wisdom I'll have.
So let me seize on the chance to be positive. Mostly to let you have a glimpse of why I've been floating in this country for so long.

Today was a day that could never happen in the United States. I got up early to go to give class to a private student in Thionville, a nearby town about 40 minutes or so by train from my home. It's a three-hour intensive class, so it's a lot of preparation added on to the early communte. I get there at 9:00am bang, I wait and I soon I receive an unexpected sms from my one (private) student, Brigitte.... no, she won't be coming to class, she has a headache and is taking the day off. Granted she writes this to me 10 minutes after the time the class would have started! So I feel shitty for having wasted all my time, and I was already stuck their because I had an afternoon class, even if I would still be paid for part of the time wasted. \

That is when I bumped into Nat, the other language instructor who says "no prob, just switch with me, just move your afternoon class up a few hours till now, your students are here anyway doing something else, I'll shorten my class with them too, and we can all take the afternoon off". At first, the little American inside of me thought.... no, they have plans for the morning, have projects, need to have lunch sometine, how would we find a room?, how would it work out?, is that possible? there is a little fraud there somehow... nah nah ni, nah nah nah" . But let it be, and so it was.... I ended up taking an open classroom in the school, and made a deal with my students that we'd do about half the time, no one would know about it, and we all could have the afternoon free. And if we had to blame anyone it'd be Brigitte and Nat! But actually so many people had taken the day off anyway that there weren't even any secretaries or assistants around. So this morning was kind of like organized chaos, everything was on auto pilot, you know... photocopy machine works till the first jam then puff, improvised attendance sheets etc. In the end, I made out better than if Brigitte had come, for a lot of reasons as you'll see later.... financially 6 hours of class in 2.5 hours, with 4 of them paid and a whole afternoon free! Floating in France can either bite you hard in France, or you can win big time.

Next, I head out and start walking back to the station. And what do I see? People dressed up like Halloween singing and drinking beer in the street! So I learn of the BAC carnaval tradition! The equivalent of Seniors in High School sporadically decide (whenever they want to) to play hooky (all of them), go party in the street, all with the excuse of protesting the fact they have to take the Baccalaureat, a hard, thorough exam at the end of their studies, to get their high school diploma. In reality they drink a lot of beer, make a mess and condemn the napoleonic tradition. OMG!

Arriving at the station, I find a crowd of disgruntled people waiting for trains. The SNCF train workers have gone on strike again!!!! Again, nobody knows why, no apologies, no info available. My 1PM train ain't coming! It's 12:35, so I thought, here we go again... I dodged one bullet and survived well, just to get hit straight on in the head with another!! But don't dispair.... what did I see? The 10am train, arriving late, going in my direction! No, I didn't have a ticket, but I couldn't miss the opportunity. I had to jump on that train, like my life depended on it! Who knows when the 1pm would have come. And no conductors, means I could actually get away with it. Even if there were, today was my day and there was no way in hell they'd get a dime out of me...

All in all, I actually won again. It makes you feel alive, and strangely productive. I got up on the wrong side of the bed and turned every bad situation into a success story. Yeah, I know it's pure luck, and it's really the same message as before. My life is floating on a cloud, normally a storm cloud but today a beautiful bright fluffy one. Whatever, it feels good, and speaking of clouds, the underlying reason for everything happening today, the real unspoken reason, be it Brigitte's blue flu, the changing of classes from morning to afternoon, my pact with Nat and the students, the Senior carnaval, and the train strike.... if a miraculous thing happened today.... after 9 months, the sun came out in France. Yes, Spring has finally arrived.. It's incredible really! Getting out of my train in Metz, I looked up, and gasped. Oh my God. Now if you live in Florida I guess you cannot appreciate this, but in France this is really unexpected, because the weather is so terrible almost all of the time. So this was as close to being touched by the hand of God that you every possibly humanly imagine. Then you realize what the century old legends of Springtime in Paris and the beauty of France is about. You suddenly see flowers everywhere, geraniums, nacissus, lilies, green trees, think lawns. You hear the sweet sound of river water slowly floating downstream as you slowly saunter over the bridge. You notice the sunshine ricocheting off whitewashed buildings built centuries ago, gone with the winter coats, on with the miniskirts. The artists and wannabe artists are painting outdoors. Everyone seems to be in love with life and each other, walking, holding hands, running, rowing boats gently across the lake, sunbathing on benches everywhere. The French are just enjoying life and laughing (yes even laughing in France, it does exist), and, sipping those tall glasses of rosé wine in outdoor cafes, and of course, you bump into everyone you've ever met, and celebrate together, for of course, but of course, nobody is working, every bogus excuse is good for for being out, about and alive.

Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay, Rontay