Les conjugaisons de la vie

Time for a pleasure check. 

If this is the summer to indulge in my little pleasures, those many amuse-bouches that together nourish my Being (capitalized à la Eckhart Tolle), how am I doing?  Am I partaking in les petits plaisirs that I set out to do?  Well, considering where I find myself, it’s pretty fucking hard not to.  I mean, pastry cases and espressos are as prevalent as planned work signs are on the G-train in Brooklyn.  Museums are Paris’ Starbucks.  And I’ll accept your Lincoln Center bid and raise you this Palais Garnier.  This city is an unbelievable package gorgeously wrapped in the French language.  Silken sentences float around me just waiting to be grabbed and relished… although that doesn’t make them any easier to understand.  Hey – I’ve only had five days of class.  Gimme a few days…

I suppose the better question, though, isn’t if I’m partaking in these pleasures, but rather if I’m even noticing that they’re there.  I’m not disillusioned enough to think that my normal life in Brooklyn is void of tiny pleasures.  On the contrary, I know there is a smorgasbord of luxuries and joys – both big (summer trips abroad) and small (a great bakery on the corner) – that I often take for granted.  Here, though, when I’m stripped of the weight of distraction, they’re so much easier to see.

I encountered a petit plaisir as I lazily sat at one of the countless cafés and a small parade of preschoolers marched by – hand-in-hand with their partner – singing with their daycare teacher.  There was the realization that our fancy cheese at home – the kind that you only find imprisoned by a glass case – is just cheese here.  Just Cheese.  Not Fancy Cheese.  There was the realization that cell phones work on the metro here – but no one uses them.  Tranquility is still sacred in some places.  There was the grandeur of the Musée d’Orsay and the surrounding arrondissements juxtaposed against the graffiti and hipsterdom of my own Parisian ‘hood, Belleville.  There was the first glass – and the first bottle – of wine.  There was the video chat with my family as I gave them a tour of the apartment.  There was the moment when a group of British tourists walked up to me and said, “Excuse me?  Do you speak English?  We’re trying to get to the Opera House.”  Ha.  They thought I was French.  There was the realization of my Parisian dream: riding a bike along the Seine with a baguette sticking out of the basket.  

But my greatest pleasures over the past week have been with this language that is undoubtedly trying to woo me into its bed with its fluidity, its sensuality, its smooth and seamless flow from one word to the next.  Ooh la la.  I’ve grown accustomed to practicing my numbers in French as I climb to the apartment on the seventh story.  I eavesdrop as I eat my crêpe, sometimes forgetting to appreciate the mushrooms and oozing cheese as I attempt to dissect the message of my fellow diners’ conversations.  I smile after every interaction – whether it’s requesting my second pain au chocolate of the day, asking for directions to Fontainebleau’s chateau, or simply asking my professeur what her thoughts are on the Mona Lisa (Granted, I couldn’t fully understand her answer but that’s neither here nor there.  I was simply thrilled that I spontaneously came up with a question that pertained to the conversation at hand.)

As strange as it sounds to many, I’m sure, I’m finding great pleasure in verb conjugations.  There’s something so systematic, so orderly about it that I find beautiful.  My notebook is quickly becoming my own work of art, one filled with tiny verb charts sprinkled with multicolored circles and arrows pointing out inevitable irregularities that veer from the orthographic path.  For those unfamiliar with the often bemoaned task of verb conjugation, it’s basically the process of taking an infinitive (to walk, to run, to love, to relax) and changing its form so that it gives us two major pieces of information: 1) the subject, and 2) the tense.  I walked.  You are running.  We love.  She will relax.  Voilá.  You’ve conjugated.

The Romance languages are unique in that every verb can be conjugated six times in each tense.  Of course, these conjugations depend upon the subject:

French: je, tu, vous, il, elle, nous, vous, elles, ils

Spanish: yo, tú, él, ella, usted, nosotros, vosotros, ellos, ellas, ustedes

Portuguese: eu, tu/você, ele, ela, nós, vocês, eles, elas

(I know, I haven’t included Italian and Romanian… but I haven’t learned those yet. J)

Perhaps the joy I find in conjugating a verb appropriately is similar to the satisfaction felt by a mathematician who correctly solves an equation.  The difference, however, is that while an incorrect answer to an equation may derail subsequent mathematic endeavors, an incorrect conjugation may go unnoticed or unacknowledged in an everyday conversation: “Where be the bathroom?”  “I eats foie gras last night.”  “We wearing a bindi in that picture.”  While incorrect, you would be understood, and it’s unlikely that someone would correct you despite hearing the error.  So it goes in real life, I suppose.  We sometimes fill in the blanks with people/things/experiences that we think are right – but in reality aren’t meant to be there.  Often, those on the outside notice the mistakes before we do, but most choose to remain silent.  The life grammarians – those who bring a red pen to what we might otherwise overlook – are priceless.  And far too rare.

What’s interesting in French – and unique amongst the Romance languages, at least to my knowledge – is that there are a series of conjugations which are spelled differently (i.e. J’aime, Tu aimes, Ils aiment) but pronounced the exact same way.  Ironically, then, you may conjugate a verb incorrectly in your head but those listening would never know.  No matter how many life grammarians you’re able to surround yourself with, sometimes it’s only through the arduous process of self-editing that we arrive at bliss – grammatical and otherwise.

Maybe my meanderings are my attempt at facilitating that process.  Autocorrect à la Microsoft Word doesn’t exist yet.  Have I been filling in the blanks of my life with the right ils and elles, hes and shes and its and theys?  Have I given of myself enough to my friends, family, and community so that I can truly say there is a nous/nosotros/nós/we?  Have I maintained a positive relationship with tu and vous?  Am je/yo/eu/I focusing my energy on those aspects of my life which promote my own happiness?

Clearly, these queries cannot be answered in a single sitting.  However, to jumpstart the process, maybe tu should hop on a plane, je will pick up some wine, and nous can discuss.  D’accord ?

Bonjour, Paris.

A year has passed.  

Last July’s afternoons of temples and chai, monsoons and mosques have given way to this July’s adventure, one decidedly distinct from the last.  While the 29-year-old Joe sought to fulfill a lifelong dream of South Asian adventure – packing lightly, boarding a plane/train/bus/scooter/camel every few days and heading somewhere new – this 30-year-old Joe was looking for one thing: leisure. 

Bienvenue à Paris.

Don’t get me wrong.  I had moments of serenity in India which I doubt I’ll ever be able to duplicate.  Lying at the base of the Taj Mahal, letting my legs, back, arms, and head come in contact with the greatest manifestation of human capability.  Lazily chatting and laughing with Mangala as the monsoon beautifully raged around us.  Eating countless paranthas as I stared at Udaipur’s floating palace.  Those moments have sustained me over the last year.  When the to do list seemed unending, when the bills seemed daunting, when my bed felt empty, when I felt too far away from the ones I love, when life decisions seemed really fucking hard… well… I probably should have gone to a therapist, but instead I opened up iPhoto and clicked on “India”.  It was cheaper. 

Reliving the moments with the smiling and giddy kids in Delhi’s Hama Masjid, I definitely shed a tear or twenty – happy ones, of course.

That got me thinking: When else have I cried?  Not because of heartbreak or life’s menagerie of mini and major tragedies, but rather of sweet nostalgia and unbridled, pure happiness.  I know I mentioned some of these in last year’s blog entries – but over the course of many full moons a few other joyful moments inevitably join the list:

• ·      Seeing Isaac and Sydney peacefully sleeping for the fist time
• ·      Hearing the symphonic cacophony of crashing waterfalls and tropical bird calls at Iguaçu
• ·      Bundling up under the shadow of the massive electric blue Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina
• ·      Turning the corner and being beautifully slapped by the grandeur of the Taj Mahal
• ·      Hearing the eloquence of a group of UCHS students as they recorded their own “It Gets Better” video to end anti-LGBT sentiment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo3cSFN9tTI) 

Maybe it’s coincidence or maybe it’s the universe telling me something, but this question of happiness has continually been on my mind lately.  As evidence, reference my nightstand book pile: The Big Five for Life by John Strelecky (Thanks, Maya!), The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (Thanks, Christine!), and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (Thanks, Josh!).  While distinctly different books, they all focus on living passionately, living happily, living unburdened.  In the last of the three, for instance, Tolle tells us that we are not our mind, not the byproduct of our thinking.  The string of thoughts that incessantly pelts us, on the contrary, is separate from our true Being.  It’s in those gaps between our thoughts that we are truly able to connect with our core.  I like to think of it as those times when I really – I mean, REALLY – exhale and appreciate what’s around me – or more generally, when I appreciate life. 

 

So, when does that happen for me?  What are the five things that really make me happy?

It may seem like an easy task, but as Teri, Kim, and I started to come up with lists over wine and Parisian treats last night, it became apparent that this is a harder task than originally thought.

24 hours later, I’ve come up with a preliminary list, of course subject to change as I continue to find out what really makes me happy:

•  ·      Travel – Considering three of the five moments I mentioned above took place while traveling, this should come as no surprise.  Travel, I suppose, shouldn’t be limited to the type that requires a plane ticket and a passport (although I do consider a world map to be more of a challenge than a guide).  I do still find immense pleasure in hopping on my bike or slipping into my running shoes and “traveling” to some unknown part of Queens or the West Village.  I get the same rush when I stumble across a great restaurant, too.  Is travel synonymous with discovery, then?

• ·      The human spirit – I struggled to classify some of my happiest moments: the Christmases with my family, the “orphan Thanksgivings,” the “ah-hah!” moments in the classroom, the night of the presidential election in a dive bar in Cambridge, the total awe of the Taj Mahal and the sculpture wing of the Louvre… but all of them boil down to the human spirit and what we as a species, as a group of beings, as a community are able to accomplish.  We – you and I and every one that has walked and will walk this rock – are pretty amazing when you stop to think about it.

• ·      Possibility – Similar to my last point, there is something sublimely beautiful about our ability to accomplish something once thought to be impossible or never done before.  Fighting for civil rights or simply striving to be a compassionate and empathetic individual requires us to believe in the possibility of a better world.  When I find myself dreaming about possibility – what can be rather than what is – I am truly happy.

• ·      Beauty – Does this make me vain?  I suppose if I defined beauty as whatever the Kardashians tell me is beautiful, perhaps.  But the beauty that really makes me happy is the kind that I see when traveling (either abroad or in my own backyard) or observing fleeting moments of human interaction.  Beauty is a carefully planned meal.  It’s a silly game between a mother and a child.  It’s a painting.  It’s a well-designed dress.  It's Notre Dame.  It’s a side-splitting improv show.  It’s a cascade of flowering plants coming down the balcony of a Parisian apartment.  It’s whatever makes me smile simply by looking at it.

• ·      Leisure – There.  I said it.  I like leisure.  Isn’t it funny that it’s almost a dirty word in our society?  “Man of leisure” has such a negative connotation.  It conjures up some trust fund baby whose life revolves around clubs and cocaine, cars and courtside tickets.  Compared to the 35-hour workweek of France and the café culture, we Americans don’t know how the hell to relax.  We are so goddamned uptight and afraid to simply ENJOY.  Fuck that.  I like to relax.  I like to sit and observe for no other reason than to sit and observe.  I’m thoroughly enjoying drinking this 1,45€ bottle of wine and watching the rain fall on the Sacre Coeur.  You’re hearing it here first: From this day forward, I declare myself a man of leisure. 

If I am most at peace – my mind, my usually tense shoulders - in the calming shadow of these happiness pillars, then am I a slave to my mind in the absence of one?  Two?  Three?  While afraid to admit it, I think I am.

So, why am I in Paris?  The leisure, I suppose.  It is increasingly more difficult to step back and appreciate the tiny moments of relaxation and joy at home – so my hope is to rediscover those little treasures.  I love the common use of the word petit in French – petit déjeuner (“little lunch” meaning breakfast), petite mort (“little death” meaning orgasm), petits fours (“little ovens” meaning small confections or sweets) and petit ami (“little friend” meaning boyfriend), so this trip is my attempt to find les petits plaisirs – “the little pleasures” that exist in life.  I will no longer feel bad for reveling in them.  After all, as the essayist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson wrote, “It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.”