insider

20-ish days into the semester, 3 chapters into the french textbook and half-way through a weekend. i'm tired and i feel like i have 24 children. i DO have 24 children. but thankfully i don't have to see them everyday. just answer their emails at 11:25pm on a saturday night. still, i can sit here at watch the lights of town from my desk, and for that i am thankful. i've also just acquired two chairs for my sunset watching on the balcony. an old hobby that i've returned to.

despite the sunsets and the balcony however, i still feel restless and find myself thinking a great deal about Paris and all i feel i have left behind there. i was told this week that i am an artist who thinks like a scientist, yet i long for the places (and space) in which i was able to think and dream and create. but if thinking like a scientist involves extensive daydreaming, i'm certainly a candidate...

had a mildly amusing moment today (or rather a set of three). met a guy in the lift as i was leaving the building this morning - he said he'd seen me on the bus yesterday and introduced himself so i did likewise. then as i was coming home from my shopping with miss mm, the same guy was in the lift with about 20 grocery bags. this time i got an invitation to a bbq here tomorrow, by way of explanation. the third time we ended up in the lift together we were both quite embarrassed ... me on my way back from the laundry room and he just coming in from a run. i think we exhausted nearly all elevator conversation. strange though, to see one person 3 times in the same day, and in the same place...

posted by Joanna Ruth @ 4:18 AM

the good news is that today, after several days of isolation (sigh), my phone works. the bad news is that i think my teaching is driving me crazy. i never thought i'd say it, but oh for the disorganization that was charles v. at least they didn't make you post homework on the internet ...

posted by Joanna Ruth @ 11:02 PM

well i've survived my first week of teaching, and the sun is still shining. scary though. particularly since it now involves getting up at 6:30am; something i've never considered a good idea in the past. mm has kindly been ferrying me around town, picking up all kinds of exciting things for my room with a view. and i WILL be happy there, just as soon as i get a phone line so i can communicate with the outside world. or parts of it at the very least. has the culture shock worn off yet? no. but perhaps it's a good thing that my memories of paris are so vivid and so happy. and i know that somewhere here too, there is space to be content with what i have, and excited about this new chapter ... well all the new chapters. i just have to find the space.

posted by Joanna Ruth @ 7:49 PM

how funny life is. went to see an outdoors production of As You Like It in the Arb last night. beautiful ...

it's Labor Day and I have a cold and am at work, lesson planning for tomorrow's character-building 8am class. shudder. i've always thought there ought to be special rewards for people who get up before 7am, and i'm about to find out if indeed there are any. am feeling a little sorry for myself still, but the sun is shining and there is a gcf bbq this afternoon, so food is in sight. plus there's always Calvin & Hobbes to go home to. my latest literary purchase, don't you know ...

posted by Joanna Ruth @ 5:40 PM

this is my memory from the summer:


Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
I would not change it.

-- Shakespeare, As You Like It

thinking about it, i suppose that's not a bad answer to my earlier complaints about solo supermarket expeditions. not that they really count as moments of adversity, but almost ...

posted by Joanna Ruth @ 11:49 PM

hmm. a year since i last wrote. it's september again, and i'm back in aa. familiar ground, but that doesn't mean i feel at home here. in fact - more than usual perhaps - i feel very out of place. paris seems like a world away, just as it always seems to when i'm here. and yet all this afternoon i kept thinking about it ... about all the little places i love and which i miss. somehow i don't know how to recapture that sense of excitement and adventure which i used to feel here. paris now seems like a magical place i can't get back to, and the place where i feel truly happy. but perhaps all of this is jetlag. that plus the fact that i've spent all day in teaching meetings trying vaguely to connect with the organised grad student i was last time i taught here. on the bright side, this weekend is labor weekend, which means time to buy furniture. definitely a priority since i only have a bed so far. not that i mind the sparse look (minimalist, right?) but there's only so much time you can spend eating on the floor. i took myself off to the supermarket last night and felt truly lonely for the first time in a long while. why it is that food shopping does this to me, i don't think i'll ever know. but it does, and it did ... i felt very sorry for myself wandering slowly back to the bus stop with my four plastic bags last night. sad to think that at times like that my definition of pure happiness is having someone to help you decide what to eat that evening. yet right now i can't think of anything sweeter.

posted by Joanna Ruth @ 11:37 PM