Ragusa

Overindulgence in chocolate is the main cause of my woes this evening. My stomach suffers a vague nauseous weighty feeling while the rest of me sinks idly into a sugar coma. Was I wrong to think it would  be a nice gesture to partake of one last portion of my rich Swiss Ragusa before heading off to bed early? All of this before joining the 9 to 5ers tomorrow at my first official employment in America since before the dawn of the economic crisis; all of this and a wrestling anxiety that something will go wrong at the ritzy Italian restaurant a few blocks shy of the White House with a  manager who bears a hint of mafiosi and vibes of vehement life force, along with a star chef of great notoriety and a history of lawsuits and financial mishaps. I shall be a hostess, meet and greet and seat and distribute menus and record reservations and take phone inquiries. How tough can that be?
Only time will tell. Can I hang on to the job and excel or will I be some sub par restaurant service worker and get kicked to the curb? Anywho, as the youth say nowadays, retail sucks and so does this economy and all the maleficent forces pulling its strings. Some more bright side: my tummy ache has dwindled, I am employed and I can't be fired for stacking and folding sweaters hors corporate norms. Stick it to the man! or woo-man!

Now I shall return to either the movie The Young Victoria or reading some seminal economists to try to figure out how it got this bad and where it might be going.

Goodnight D.C.

Stand under my umbrella, and take a whiff of Spring

Spring. Does it creep slowly upon us? The ice caps may be in a melting-kind of phase but it winter's still pushing its chill past my doormat and it's worn out its welcome. For all intensive purposes I am presently experiencing my first winter in Paris. I am a certified grade A Floridian. Those sunny days Winter chills only dared flirt with me enough to force a heavy sweater and a light jacket.

Spring seduces you with a host of new colors, warmth and sensations. Change your clothes, your attitude, the food on your table and the tune you whistle. Spring comes after a heavy season of sober clothes, dense meals and relative hibernation. The novelty it provides is essential to our rhythm. Spring is necessary not because it represents what's new and living but because it is new and it pulls the threads of seasonal transition into full throttle. It also holds the promise of summer, extended light and for some lazier days.

I like April rains, the first days eating and taking coffee on the terrasse, walks in the Parc Buttes Chaumont, afternoon viewing sessions of children sailing their boats in the central pond of the Jardin de Luxembourg and picnics in the Parc Montsouris. Sometimes I take a cue from my bum student life in Florida and nap in the parcs of Paris when the sun blazes but first I make sure to tote a blackbook and pen. Yes my feigned industrious look assures all I'm in the middle of writing an epic while stealing a bit of the most refreshing shut eye out there. 



January. New Year's, great. A decade's flown by and I barely noticed. I barely noticed the stroke of midnight on NYE, it must have been all that champagne and foie gras. Luckily I retained something of that evening. By the way all you cruel meat eaters, Goose foie gras is better than that of duck. I guess when it comes to sadistic french spreads I kick it old school, goose foie gras is le plus ancien des deux. By the way aren't I supposed to have some kind of inspiration for a self-righteous resolution like breaking a sweat more often or writing a novel or getting a second job? Guess not. Also I have to remember to wish everyone I encounter a Bonne Année and good health and a bounty of other blessings until the passing of January 31st. Les formules de politesse, c'est presque un corvée.

February. Still in winter looking forward to Spring, am rather sad that the sales are over.

March. God, it's still not Spring. I can't take this, I keep eating like it's winter but I'll shop for a spring wardrobe (you know before too many catch on about it) I even dream of the beach at night and am starting to nostalgically idealize Florida into this ethereal paradise. I'm buying my one-way ticket to Miami sooner than you think. Actually I should probably work on fitting into my Spring wear.

SPRING SELECTIONS

24 IS PURGATORY

People, let’s talk about age and youth. Are we not constantly goaded by age expectations and limitations?  What is considered appropriate and expected at a given age directs our days, the media being the biggest age bully bombarding us constantly with ageist propaganda.

     Zeroing in a bit, I’d like to talk about my age, 24, which I consider the mid-twenties. The mid-twenties is the new purgatory, void or wasteland for this generation’s post-adolescent, post-baccalaureate not quite self-actualized adults.  The pressures exerted by our woe-be-gone economy, domestically and abroad, have kept many promising grads far from gainful employment and pinned under the pressure of ever- inflating student loans. What we do? Go abroad to teach a bit, try subsidized programs like Teach for America and apply for Grad school. Does grad school secure a career? I sure hope so; otherwise I have no clue how I’m going to pay for it. It’s no secret, America runs on credit and interest. There’s no flying the coop, financial freedom for today’s twenty-somethings seems more and more impossible to obtain so we linger in our one bedroom apartments trying to enjoy what’s left of our supposed best years.

        It’s prolonging the settling down and multiplying process. We don’t want to live at home with la mamma but we certainly can’t have the responsibility of multiple mouths to feed hanging over our heads. Many concede the cliché:  this is a strictly male phenomenon, men want to be single, and men don’t want to commit or settle down and if women don’t it’s because they can’t nail one down. That’s a gross oversimplification.  It has less to do with avoiding the family life or finding a partner than looking for a safe bet, stability and security before plunking down on a good plot of new suburbia and attempting the nuclear family.Many have abandoned the rat race to get hitched and stay in one place party by choice and largely by circumstance. 

      We have been split up from family and friends, shipped off to different cities to find work or relevant study and have been bit with the travel bug. Personal projects and individualist goals are loftier than ever and although the world is getting smaller the distances we share with those in our social web are not.  Take myself for example, I currently live and work in Paris, France. My immediate family and a few high school friends live in North Florida. My best friend lives in Washington DC.  My boyfriend lives in Paris. My closest friends live in places as varied as Brussels, south-eastern and south-western France and Miami. The rest of my family is scattered throughout the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico. I’m planning to go to Graduate School next year either at my Alma Mater, University of Florida or in Washington, DC, a big shift in the center of my social web. 

            I find myself far from many of the ones I hold dear, except for the liens the phone and the web has afforded us,  without a decent job or financial backing and trying to figure out  what my next move is. I know I’m not the only one.  I wonder if the benefits of cosmopolitanism outweigh the pitfalls, if I should be worried about getting ‘older’ or losing my youth, if I look or act my age, if I’m too old for the shenanigans of college years and too young for these couply dinner parties, if I’m too irresponsible and spontaneous or fun and disorganized and mostly I worry about being financial instability. Am I wasting my time or just plodding on slowly with great anticipation? A family isn’t yet waiting in the wings for me but hopefully with a useful master’s degree and a decent job I can make a debut and take the first ticket out of twenty something purgatory. (the glitch is I’m bored of study and who wants to be shoved in a cubicle, no no no I’m not an idealist; I’m just lazy and like wide open spaces)

Epicurus: Letter on Happiness

I recently read Epicurus' Lettre sur le bonheur or Letter on Happiness in French. It's just as relevant and crucial to our meager survival in an overdrawn over-indebted world as it was in any period in history.

Short Documentary on Epicurus and his principles on happiness:


Link to the Letter to Menoeceus or Letter on Happiness: http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html

GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATION BLUES -

RANT RANT RANT RANT RANT! RAVE RAVE RAVE RAVE!

Do the PAPERWORK! Sell yourself! Do the PAPERWORK! Sell yourself! Convince others to market your product too....can't we all just look up gradschool applicants on facebook and see what shenanigans they've been up to for the past few years? That should give a rounded enough picture of the potential debtor.

GRE!
TRANSCRIPTS!
WRITING SAMPLES!
PERSONAL STATEMENTS!
STATEMENTS OF PURPOSE!
RECOMMENDATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS!
CVs!
FORMAT, EDIT, TAILOR YOURSELF!


too cool for school.

JUST GIVE ME A JOB AND LEAVE ME ALONE EDUCATION! I'm bored of your costs and demands, they tire me.

Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething: I remember being my 18 year old highschool graduate self and liking this song with the slightest apprehension that I would embody a similar fate. Good Grief.  Please donate money to recent liberal art graduates. They're not that difficult to spot, you know they're not really doing much and have decent CV's with no tangible skills, even a good GPA and study abroad. Please hire us, pretty please?



I'm actually just posting to my blog because I'm procrastinating putting the final touches and possible extras to go along with my gradschool application. If I didn't have that to do I would certainly be doing something else to avoid writing this post.

Cinéaste Jacques Tati inspires Kenzo Men's wear collection

"I love Tati's freedom, his joy, the way he was always whistling as he walked through the streets," Italian-born Marras told The Associated Press in a backstage interview. "In his films, we get the idea that he's looking at everything through a child's eyes, and that's what interests me: I want to look at things with his sense of amazement and see the joy in things."

-JENNY BARCHFIELD Associated Press Writer

"Kenzo’s heritage is inspiration from far-flung places. But the charming show sent out by Antonio Marras was about time travel in France. The starting point for elegant ginger coats, double-breasted suits and graphic knits was the cinéaste Jacques Tati and his Mr. Hulot character of the 1950s. The finale was a triumph of staging, imagination and inclusiveness, as the public joined the models recreating on the street the 1971 Tati movie “Trafic,” complete with vintage Citroëns."

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/fashion/25iht-rraf.html

"He had an inimitable silhouette," said Kenzo designer Antonio Marras. "I liked his eccentricity and anarchism."

Point de départ:

Here I am, known soley as M. Cantelus, living for a year in Parheeeee the métropole. My previous blog Parisienne Inadaptée has been scrapped; I was blocked, aesthetically and textually.

This is my ponctuated late-start so to speak. I retreated to the states for winter break, being there and back made room for ((change of perspective)).

       BLOG AMENDMENTS:

Amendment 1! Include appropriate accents when using French, on the last blog I didn't and I festered inside, wondering if others would catch it and call me out on sloppy spelling. The funny thing is the accents on this post are copied and pasted from song files on iTunes, perhaps next time I'll use the home page of Le Monde since I can't manage to learn or use accent shortcuts.

Amendment 2! Include photos as much as possible and start toting my camera around the city religiously.

Amendment 3! Always have writing material on hand to jot down input since I cling nostalgically to a four-function phone: dial, answer, hang-up, wait there's only three.

Amendment 4! Keep track of writing materials. I can't write a blog on crumpled napkins and folded receipts stashed away in purses, yellow envelopes and worn notebooks.

Amendment 5! Write and edit regularly.

Five ought to suffice if they pass and become entrenched in both hemispheres of my brain.