Making Dinner with Tara, chez Pierre et Astrid

My Princetonian friend Tara has moved out of Gallia (the dorm) and into a host family: the very French Astrid and Pierre. Astrid is a famous singer and Pierre was once a lawyer but now organizes theatre and writes novels. This weekend they were away, so Tara and I made use of the kitchen! Tara is an excellent cook, which gives me just another reason to find her awesome.



I was amazed at her confident and carefree preparing of the chicken, so I took a picture (of her laughing at my amazement)!












Where there is an Emily, there will be vegetables!! Peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini.














And then we eat! (Here I surprised her with her mouth full, but she was a good sport and smiled anyway.)

Tomates (Tomatoes)

I think I had my first entire (and remembered) dream in French. This morning as I was planning out meals for the weekend, I wrote down “tomates” and thought, “Now who was I explaining that to?” I slowly remembered—in the dream I was holding a small tomato which had been cut in half, bright red like the ones from our garden, and was showing it to a woman who was standing next to something heaped with produce, but the tomatoes there were those too-big colorless ones that you use for who-knows-what. I was trying to explain to her what was different: that these tasted better, they were smaller and had better color, everything was packed into this little space, the seeds didn’t look as strange, they had been in the sun more, etc etc. The woman was skeptical of both my enthusiasm and the tomato.

A Poem by Max Jacob

Here’s another poem which I keep returning to. Last night at a bar/café called L’Artichaut, I read almost the entirety of his collection Derniers poèmes en vers et en prose. Before him, I had never read anyone who played with French rhythm and rhyme in this way, a little bit like Gerard Manley Hopkins.


Présence de Dieu

Une nuit je parcourais le ciel amour
une nuit de douce mère
où les étoiles étaient les feux du retour
et diaprées comme l’arc-en-ciel
une nuit que les étoiles disaient : « Je reviens ! »
Leur pitié saignait de mon sans repos
Car le malheur a percé mes pieds et mes mains
O résignation, c’est toi qui chantes le laus
Une nuit que les étoiles couvaient mon vol
j’aperçus un astre qui m’approchait
et il me versait un opium qui rend fol
et l’astre me séduisait avec son œil épais.
Tes caresses désenchevêtrent mes membres.
L’amour n’attend pas, il n’attend pas.
Il est astre et je suis plante : nous sommes ensemble
Tu me feras pousser comme un panorama.
Et quand je fus près de l’astre-événement,
je vis que c’était le Beau Dieu, le Concepteur
du monde, le Seigneur, le Génie-Gentleman.
Alors il m’absorba comme une liqueur :
c’est un secret et il n’y a pas de mots pour dire
que mon sang en Lui Dieu se retire
comme en un seul cœur.

Strasbourg by camera

View of Strasbourg from the platform of the cathedral; my first day in France, and within two hours of arriving at the program, I was climbing up a spire!



What miracle--a sunny day! That's my (very unhealthy) lunch on the windsill : part of a baguette and some cheeeese. Strasbourg is a little like New Jersey in that it is mostly gray, so when the sun comes out you REALLY notice it.



Leeeaaaaning precariously out the window (don't worry Mom!) to the right (the West), I can see the canal of the Ill river and the sleek rumbling tram.










Our room! The messy side is of course mine.



Leeeeaaaaning out the window to the left, you can see our neighbors' balcony (so jealous!) and the sad stumpy plane trees (les platanes) waiting for spring.







In the evenings, Tara and I go wandering around the "downtown", l'Ile or la vielle ville etc. Sometimes we're looking for food, sometimes we're just taking the long route to get to a store, sometimes we're just filling in our mental maps by going down every small street where we haven't been. Last week, we discovered this glittery tiny restaurant, on the rue des Tailleurs-de-Pierre (if my memory doesn't fault me).



Tara considers how best to capture the gray radiance of les jardins de l'Universite, a stretch of manicured lawns and plane trees just behind (north) of Gallia, our dorm, and behind (east) of the Palais Universitaire, home of my beloved theology departments.



We walked further (east) into the garden; here I pose happily with the Palais Universitaire in the background. What you can't see from here is that the ridge of the building is lined with friendly famous people like Zwingli, Luther, etc.











Finding color where I can.



























Oh, hey there Cathedral!























Tara at the place Gutenberg, where Saturday mornings there are books for sale! Also a good winstub, which we have not yet tried.

Motif : Numbers

Most of you know that I am not so good with numbers. When they are resting well-behaved on the page and no one’s timing me, I can handle them all right, but as soon as they start tumbling out of people’s mouths I get knocked right over. If this is the case in English, it is doubly so in French! For those of you who have not suffered through Introductory French, here’s the run-down : French numbers plod along dutifully up to ten (un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix), then make a few new words (onze douze treize quatorze quinze seize), and then start adding ten and the number (dix-sept dix-huit dix-neuf). This last pattern continues, because after each group of ten (20 vingt, 30 trente, 40 quarante, 50 cinquante, 60 soixante) you simply say also the second digit. For example, 23 is vingt trois, literally “twenty three”.

So the numerical system SEEMS logical, and it lulls you into a false sense of security until, at 70, it ATTACKS you with Gallic absurdity! Instead of creating a new word (“seventy” or “setenta”), it gives you soixante-dix, literally “sixty-ten”! Which means to say 74 you say soixante-quatorze, “sixty-fourteen”! And it doesn’t stop there! 80 is quatre-vingts, “four twenties”, and ninety is quatre-vingt-dix, “four-twenties-ten”! To say 93 you say “four-twenties-thirteen”! My poor brain!

So when paying for things, we have started simply handing them more than enough money and getting change. And I practice muttering the bigger numbers under my breath as I walk along the street, which is doubtless going a long way in endearing me to the locals.


Another number difference : military time, which is used everywhere here. I’ve gotten very good at adding and subtracting 12; I don’t even need a paper and pencil anymore! Two numbers I learned very quickly : “14h” and “19h”. Two p.m. is when stores open again, after the 2 hour lunch break; and 7 p.m. is when it is reasonable to look for dinner. And woe to the clueless one (i.e. myself) who looks to go anywhere on a Sunday, because the only option will be a kosher grocery store. Stores which say they are “ouvert tous les jours!” mean Monday through Saturday.

Motif : Water

written 22 January

Strasbourg, in my mind, is made up of canals, bridges, and churches. The water is dark and moves in a slow stream with occasional rushes of wavelets in scallop-edged patterns. On the water are swans! Last night, walking across the Pont St-Guillaume, Tara and I turned to the northern side and saw (it seemed to us) all of the swans in the city, who’d just decided to gather on this one spot in the yellow lamplight and cavort in the gentle current. Tara leaned over and said, “I hear they’re flesh-eating swans. Strasbourg’s piranhas.” We have yet to risk this rumor by walking on the low path alongside the canals [cf scene in Charade], but we did see a woman feeding them bread.

While this peaceful water-lined tableau sets the outdoor scene, Tara and I have had some very interesting tribulations with the water inside of our dorm, Cité Universitaire Gallia. Our room is very clean, with high ceilings and a big window, and 2 each of beds, desks, dressers and sinks; it’s in a very large building with (as Alex says) “an imposing neo-Gothic façade”, about 6 floors but twice as many flights of stairs, and each floor is a maze of wide tiled hallways lined with the tall blue double doors which open into the single dorm rooms. Unfortunately, it seems that only one shower in the entire building works! On each floor there are (supposedly) three stalls contained in one large room--on our floor, the entire group is locked for “renovation” (though no work is being done); on the floor below us, the room has a ginormous hole in the ground covered with a pink towel and a sign is posted which says essentially “Watch Out! There is a dangerous hole here!”; on the lowest floor they are all nailed shut; and on the floor above us, one of the stalls is missing a showerhead, one is nailed shut, and one (thanks be to God!) is functioning, complete with hot water IF you turn the handle all the way to the cold side. The first night we were there, the hot water didn’t come on at all so we, the jet-lagged and cobble-stone weary, washed our hair in the blessedly wide sinks.

One of the first unexpected differences I discovered here is the relationship to drinking water—that is, the French do not drink very much water at all! Although here you don’t risk elevation sickness, it is still a little startling to me to ask for a glass of water and receive a cup approximate 3 ½ inches high, half-full of water. I feel like a whale (or a shark, or a mermaid) when I drink it in one gulp and ask for more. Considering how much coffee and wine and beer is drunk in an average day, I’m surprised more people are not sick with dehydration! It remains a mystery. Maybe in a few weeks I will discover some secret “they” are hiding from us; perhaps they have gills which drink the humidity out of the air. In the meantime I’ll continue gulping my carafes d’eau and sipping from the sink.

New Vocabulary!

Although there is an exclamation mark in the title, it’s not because I’ve learned any new swear words or crude expressions—yet. I have however learned lots of good things, some of which are included below.

tatiner : to spread [EDIT : TARTINER]
This is a food word, which I learned because some of the cheese packages have a cow or block of cheese saying “Tatinez-moi!”, the equivalent of the English advertising phrase “I’m spreadable!” Both are pretty weird, if you think about it.

traiteur : caterer
Tara and I puzzled over this one for a few days as we’ve been walking around the city—“The Traitor Pub? They’re going to betray the butter mob against the cheese brigands? What?” Turns out many places have good food which you can also buy prepared in biggish quantities for your family dinner.

lisse et soyeux : smooth and silky
Two words which sound like their meanings ; seen on a bottle of conditioner, or « après-shampooing ».

hebdomadaire : weekly
I’m going to start using the English equivalent of this one—so fun to say! When I first saw it, it reminded me of the name of some primordial monster or folk tale creature. (Don’t you think so, Diana?)

dentelle : lace
I had to look this up because a professor used it in class (“Sacrements d’initiation” with the mean Prof. Wagner). As an example of the effect of ritual, he was describing the arrival of important dignitaries to a university ceremony—how they walked so solemnly, and spoke slowly, and also how they dressed. In describing one man, he said that he was “covered and covered in dentelle”, motioning around his throat and the front of his shirt. The first thing I thought of was teeth; I wondered if it was a French tradition for especially important university folks to wear the teeth of their conquered, dejected, failing students, in which case I definitely should have studied in Spain. Luckily, it isn’t. They just like lace.

A Poem by Jules Supervielle

For my second JP (“junior paper”, 30pp for the Comp Lit Dept) I’m going to work with French poetry and “thematics”, i.e. something which shows up in the particular poet(s) I’ve picked. Since I’m a monomaniac [cf Prof van Z’s book], I’ll be talking about religion—for example, how the image of baptism is used, how God is addressed, the relationship between God and the earth, etc. I’ve narrowed my poets to three choices : the ecstatic Paul Claudel, the convert Max Jacob, and the “Franciscan” Jules Supervielle. All are French poets, all are Roman Catholic.
I’ve been reading their work, trying to decide; here’s one of my favorites, by Jules Supervielle.

Haute mer

Parmi les oiseaux et les lunes
Qui hantent le dessous des mers
Et qu’on devine à la surface
Aux folles phases de l’écume,

Parmi l’aveugle témoignage
Et les sillages sous-marins
De mille poissons sans visage
Qui cachent en eux leur chemin,

Le noyé cherche la chanson
Où s’était formé son jeune âge,
Ecoute en vain les coquillages
Et les fait choir au sombre fond.