this is the way, is the way that we live

Tonight I watched The L Word's season finale. I don't know what I expected, but (forgive the spoilers, I assume if you haven't seen it yet, you're not going to) they definitely get catharsis points for finally killing Jenny Schecter.

This was the show's sixth season. The pilot episode aired on January 18th, 2004. I didn't start following the show until the spring of 2006, which is when season 3 was beginning. I played catchup with seasons 1 and 2 that summer, and was pretty much hooked.

I've seen those first three seasons countless times, and they certainly carry connotations of the beginning of a relationship that's over now, which is kind of strange to think about.

I remember watching season three, curled up on the tan leather couch on Sunday nights, never able to make it through an episode without being distracted by each other. We were seventeen, tiny, scared of going to college, and ferociously in love.

The seasons continued to air and develop more and more ridiculously through our first and second years of college. This was before they went online legally, in high definition, and we would call each other with YouTube links to the most recent episode, watching pirated ten-minute segments in the few hours before they got taken down. The portrayal of queer people, and the drama in general, became more and more unrealistic, but I continued to watch because we all did. Love it, hate it, or fall somewhere in between, but the bi, lesbian, curious, and questioning girls all watched The L Word.

We aged, both of us, and I only feel it now, looking back across time. Watching the finale was certainly sweeping, and I am sure that it moved me more because of how faithful I've been to the show. I certainly never imagined that I would be watching it alone in an apartment in downtown Lyon. I am twenty, not at all tiny, living in a foreign country, noting a profound dissociation between the past and the present. To paraphrase, that was the past, and this is the present. I am no longer the person who lived in that past.

But tonight, ah, tonight brings these things back, perhaps in sharper focus that I would like.

The river moves like glass under the streetlight. I ache, for many things but primarily to be curled in bed with a glass of tea and a book, at the moment.

Listening to: You Are the Best Thing // Ray Lamontagne
Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien

in my room, you can go, you can stay.

It's the end of another lazy Tuesday here in Franceland, Lesbia, and I still have no idea what to do with myself.

My mind is far away, thinking of the fall. I started this little corner of a blog in the fall, a fall that's now a year and a half ago, on the same day that I perched myself on the steps of the Rotunda (University Avenue side) and wrote a poem that 3.7 later published.

I miss the Classics girl who was part of my life in that time, at whom I bubbled once in a café about my new best friend. I remember her raising her hands together, palms inches apart. Face to face, she said. Stay away from this distance, it's dangerous.

I saw her in the architecture school one day last fall, a year after that conversation and that friendship happened. She asked me how I was, and she looked to sad to hear the truth, so I said exactly what I was saying to everyone last semester: "School's good!" She raised one eyebrow, and I raised my hands, inkstained, thin, cracked and calloused, turning my palms inward, face to face. And then I walked away.

Anyway, it was a good poem, and I remember us commiserating about how much we adored Sappho, how dirty Catullus really was, how incredibly gay this all made me.

I haven't been able to pass in the world as a straight girl since my junior year of high school, and then only briefly. I realize now that one of the things I miss the most is our mutual, fierce pride at living on the outside, at weathering the insults, the catcalls, and the compliments alike.

I suspect that, when I go home, I will be struck by how different the world feels now.

Reaching further back, I realize I miss queer culture, feeling like a part of something with a group and a definition and a name. I miss the overwhelming, glossy, flamboyant boys, the only ones whom I would ever allow to pressure me into a party, a dance floor, a drink in my hand. Something about their energy always pulled me out of my reticent, serious self and encouraged me to laugh more, to smile more, to enjoy the beat and the alcohol and the pretty, pretty girls.

I never go out anymore. There are all the reasons I typically give, and then there are others, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

In all truth, this post stretched from a night into a morning, and now I've somewhat lost the original train of it all.

I don't envy her engagement in the slightest. My needs can all be summed up in one phrase: please, please, you've got to get on the same continent as me. After that, everything else can just worry about itself.

More to the point, I've got to get home. At this point I am just willing the days to go by, devouring books I never thought I was interested in (but I'm so glad I gave Tolkien another chance), napping the afternoons by, ticking each successive day off on the calendar on the wall. Once June is finally upon us, I will be preparing to get on a jet plane. I already promised you that I would never go so far without you again.

listening to: the beatles
reading: The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien

you did nothing wrong, and nothing right

While going for my morning run, I occupied my mind as I usually do, jogging along with some sort of bouncy iPod playlist and scanning methodically from left to right, then from right to left, in my field of vision. La berge du rivier was fairly crowded with promenaders, bicyclists, skateboarders, rollerbladers, French mamans pushing prams, and other runners, as usual.

As I passed one of the many half-pipe / skate park type areas, my eyes swept over a young man stretching with his skateboard propped up next to him. He looked like someone in kneeling seiza who had fallen over -- his lower legs still folded underneath him, but his torso flat along the ground, shoulders resting on the concrete, the smallest of arches in his lower back.

In the fraction of a second that it took for my brain to process the visual information, mental images shot through my head, narrowing around the look and the feel of the muscle the boy was stretching (the internet seems to indicate this is either the tensor fasciae latae or the sartorious, the flat deep muscle gathered just below either hipbone-point).

I saw a long front stance, the tension ripping through a room simultaneously; watched a girl mount a running horse, her powerful hips flexing to vault onto his back. The ghosts of fingertips gripped white-knuckled onto the lines of muscle standing out through my skin, felt the lengthening and resistance there.

I used to be able to do that stretch, to tip backwards until I lay flat on the ground, looking up at the sky. I don't think I can do it anymore.

Or maybe I could. The thought has stuck with me for the otherwise unremarkable and lazy day.

36 days.

killing time on Thursday evening

From my morning internet perusal:
"I just wish two things were more promoted in our sexual culture: pubic hair and foreskin."

Thank you, thank you, nightmare brunette, for making me feel like I'm not the second-to-only person constantly saying this. Well, the former point, at least (I can't claim any beliefs about the latter).

Apparently the reflection comes from reading the tumblr site sexartandpolitics, which I'm not familiar with personally, but I scoped out the offending post that inspired nightmare brunette's comment and perhaps I'll add it to the 'roll.

Come on, I'm living in a foreign city with no classes and nothing to do but soak up French culture and spend money. The least I can have is an extensive Anglophone blogroll to read in the morning before I go out and do those important things.

Eh, on second perusal, I think I can skip it. Too much watered down politics that I already get in full force from my obsessive reading of The New York Times and BBC World Service.

Nothing else of note to report. Hop on over to Squidgirl in Lyon to take a look at my pictures from Italy, or, you know, kick back with a giant mug of tea and some sudoku and a view of the river like I'm doing right now.

38 days.

you've been leading me beside strange waters

I am, as usual, baffled by the things I learn on Facebook.

It's too early in the morning for this kind of excitement (namely, the kind that isn't exciting at all). I am still lying in bed, not looking forward to pulling back the curtain and surveying the cloudy day, not looking forward to having to fill another endless morning and afternoon with things to do.

It's only been five months.

Today marks my two-month anniversary in Franceland.
In one month I will be entertaining my parents, and anxiously counting down the days until you arrive.
In three months I will be celebrating my second full day back home.

I guess that's all. I still can't bring myself to go out for breakfast. Maybe a midafternoon coffee. Then again, probably not that either.

like painted kites those days and nights went flying by

Wow, today has just been one of those awful, awful days that blindsides you every once in awhile.

It all started with my lack of sleep, I think, because even though I got seven or eight hours last night, the two-day trek back from Italy is something that my body surely hasn't recovered from yet. Pair general fatigue with my recently re-sprained ankle and I was already pretty ready to drop.

But the really bad part was when ML and I trekked all the way out to class and discovered that this grève nonsense is still going on. I still say that I respect French administration, chercheurs/enseignants, and etudiants, but for the sake of everything holy, this is the fourth week of strikes. When we got there the students had taken it upon themselves to physically blockade the stairs / doors to the auditorium with tables, chairs, etc. I've never encountered so much opposition for trying to go to class before.

So back to Quai Sarrail we marched in the cutting wind, chilly and miserable, both (I suspect) wishing we were walking along the sunny River Arno in Florence again.

This was particularly crushing to me because I was impatient during much of Italy to get back to a life with a routine. Although students might not have the strictest time schedule, everyone sorts out their own daily plan and I especially like to have a reliable routine to my days. It helps me feel productive. But I came back and things are just as nonsensical as before.

All these things combined, I spent the remaining morning hours curled up miserably in bed, rolling back and forth with the ponies tucked against me, feeling completely sorry for myself and generally homesick. I finally gave in to the need for some external comfort and dialed your number from Skype, despite the extreme earliness of the hour (just around 6am at home). On the third try I woke you up successfully, and I got to hear your bewildered, sleepy voice on the other end of the line, slowly making sense of my words. Undeniably comforting, if very selfish.

After that I summoned all my courage and got out of bed, walked to the kitchen (blessedly deserted of roommates, who were similarly napping or out), and slowly put some lunch together. Once I had fed myself and had some tea I curled up again and closed my eyes, convinced my body needed rest. I woke up a couple times but managed a two-hour nap, waking in the late afternoon to bright sunlight pouring onto me.

I'm still upset about the same things (no classes, few chances to practice my French, a feeling of general uselessness) but feeling much less despairing about them. I've made a resolution to go running more, because I need a higher level of exercise than I'm getting here, but the full-body fatigue combined with the ankle makes that seem like a bad idea for today. Maybe I will practice some self-defenses or kendo stance sword work tonight to take it easy.

I have to say that was the worst that I've felt not just since coming to France, but in a long, long time. I hope things here settle the way that they're supposed to, and soon.

I think that's all for now, Lesbia. From across the ocean, I bid you au revoir.

and what if there are no damsels in distress?

I had a friend once who owned the complete discography of Ani DiFranco. I had forgotten about this album until a few minutes ago, and Not A Pretty Girl stuck out at me. I like angry Ani better than almost anything.

Lyon is Raining. Not just raining as in for a few hours, stopping toward the evening and breaking into a lovely, mild night. Raining as in with a capital "R", pouring from the first light in the morning until late at night, pedestrian streets flooding, crosswinds flipping umbrellas inside out on the bridges, water driven absolutely sideways by the gusts. You can barely stand in a doorway without getting soaked to the skin.

It is a particularly bad time for this kind of rain because we have not had classes for more than a week now due to the professor strikes against Sarkozy's education reforms. I finally heard a good explanation -- he is trying to change the requirements for becoming a teacher, shifting the focus away from historical and cultural knowledge to pedagogical logic, as in, how to teach, rather than what to teach. The French are not reacting positively.

You can see how the combination of these two things can get a girl down. But I've tried to have a productive day, braving the rain to explore bookstores and pick up plenty of groceries for the weekend (seriously, where does all my money go?) and suchlike.

We're also planning the Florence trip, which is getting more and more out of control. Hopefully all will, in fact, go as planned.

Off to be anti-social until dinner.