Je viens pour le lapin

So, when your (slash my) French is bad, I find that it is helpful to have a first phrase planned for any encounter. "Je viens pour le lapin" ("I come for the rabbit") was my opener when I went to pick up an origami rabbit necklace I ordered at the I-Lick-Your-Windows-All-Of-August shop I mentioned in my last post. It worked! Origami is significant because I am, er, attentive to detail, and love paper. The bunny is significant because it is my totem animal (discovered in response to EH's insightful question). I chose cette animal because I consider rabbits both cute and ferocious, and like that they were previously considered rodents. The overall encounter also was significant, because it was the first time I ordered something here, it involved a number of phone calls, etc. Picking up the necklace also capped off a day I had done a number of things I was afraid of including getting a manicure and scheduling an appointment for a pedicure (or rather, a "beauté de pieds", because only a licensed podiatrist can give a "pedicure," bien sûr). I wore the rabbit tonight to my placement test for the French course at the Mairie, but it didn't help me with the future tense.

There have been a number of everyday accomplishments here, from the big-ish establishing bank accounts, apartment insurance, and applying for immigration long-stay carte de sejour, to minutiae such as figuring out where to get a sticky lint brush (Monoprix, for one), and what it is called (brosse adhésive). I tend not to blog or otherwise take note of such things, but really, these types of things are most of what I "do" here, and I can feel elated by these successes.

The daily difficulty is not a matter of pure "translation." At times, there is no exact parallel. People more sophisticated than I am may already know that the French have completely different cuts of boeuf. And tools like Google Translate can be far from perfect. E.g., it translated my message that my former apartment was in overall "terrific" condition to say that it was in overall "terrible" condition. I actually sent that to my landlord. (GT's also not great with food terms, though it's true that the actual translation of "volaille" just isn't specific enough for my taste).

Living here is the intellectual and emotional equivalent to how I felt when I took Pilates and hurt in muscles I didn't know existed. One is in shape in one's home culture in ways that are invisible, and there are so many cultural differences waiting to be discovered. Just as Rosetta Stone is meant to mimic language acquisition from the age of bébé, my daily life is an attempt to basically become a human from the perspective of a total ALF.

But my coping mechanism does help. My opener at the video store across the street? "Je suis cinephile." The guys behind the desk exclaimed happily, "C'est bon!" and opened an account for me.

Faire du lèche-vitrines

I don't care if it *is* Paris fashion. I'm not wearing it.

Comment Penser Chat

So for a little weekend fun, a book that N found:



Aside from the just bearable cuteness, this appears to be a fairly straightforward book by a vet about what to feed your cat, what to do if she stops using the litterbox, etc.

But Amazon's "those who looked at this, bought that" list revealed something about Comment Penser Les Gen:



I love that 16% bought "Mon chat et un hypocrite (Et en plus, il est gros.)"

Nos chers clients . . .

Gopnik says that it is not the yeses, but instead the noes of Paris that make it "romantic."

Gopnik is more obsessed with the rules-and-regulations culture, particularly at the parks (He writes that if you are jogging in the Jardin de Luxembourg, and you hear the French police jogging behind you, "you worry that you have violated some ordinance, stepped on some forbidden grass."). But you can feel these noes throughout Parisian life. In addition to the reservation culture, for restaurants that do not require reservations--and for many boulangeries, fromageries, or even supermarchés--one must negotiate a web of fermetures (closures), most of which are discovered after you have hopefully and hungrily made your way across the city, probably with an out-of-town friend in tow. When you find the door shut, the lights off, and maybe metal shutters rolled down, you can spend the walk home contemplating whether the fermeture is because it's Tuesday, because it's lunch, because it's Tuesday-lunch, because it's between 2:00 and 5:00, because it's a Sabbath or holiday, because "c'est août" (it's August--a good time for "fermeture annuelle"), or perhaps a fermeture permanente, or merely a fermeture impromptue on a slow business day or allowing a last-minute trip for the proprietors. There's no firm pattern: some places are closed Sundays, some Mondays, some Tuesdays, some in a patchwork throughout the week; and closures for a few hours during the day are so common that "service continu" (throughout open hours) is advertised.

But if you're lucky, in a darkened window you will encounter a crumpled quarter-sheet note, perhaps hand-written, that begins "Nos chers clients . . ." and explains what the closure is. Your heart imagines sometime in the future a whispered "yes," and you're in an on-again, off-again entanglement with an entire city that is hard-to-get.

So you toughen up, you assume you will not have your first choice, you grab that poulet fermier rôti at the boucherie, you call (as a back up) the café next door to the popular spot that never answers the phone, you attentez.

And when you finally have that cocotte, or find a "Nos chers clients . . ." note on the door assuring you that your favorite cocktail spot *is* open for the month of August, you can really taste the romance.



PS Mes chers clients, désole for the brief fermeture for the past week and a half. I promise such lapses will only happen intermittently and unpredictably.

You must have a rendezvous.

These words were spoken by the guy manning the information desk at the bank in the 11eme (our neighborhood starting in September). His use of French for only the word "rendezvous" made it sound more like he was reading our horoscope than explaining that we can't just show up to open a bank account.

Apparently, an appointment is required for many things. There are a number of restaurants we haven't even attempted to go to, because one must book many days or weeks in advance. But we were a bit surprised when we took two subways to the Deux Fois Plus de Piment from my earlier post, and were told we couldn't have even une fois de piment without a reservation. And we had a long hoof to the Latin Quarter on Saturday (moi in new boots) to catch another in the Eric Rohmer series playing at La Filmothèque, and wrestled a throng of bespectacled Frenchmen and women only to find "pas plus de places."

We are learning that anywhere you would want to eat requires a reservation (even if made the same day) and if you don't have one, your best bet probably is dining "chez vous." So on with the practicing: "Nous voudrion une table pour deux," and more importantly, how to understand what phrases might come flying back at machine-gun pace.

But we did manage to have a more horoscope-style "rendezvous." On Thursday, we went to La Filmo to see Rohmer's La Femme de l'Aviateur (Recommended). On the way over, we passed by the Palais de Justice, with Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité inscribed on the front. I asked N which of the three he would choose. He chose Fraternité. (I chose Liberté.) After the movie, we ate sans reservation at a brasserie on the Place de la Sorbonne. When we got home, N noticed he didn't have his backpack, which had his computer, and a bunch of important papers including official copies of our birth certificates (we had hoped to open our bank accounts). I called the restaurant, and managed in a mix of French and English to confirm they had our backpack--though the waiter after seeing what was inside joked, "Maybe I have found *my* backpack." As we walked back to the brasserie, and again passed the Palais de Justice, N said, "I'm sure glad I picked Fraternité."

Plus Rien Ne Vous Retient

"Nothing is holding you back." The message of a Metro advertisement for a website for bargain "vacances." (More on ads in a future post.)

The sentiment: Carefree with a touch of dread. It's true that nothing *might* hold me back, either in my work or by just confirming that I have no personal interests. I'm not the sort of person who gave up other pursuits to be a lawyer. (I just like being a lawyer.) If I ever imagined having a lot of free time, there wasn't *something* particular that I imagined filling that with. Like Peter Gibbons, I guess I just thought I would do nothing.

It is possible to sink into the nothing. The other day my only departure from the apartment was to get a chicken for dinner, after which I sang, "Voulez vous poulet avec moi ce soir?"

But there also a more buoyant side. Today: rode the Metro, got my LA Story-style message, secured husband's "lost" box of books, scored coffee fresh-ground for French press (which one Parisian said n'existe pas), bought laptop battery for blogging and Rosetta-Stoning, obtained various delightful edibles and wearables and drank in others with my eyes, most achieved while dodging through tourists in the 1er arrondisement, including a purposeful stroll through Tuileries to the Apple Store at the Louvre .

So I'll take "Plus Rien Ne Vous Retient" as carefree. It was about vacations after all. But I'll hold on to the touch of dread, just to keep things interesting.

Deux fois the fun

Two times . . . Two times. On the phrase "deux fois:" In White Night Wedding, a romantic comedy playing at Forum Des Halles, the bride-to-be is described as "deux fois plus jeune que" her bridegroom. (I find it un peu creepy that the cinema has "séances" and I can reserve one for myself.) A Szechuan restaurant's name advertises "Deux Fois Plus de Piment," for those who crave spicy food. And a product for women promises to be "deux fois plus petit; deux fois plus discret" (which doesn't rhyme in French.)

"Deux fois" is a happy, optimistic phrase. C'est une bonne chose for a woman to be twice as young as her man. And twice the pepper suggests largesse, rather than remarking on other restau's lacking in the spice department. They are fine--they are one time the pepper. But we are two times. Similarly twice as small has a positivity that "half the size" would not.

I'm definitely keeping a look out for pommes "frites deux fois."