So, after a break of a day or two, I'm writing my first blog post. I don't know why, but even after a day or two not writing, it feels a bit strange coming back to it. It had just become something so part of my routine to write something, by the last few posts it was even pretty easy.
These last two days are interesting. I finally got some art supplies with whatever meager money I earned from tutoring. Wednesday night was my first private tutoring lesson with this old man I met in a park. I guess I should tell that story, its a good place to start.
So, walking home from the Bastille, there's a elevated park that runs along what used to be an old train line. Its called "La Viaduct Des Arts," its beautifully maintained and has a gives a higher vantage point to see paris as I walk home. Well, being poor, I'll do anything to cut corners on costs. Along the walk there are plants that are edible. Trying to figure out what plants are what, I nibble on ones that look familiar. I was eating what I assumed to be lavender when an old man came up and asked Nay, Mika, and I if we were english. Taken aback, and a bit offended at first, assuming that he was being hostile because we were not french speakers and eating random leaves in a public park. Well, it turns out he needed an english teacher for weekly classes. Thats how I got my first private student. I met him for my first class on tuesdays and it turns out he's a french poet who works for the government at some general desk job during the day. Very cool, we just spent an hour talking about whatever, in english. He doesn't so much want a teacher as someone with who to practice conversational english. We sit in cafés, drink coffee (him a strawberry milkshake) and talk. This week, I think I might bring him to the photography museum because its free.
With the money from my first lesson, I bought some art supplies. Mainly paper, a piece of charcoal, and a pencil (well not "mainly," thats it). I've been drawing on free newspapers with the back end of a broken fountain pen dipped in milk caps filled with acrylic inks I brought with me. Well, now that I have paper, I feel like a baller. Funny how shit can switch around so quickly, living in Paris is so expensive, but there are ways to make it work. I spend about 50 dollars a week, thats two overpriced beers from my watering hold (Le Piano Vache), two bottles of the second cheapest wine my corner store will sell me, a pouch of tobacco, and a fridge stocked full of bulk vegetables from the street market. You know, all the necessities. At first, having to budget like I do was totally foreign to me, and made me wish I had saved more money and learned to curb my consumption back in Toronto. Eating sushi here is probably about the same price as buying a week's worth of groceries from the market, to think that I ate sushi almost every other day in Toronto.
Friday night I was invited to the ambassador's home for some swank cocktail party. You know, go and schmooze with people who have too much power, eat their food, and drink their liquor. I didn't do much of the first, but plenty of eating and drinking. I got there a bit late, so I had some catching up to do, I drank tall glasses of dry gin and tonics (2/3 gin to tonic ratio) and was quickly at the level. The food was fantastic, and I got to eat the first sushi since I'd arrived in Paris. Also, the first salmon, the first proschuto, the first gin, the first tonic, the first -- oh whatever, you know, shit thats generally too bloody rich for me these days. The house was ridiculously ornate. Tall ceilings, painted panels, gold gilding, a fully staffed bar, well dressed butlers wandering and attending to you, a coat check guy waiting to take my coat with its holed pockets. My hair, dirty and unkept, was sticking straight up (my friend Mika said it makes me look like Tin Tin, my friend Annie says I look like a mad professor). I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb in my high tops. Well anyways, these old dignitaries retire too early in the evenings, so once we'd left, we ware back to our general budget of two dollars bottles (not that I paid for them, someone else who had left with us didn't seem to mind keeping the party going). We sat in the street and drank them before going to a bar. I didn't really feel like going in anywhere, so i sat in front and chain smoked.
I'm kind of in a drunken stupor at this point, but, the group decides to split up, take two cabs to Pigalle, which is near Montmartre and I know is kind of a rough neighborhood. I guess we're going to someone's house so I don't really think too much of it. Well, I'm in the second cab, which takes me a while to flag down because in france, you can only grab a taxi from a taxi cab stand (you can't just flag one). I eventually catch one that's stopped at a red light and just get in before waving to the others to follow. When we get to Pigalle, we don't really know where we're meeting up with the others, or what's even happening. So we wander down the strip towards the Moulin Rouge. And I see nay, he's horribly drunk and stumbling, which is generally normal, but he looks off.
As we walk, he tells me how stupid he is, etc, and after a bit of piecing him together I gather that he got robbed again. Two guys had cornered him in a bathroom and kind of slapped him a couple times, he was fine, his cheeks weren't even red. He said that he fought back and then they just took off. Well, as I'm trying to put it all together in my head, we were standing in some fast food restaurant waiting for someone we just met to finish using the bathroom, and our friend Corey to show up. Kind of steaming from the ears in rage, Nay gives himself a quick pocket check and realizes that my cellphone is gone (Nay and I share a phone, its my phone, but I've kind of boycotted them since I've arrived here, which is why he always carries it. I'm so tired of the things after living in Toronto. In fact, I haven't called anyone back in Toronto, and generally prefer to use pay phones while I'm here).
Angry, not necessarily that the phone is gone, but that this kind of shit has to happen to Nay. The people that we're with don't realize any of what's going on. So, I grab Nay's arm and decide to forgo the formalities of proper goodbyes with our new friends when neither of us are really in a state of mind for it. I tell nay that we have to backtrack, maybe you left it somewhere, maybe we'll bump into the guys that lifted it from you. I don't know what we were really trying to accomplish. I was pretty sober at this point, but had enough alcohol in me to be narrow sighted. Even though its a relatively rough area, there are still a lot of people, nothing serious could really happen without getting broken up quickly, I think to myself. Nay doesn't remember which fast food joint he was robbed in, so we trace our way back along his path, him checking each one. I walk a bit behind him, and watch everyone watching him. Some tease, some insult, he walks up to a group of them and asks "c'est ou mon mobile?" this guy kind of looks confused, maybe Nay thinks its the same guy, the guy tells him off and nay stumbles into the restaurant to check the bathrooms. I listen in on their conversation from outside, maybe hoping to hear them joke about how they stole a phone from him earlier, something, anything - but no, its nothing.
Maybe if I can see someone mention it, then I can do something; whatever, call the cops, get someone's attention, but otherwise, this is a lost cause. I wrap my hand in the sleeve of my sweater and punch a window in frustration, stupidly, and am thankful that it didn't break. Well after this, this guy just jumped out of a car and started trash talking Nay, I gave him a kind of pissed off look and was asked what his problem was. He ran over and swiped at me and just took off my glasses. I told him to go fuck himself and got ready to get punched or to punch, whatever happens in those stupid moments before a fight. But a friend of his grabbed him and they got back in the car and drove off... It was all so random. No incentive, no nothing, just like that, its over.
Frustrated, furious, and finding things wholly absurd by this point, I can't help but laugh hysterically and figure its about time to call a cab and get home. I bitch to the cab driver on the way. I ramble on in broken french, but when I'm drunk, even if its horrible, I feel like I'm speaking fine. He gets the point and seems as pissed off as I am.
Anyways, thats it, I'd keep catching you up, tell you about saturday. Not much though, hung over a bit, went out with some friends and wandered around the Bastille area trying to find a good bar to dance or even to sit. Today I learned how to prepare sweet potatoes in neat ways, making vegetarian soups and a vegen lentil dahl.
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Broadcast - PendulumLali Puna - Nin-Com-PopLali Puna - Left HandedB. Fleischmann & Ms. John Soda - Here She ComesStereolab - Miss ModularDeerhoof - Scream Team
