Let me begin by apologizing for the week long delay (I'm sure everyone, like my mother, has been eagerly awaiting the next entry)--I've cruising between classes, trying to find ones that fit me, going to job interviews, battling with the laundry machines, and using public transportation like nobody's business.
I'm listening to The Wallflowers in the theme of the "nature shrine" I built myself yesterday around my windows. I bought a bunch of plant wall decals, another potted plant to add to the small one I already have, and some tulips to put in a vase. I put these all around my windows (which look out onto the mountains), and put a postcard of Newport with the ocean in the corner of one of my windows, so I can look at all kinds of nature at once. I'd like to acquire some shells, etc, from home if anyone is willing to send some :D.
My schedule has worked out to look like this:
Monday & Tuesday afternoons to evenings I will be working for an offshoot UN org, translating their website from French into English and maybe attending some meetings and writing English summaries. They are also going to speak to me in French, even though they know English, to help me improve.
Wednesday & Thursday I will be taking my classes. I am going to take 3 English Lit classes: South African Lit After Apartheid, a master's level seminar called Water As A Literary Element, and a Toni Morrison seminar focusing on the use music in her novels.
I'm going to take a cinéma class taught in French that I liked a lot, I could understand pretty much everything the professor said, and she's so enthusiastic about cinéma it made me really happy. The course is actually going to be on three American films, which is a little cheating, but very interesting culturally. At one point in the class I was freaking out because I couldn't understand a word that she continued to use, but I quickly figured out that actually she was saying the word "jazz"! I felt a wave of relief wash over me that my confusion was really just over a familiar, friendly american word.
I also am going to audit a music course about music and children. Last week we talked about the first composed lullabies that were of Mary singing to Jesus. I really liked the class, but a lot of the terminology of the music classes I sat in on was too difficult for me to grasp, and I'd rather not have the pressure of having to learn them and instead just feeling like I can listen to the class and learn the vocab.
In my Toni Morrison class, the professor gave a history of American slavery in order to put African American literature into context, and I felt so guilty for being American the entire class. She kept saying things like "terrible, huh?" and I wanted to raise my hand and try to think of something to say to make it better, but, alas, I obviously could not and no one will ever be able to. I think taking this class will be very interesting culturally.
Most of my classes are in a building in a park area in the center of Geneva. One day after class, I sat down on a bench that looked like it had a good location, and just watched all the parents playing with their children. It is so incredible to me how easy it is to find joy and understanding universally in children. Maybe it's sometimes difficult for me to communicate across cultures with other adults, but I know how to play peekaboo behind the bus schedule sign with a child from anywhere in the world. The more I grow away from being a child, and the more I read and try to understand what the meaning of life is, I think that the answer to happiness, the answer that children have right and somehow forget in their "maturity," is simplicity. I sat for at least an hour, listening to parents wandering around the park looking for their "hiding" children saying "où es-tu?" and parents on bikes saying "attend, attend!" to the children who had biked too far ahead of them, and I just felt an overwhelming sensation of love and the simplicity of the love of parents for children and the love of children for everything else and everyone else around them.
Then, an even deeper revelation hit me. I had been discussing with Rachel earlier in the week how when you live in the city you have to have a certain kind of directed, rigid, focused walk. It's very impersonal, and it's really to block yourself out from everyone else to prevent yourself from being harmed or looking vulnerable. Even if you don't know where you are going, you need to pretend that you do and lie with your walk. But, somehow, here in the park, there is a universal trust. Maybe this has to do with the overwhelming presence of children and their unconditional trust, but I had the feeling that nothing bad could happen here in the sunshine. Even the teenagers hanging out in the park wouldn't be able to get away with anything that disturbed the peace--I can almost imagine that any sort of rebellion would be immediately extinguished by the utopian world of the park and the impenetrable love of parents for their children and children for the world.
I began to observe the way people moved around the park, and I realized, here in the park, it's the only place where it is NOT normal to be walking with a directed, impersonal "city" walk. In the park, these people are the weirdos, the people that you know are just using the park as a cut-through to somewhere else and not an important part of their day. Everyone else doesn't have any plans for where they are walking or going. In the park, you're not supposed to know where you are going.
Then I thought--hey, it's like me and how I "walk" through life. Maybe I don't have a directed walk, maybe I don't know exactly where I'm going, exactly what I want to do with my life, but maybe I'm just a kind of person that belongs in a park and not in a city. I'm not sure if that makes any sense...to anyone else or to myself...
thank you
ReplyDelete