9 posts tagged “paris”
It's such a beautiful day, but I find no happiness in it.
What's great about having this Vox is that I don't have to censor it. Mom has been a devoted reader to the Paris blog. She knows all and everything that's going on with me through that blog. And that's great. I want her to know, but there are things that she shouldn't know. We all keep secrets from our mothers because we want to protect them.
Last night was a really depressing night. I got an email from a former professor asking if I wanted to TA with her and my former TA who is now a teacher. I had a huge crush on this TA. I learned a lot from him. And they wanted me to work with them. They wanted me to help teach kids like myself who knew little to nothing about shooting on film. But I had to say no because I'm in Paris.
And for the first time in a long time I wanted to go home.
I cried after sending her an email telling her that I had to decline the offer. It just felt like saying no to a once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean, I thought she had retired already, there were rumors before I left. And Jason, the old TA, I thought that he was already done with grad school. All this might be true, when I get back for my last year.
Then Nayo called, after I was done crying, and while talking to her, I couldn't help but cry again. I hung up. Then I started to wash my clothes in the sink. I'm trying to save money so I can see some other beautiful places. I wrung all the extra water from my clothes into the sink and hung them on the clothesline that hangs from my door to the far side of the room. I stood under my laundry and felt drops of water fall onto my arms and shoulders and watched drops falling onto the tile floor. I stood there for a while, not moving.
How do you feel about your birthday? Do you look forward to it and remind all your friends, or do you dread it and try to keep it a secret?
Blurg. Total dread. I never really want to celebrate it. My birthday always depresses me 'cuz I look back on all the things I haven't done and now I'm a year older. It's this twice yearly sad state that always comes around like the Nordstrom twice yearly sale. It comes on my birthday and around Christmas. Christmas because I'm never really happy around Christmas and New Year's.
I'll be spending my birthday in Paris this year. We'll see how it goes.
What are you most grateful for in your life right now?
Submitted by Becca-Pink.
For my parents who are financing my year abroad, my dream to live in Paris. Who believe in me and my passions. Who hide their fear for me being in a foreign country, living alone. Who hide their fear for my future in film. I know they're scared for me. I know they're scared, but they hide it really well because they don't want me to know, to be afraid and lose focus. I want to succeed for them. I want to pay them back, pay it all back. But...they tell me it's not necessary. That they do this because I'm their daughter, and they love me.
I'm so unbelievably blessed to have them. I love them so much and I tell them that whenever they're on the phone.
Wow, I've never cried this hard since the Keaton epiphany.
I can't stop thinking about the future. Like, what am I going to do when I get back to California? This whole study abroad thing has just become this hiatus from school/normal life/the familiar. And I'm glad I had it, am having this "break." But once I get back home, I have to start up again. You know, start actually doing things. Not that I'm not doing things here. But, if anything, this past year in Paris has been like a vacation. And I love it, but it's going to come to an end like all vacations. There's a lot to accomplish when I get back.
- Start filming mockumentary for Kuya's wedding: This might involve at least 2 weeks of shooting in July and a couple days in August.
- Get top wisdom teeth removed: I can feel them coming already and messing up my top row of teeth. Crap. I have this thing about my teeth. This can also ruin my shooting schedule. We'll see.
- Clean: A lot of things. Just get rid of things that I don't need anymore. Can do without it. Living here has taught me to be more simple, live with simplicity. I'm also going to clean the hard drive and possible get another one.
- Bike: I'm going to finish what I started last summer. The Spartan. That was the fixed gear project I told you about. I bought a blue bike called "Spartan" on the head tube. I was going to turn it into a fixed gear beast as an homage to the film 300.
- School stuff: Just figure out what I'm going to do my last year of school. Should I get the French degree? Do I even deserve it? Because I don't feel like I do. I don't even want to call myself a French major.
I think that's good for now. That's a lot, actually. Shouldn't overload. If I can get all these things done throughout the summer, then I'll be happy.
I'm starting to really like Vox. I like the whole audio, videos, books, collections deal because it allows me to record what I've been listening to, watching, and reading while being in Paris. And that's important to me. Lately, I've become obsessed with recording everything I've been doing here. Not so much crossing off lists of things, but just listing things I did.
Anyway...keep it up Vox!
New Year's insanity. Here's what happened. Taken straight from the Paris blog:
New Year's was...interesting to say the least. First...while getting ready to meet my friend, I couldn't find my wallet. I called her saying I don't think I'll be able to make it, I lost my wallet. Then I turned my studio upside down looking for it, tearing my bed apart, looking through last night's jacket's pockets. There was this rage inside me, like an assassin who's been double crossed by her handler, but I felt calm, composed. This can be fixed. The night before I had switched wallets, using my smaller one, because I didn't want to carry a purse, and I only put the bare essentials in it. A 20 euro bill, my carte bleue (atm), and my carte de sejour. All three can be replaced. It was a shit wallet anyway. Wallets shouldn't cost more than the money in them.
After looking in the last possible place, I stood in the middle of my tornado-hit studio, and went back to the jacket I wore the night before. In the effing SLEEVE of my jacket was my shit wallet. There's a lesson in this somewhere.
Was livid and sober the whole night at Kathy's who lives near the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysées. It was nice of her to open her home to us since she lives nearby the Tour Eiffel. I was having a good time, but I can easily see from the outside that it did not appear so. I was offered wine, rum and coke, but I only took some coffee. I didn't want to get shitfaced or anything, I just wanted to be awake enough to watch everyone else get drunk. People kept asking me if I was having a good time, and I said yes I'm just so happy I don't have to express it physically.
People were wondering where to go for New Years, Eiffel Tower or stay at the Champs? Without thinking, I said that I didn't care. Even if we didn't make it, it didn't matter to me. I could hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth, me of all people saying this with my list of things to do in Paris, my must-see-this, must-go-to-that. "But it's Paris!" they said. "But it's New Year's! How many times are you going to be in Paris for New Year's?" I said, you have a point. But in my head I still didn't care. This deranged psycho in my mind that has never made an appearance had this urge to destroy.
I wanted to miss it. I wanted us to be lost at the stroke of midnight, hearing the screams of celebration from far away, and seeing the highest reaches of the sparks of fireworks above dark and vacant buildings and never the whole, glorious explosion. I wanted to see disappointed faces and people make excuses. "We got lost", "we didn't leave early enough", "it's no big deal". But it would be a big deal to them.
I thought about this, staring intently at a rug as a plate of cheese was being passed around, and I felt a smile forming on my face.
I stepped into Kathy's hallway to get some air. Be cool. Don't go crazy. Don't make a scene. Fake everything if you have to (I couldn't). I didn't know what was wrong with me, and I hated myself for thinking these things. It could have been the rage I had at "losing" my wallet. It could have been the fact that I was reading Fight Club currently and Tyler Durden has poisoned my brain. Where did this source of destroying come from?
The wallet, the calm panic, the unimportance to me of doing something extravagant because it's New Years and it's Paris...this all meant something. And I'm still not totally clear what, even as I walked from the Marais to home this morning trying to think about what it meant, I can't grasp it all.
We made it though, even though our group got separated. We were at Trocadero with the full view of the Tour Eiffel, and without a countdown, at midnight, it sparkled bright and clear and fireworks went off, and that's how it should be--no countdown--ever since I was a kid I've hated the stupid countdown and everyone shouting 3, 2, 1, and it was as perfect as I had believed everyone had wanted. I was happy that everyone else was happy and that their night had not been ruined. Afterwards we waded through throngs of people, of police, we walked on the streets in front of cars because everyone else was doing it. We dodged tourists, shouted the bass line of White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" 'cuz French teenagers loved that, and were in search of a bar. Kathy and I decided not join the trek for a bar so I went to her place after walking for an hour of seeing no bars or expensive ones and crashed there.
And at the end of the night, I no longer cared about perfection, about being complete. About crossing of my list of things to do in Paris. Being here is more than that, goes beyond that. I didn't even bring my camera to Trocadero to document it all. I was there; it happened. I saw it with my own eyes. I no longer felt that I should have evidence to show people back home, to boast in their faces, "See what I did? See that?" That wasn't important anymore. It should not have been.
But this, this post,
this blog, the act of writing (or typing), the hour or so I spend a day
my fingers pounding on the keys or my pen on paper, that's important.
Has always been since the beginning, and it was always for me and never
for you, although I know you want to think it's for you. This won't
stop. You will always find me here.
Show us what you're looking forward to in 2008.
As much as I love Paris, I can't wait to go back to LA in July. Because right when I get off the plane, I'm asking my family to take me to Tommy's for a burger, chili cheese fries, and a cherry Coke. Yum. I'm also looking forward to seeing my family, but that's a given.
Oh my gosh, how cute are these boys!?!?! Was visiting the Sartorialist site like I sometimes do, and this is his latest post: two lovely New Yorker boys in winter. Lovely, lovely. And look at their smiles! They're not all sullen and brooding like those models in CK ads or whatever. They look real.
Usually my standards for a boy does not include his clothing. I mean, I don't want him to look like a bum, but I didn't care about what he wore, but now after a couple of months in Paris and seeing loads of well-dressed boys and men in well-fitting clothing and nice color palettes...It got me thinking. It wouldn't be so bad if I dated a boy who looked like one of these guys or a boy who dressed nice and had style. I don't even care if he dressed better than me, but it would be nice if we had the same level of style. But these boys always seem out of my league. Ho hum...
Anyway, what got me started on this was seeing the post on Sartorialist and seeing my friend's boyfriend come to visit. He's an American too and he definitely has style with his Vans high tops (he also got a pair for his girl!), plaid button down over a thermal, and his friend's 4th grade jacket that fits him and tops off his ensemble nicely. He has great fashion sense, and so does she, and they're absolutely adorable together. This gives me hope!
It'd be nice to be with a boy you can go shopping with and for.
I joined Vox because I wanted to comment on my friend's Vox, and I couldn't be "anonymous" and comment on it. Anyone who knows me really well knows that I love blogging/writing/typing so I thought I might as well own a little piece of interweb land on Vox. Plus, it's nice having a blog that no one else knows about. Too many visit my other one (see my Paris blog), which is nice, but it makes it hard to be personal.
