it all started so innocently...

Yeah, actually, don't be mislead by that subject. Or, do be mislead. Really, it's your choice. The innocent start is referring to my trip to Brest to do laundry, because of my utter brokeness. A one-way ticket from Brest to Morlaix is about one half to one third the price of what it would cost to do two loads of laundry at the fucking laverie. And I am always looking for an excuse to come hang with my Brestois.

This was a particularly hot endeavor, due to a variety of factors: their friend Marco from Rome came in on Wed night, I don't have class on Thursdays and everyone in this city left loads of cool shit out for the dumpsters, which we immediately scooped up. We went out to Chez Kim, a bizarre phenomenon of a local bar if there ever was one. The proprieteur, a ridiculously nice, all-smiles-all-the-time Viatnamese music lover serenades his patrons with woeful yet weirdly beautiful renditions of American classic rock songs. The Beatles, The Eagles, Led Zepplin. It was one of the most appropriately and accurately hyped bars I've ever had the good fortune to follow up on. Thursday was three hours of pool in one of my new fave Brest spots, where the peculiarity of the ambiance made every one of the American lads assembled there like they had stumbled into the gaping jaws of MADNESS.

At first, I was just enjoying the joys to be had and planning on returning Thursday night for my classes on Friday morning. Cue me having a flashback to this teacher telling me if I ever had a probably making it to class, just to let her know and that it would be fine. Either this was the product of hallucinatory wishful thinking or...well, I called her and texted her and didn't hear back, so I blew off my classes on Friday.

Then, my surrogate kid bro Morlaix Matt came down to enjoy the high life in Brest and the good times began to roll. First, we proceeded to an already over-crowded Chez Kim, squeezing about twenty assistants and assistant entourage types into a hilariously small space. Then, I went with my darling friend Imani to pick up a special present for our insatiable ids. We had an amazing chat en route to an afterhours bar that was outlandishly crowded and featured terrible French grunge-revival shite. Luckily, we piled out quickly enough to have an afterparty at this weird little French dude's flat and sat around for god knows how long, smoking five or six hash joints. Wheee! As if the hedonism weren't enough to bring the memories flooding in, the kid had designed a weird little American college style living room with Xmas lights and super-old furniture, with a couch that I will swear until my dying day that my brother has.

And then we dropped of to sleep at 7 am and may I just state it has been FAR too long since I've had such a brilliantly rad late night with so little complaint.

And today, Saturday of my wildly extended vacation, I'm not even able to drag myself away to go back for my Spanish roomie's birthday. For a handful of reasons. On Thursday night, I chilled at Andy and Imani's by my lonesome and wrote emails and arrived at this amazing moment where I finally decided something. My endless complaints about how being here is keeping me from everything that I want to be doing, about how if I can just get back to my own continent everything is going to be fine...and even if these are valid complaints, I need to put them aside and make the best of my time in France. Because I have crossed the halfway mark, and if I cannot make the best of this time and enjoy all the freedom I am being offered here, than I am not even close to the person I want to be.

Also, I kind of just don't feel like going. I'm having so much fun here, I've finally rounded this corner and I'm really fucking happy for the first time in a long time...and I think this isn't just a flash in the pan, not just the precursor to some kind of unexpected manic other-shoe-dropping.

Anyway. I'm letting myself do this, accepting that this is probably going to make me look like an asshole, but being ready to deal with that. Tonight, it's going to be more party madness and the night is thick with possibility. Yum.

i miss

1.) ALL of my fawking beautiful friends
2.) Bisquick pancakes
3.) 24-hour restaurants
4.) Camel Turkish Jade cigs (secretly, I love menthols, but only once in a while)
5.) My brother’s bad movie collection
6.) Lazy Missoula weekends
7.) Um, English as official language?
8.) Red Baron frozen deep-dish mini pizzas (my most formidable munchie obsession)
9.) Vintage stores
10.) Going to hot shows (music in France blows)
11.) MY CAR! Being carless is not my favorite thing.
12.) Being in college. Real life kind of sucks so far.
13.) The ability to call up all my friends and bullshitting.
14 & 15.) Hangover breakfasts AND all-day breakfast (people don’t really eat breakfast here).
16.) My family
17.) Anglophone press (if I bought a beat-up, two-month old magazine at the presse it would be about $15).
18.) Living in an apartment (though I haven’t lived in an apt since the end of May)
19.) Seeing people I know everywhere
20.) The weird pseudo-reality of working at my college newspaper and all the ridiculous behavior it inspired.
21.) Taco del Sol burritos (the godfood of any Missoulian)
22.) The winesoaked gatherings on Rollins Street
23.) Oh yeah...SEX
24.) Getting high as fuck at The Palace, bullshitting, listening to hot music, watching GOD TV and playing 8-bit video games or video poker...all day long
25.) The certainty that things would work out for the best.

Honorable Mentions: Passions, quality movie rental stores, California

i hate

1.) French bureaucracy
2.) Being overdrawn in my bank and having to ask my parents for help (it happens constantly, as I am a moron)
3.) My body and its many betrayals
4.) This nasty feeling that I am in a holding pattern while in France and that my life is not going to truly begin again until I return to the US.
5.) Walking by my students and hearing them start to giggle and gossip (positive or negative, I’m not sure) about me as soon as I walk past.
6.) The retro ‘Spanish Inquisition’ approach being taken at my school to the discovery of porn sites being viewed at school (even though their current filter system prevents me from checking my email, The Stranger and various innocent but important-to-me sites).
7.) Boredom
8.) Having expensive taste on a pauper’s budget
9.) Realizing that I will not be going ANYWHERE during the next vacation due to aforementioned pauper’s budget
10.) My involuntary celibacy
11.) The fact that almost no one emails me here
12.) Constantly feeling like an outsider on this continent because I am no longer terribly interested in passing for or trying to become European.
13.) Running out of dope and knowing that I’m not really going to be able to get more any time soon. Blech!
14.) My continuing inability to get over the big ‘unrequited love’ of last year
15.) The fact that I am not applying to grad school for next year because apparently to get things done I have to personally threaten people.
16.) How scared I am of this new and unpredictable future that awaits me next year - I mean, really, what the fuck do I think I am doing?
17.) My inability to just let things happen in my life
18.) Dubbed movies
19.) The fact that all Chinese food in France is terrible and will probably give you digestive problems for the following two days.
20.) Seattle. I fawking hate that place.
21.) Not being a milllionaire. SO annnoying.
22.) Realizing that self-hatred and vanity are so close together
23.) Paris - too many unhappy memories, too much stress, too much palatable sadness on everyone’s lips.
24.) The revisionist positivity that prevents me from easily listing things I hate because apparently this emotion is too ‘yucky’ for me to own or hold on to.
25.) When people say they hate hate. Seriously, fuck that.

i love...

1.) French men’s asses...truly a sight to behold. With alarming regularity (“How can every one of these people have that kind of ass?” I think it’s all the stairs.).
2.) The guitar solo in Destroyer’s “The Bad Arts.” It makes me think the world is ending, it’s so hot.
3.) Curling up with an enormous, expansive novel or series of novels (then consequently developing a stoop from schlepping them everywhere, but whatevs)
4.) My G4 iBook. Four months into the delicious honeymoon period. I’m about to start using it to film movies, so it could easily be a two-year sort of honeymoon.
5.) Pulling music from other people’s hot music collections.
6.) SIX FEET UNDER. I’ve watched the first two seasons at least five times each in the last year or so. So good I need fucking pop culture methadone now.
7.) Smokin drugs
8.) Blue eyes
9.) Arcade Fire!!!
10.) My perfect, lovely set of people I have taken up with this year and made into my artifical famille, in Morlaix and Brest.
11.) Angela Carter - I have read Nights at the Circus and Wise Children by her since arriving in France and am overwhelmed by her imagination, grace and humo(‘u’ since she’s British)r.
12.) Miyazaki, especially for Howl’s Moving Castle, his new film.
13.) Boozin’
14.) Taking pictures semi-compulsively and having lots of them turn out incredibly. Then playing with them later and making them look spooooky.
15.) Scarves, especially my hot red/blue striped one.
16.) International travel, staring at people’s new and exciting ‘breath of fresh air’-ish international hottness, then internationally bringing back prezzies for myself.
17.) Dark sunglasses
18.) Black pants with white shoes and/or belt
19.) Random postcards
20.) My friends in the United States, whom I love more than the dear lord himself, and who could never be replaced by no damn fake french family!
21.) Cleft chins
22.) Trashy entertainment magazines
23.) David Bowie
24.) Smoking cigs and drinking unearthly strong coffee (also known as my primary past-time in France).
25.) One Hundred Years of Solitude

okay, actually, just read today's entry and not yesterday's

I was in a state yesterday, though only the bon dieu knows why. I blame it on Sundays in France, which are generally boring to the point of one losing one's shit rather completely. I even kept myself up half the night, rolling around and stressing about various stupid things I've been doing or not doing or thinking or not thinking. It was sort of terrifying - it felt a little like a panic attack, because I couldn't really talk myself down. Not that I've really ever had any success reasoning with myself.

I have to believe everything is going to be okay, but I also have to take fucking steps to make that happen. I need to send off some bullshit to get my titre de sejour, which I left at gare du nord on my way to Amsterdam. I need to solve the mystery of how to get my carte de sejour and fix my social security bullshit. Also, I have to pass some kind of medical exam, and I actually WANT to do that now so I have a doctor captive so I can ask him about this fucked up 'wart' that has been on my ankle for the last...seven or eight months? They told me it was a wort at the health center at my school, which makes me even surer that it is cancer and that I am in fact going to die semi-immediately.

"If only you had come sooner," I can already hear the doctor saying.

Though most likely it is nothing. However it could be something. Like slow-moving gangreen. Maybe I'll have to get a prosthetic leg! Or it could just be a wort that is mysteriously untreatable (I bought a home wart kit treatment this summer and freezed the bitch three times, all for naught).

Do you see how these warring rationalizations could keep me up til three in the morning?!

Anyway, here's a funny story for balance.

Last Friday, I was taking groups of terminales (seniors in French high school) for the first time. To start, I was certain I was getting them the last two hours of the day, from 3:30 to 5:30. Those of you familiar with the zaniness of the 24 hour clock can no doubt guess what happens next...I was, in fact, supposed to have them from 13:30 to 15:30, or 1:30 to 3:30 in 'actual time.' So, I missed the first group all together and I only took the second because they passed by the salle de profs to say hi before class and I just happened to be there at what I was certain was an hour early (which never happens). To top it all off, these are the students of the prof who is:
1.) Woefully conventional and into forcing me to do stupid, subversive texts with them. The current text talks about how truancy is a cry for help and most truants are criminals (blatant statistical manipulation, obvs).
2.) Already hating on my shit because of my semi-perpetual fuckups.
3.) My least fave person to work with, possibly ever.
4.) AND the bitch wants to invite me and Matt to dinner at her house (ARGH!).

Anyway, in a fit of coincidence, the only three students I'm really friends with make up half this group. One of them smoke a roach right in front of me before we went into class (obvs I did not give a shit since I asked her to buy me hash once when I was drunk (and gave her twenty euros to do so)). I also shared a cig with another of them before we went in.

Since I was thinking the class was an hour later, I also failed to make photocopies of this aforementioned horrible text. And in addition to kind of sucking at English, the three girls I'm also friends with did not really feel it was necessary to work/try and set a lovely example for the other half of the class to not have to do anything.

Oddly, I didn't actually mind. Basically, I told them a few things about the text instead of reading it and then we BSed in French for twenty minutes and I let them go twenty minutes early.

I am the greatest assistant EVER!

Today, I only had one hour of class and my students didn't even come. This is going to be another one of those exceptionally easy weeks...

Looking forward to a mid-week laundry/amusement trip to Brest, and to this weekend, which promises strange and exciting events (party on a boat, big concert fest, etc.)

I started coifing my hair so my bangs go over my forhead in this very windswept/boho/early Beatles-esque way. Love it.

quiet-ish weekend

Things I am Currently Out of:
-weed
-Bisquick pancake mix
-Money
-coping skills


All things considered, it's been an alright weekend anyway. Friday found me at my lovely German's house, making galettes on their fancy new crepe making thingy. Delish. Matt and I realized we had not set foot in a Morlaix bar since early December, so took it upon ourselves to get our drink on, which was a nice change of pace from...mysteriously not really drinking.

Yesterday, the Morlaix gang (me, Matt, Marie, Carsten and Elias) went to spend the day at the librarian's house, where we were invited for lunch, a long walk around St. Pol de Leon and dinner. The hosting ability necessary for such an event had my hat off long before we rolled into the librarian's house. Though the day was not un-atypically icky with rain for most of the afternoon and big angry clouds all fawking day, the walk was beautiful. My hair is getting longer and longer, and feeling the savage Atlantic wind rip through it reminds me that I am still young and crazy, even though I am beginning to feel as if I were just old and boring. All in all, we spent 10 hours in St Pol, between lunch, walking and the requisite late-night, semi-endless French dinner. It was lovely, but I felt a little disconnected.

Thinking about going home, seeing my people again and spending one last perfect summer in Missoula is occupying a lot of my time. Obviously, this kind of build-up and idealization is going to be hell on my ability to actually enjoy the summer, instead of measuring it against my expectations all the damn time. But, at the same time, I feel like anything will feel remarkable and fun and perfect after this weird shadow-year that I seem to be languishing in.

I've been thinking a lot about this experience, ever since I decided to blatantly rip off the 'I love/ I hate' thing from the marvelous Fulminous. I'm probably going to post those babies throughout next week, for those of you who are not doubt waiting with baited breath.

Since I am only teaching four days a week and we have one random day off in March, I have approximately 39 school days left. It doesn't really seem to make sense, especially since I will not be returning to the US for another three months and change. However, the shrinking number of remaining days will serve to get me out of bed, since my new and popular manifestation of depression is sleeping inhuman amounts (between ten and thirteen hours almost every night).

Anyway, next vacation is just around the corner, and while I will not be making any dreams come true, I will be having a little tour of Brittany and playing it cheap. Which is really the best thing. Apparently, we've been invited to someone's parents' HUGE vacation house in the Gulf de Mourbion (not even bothering with fact checking for the proper spelling). That's all for now, me luvies.

good times were rolled

Another weekend in Brest, which was inarguably kickass. One of the assistants was having a birthday party (though no one in that town really needs an excuse to party anymore) at The Dubliners, a local hotspot. It was also a 'dress to impress' party, which was really fun, especially since it has been quite some time since I bothered to dress to impress. I wore a sweet black shirt, black silk tie, black pinstripe pants and white sneaks and a white belt. It was hot, if slightly unoriginal (though I think if The Hives had not come along I still would have came up with this shit).

I finally got my Morlaisiens to come along, which definitely sweetened the evening. That, or my overly ambitious prefunking. It was also an odd moment in Brest social life - everyone was talking to everyone, whereas normally people are grouped by language and then by country. Perhaps the plan was to have everyone look so hot there would be no keeping them from one another.

Also, I watched the new Miyazaki film AGAIN because yes, it is that good. I was disappointed that I did not have significantly better comprehension of the events of the film, but then again, I followed the formula of getting high before the movie, so perhaps that was why my experience in comprehension was strikingly similar. I choose not to believe that hogwash. Weed is good for you!

Speaking of, I invented an amazing recipe last night, which is getting le testdrive tonight. I'll keep you informed.

braindumping

Whee! This is exactly the stoned-as-fuck stream of consciousness entry you've been waiting for! I don't even know where to be begin.

Ahyes! Le Chateau Ambulant/Howl's Moving Castle! I got to see this incredible film by Miyazaki, a follow-up to the sensational, I-am-obsessed-with-it classic, Spirited Away. The new film is really gorgeous an elaborate, it was cool to see him move into a direction that was more coherently fantastic. There is more definite world, no less fantastic than the one of Spirited Away, just more distinct. I was originally hoping to see this film in the original Japanese w/French subtitled (which is how Ghost in the Shell II was released) but I saw it with French dialog, and that was much better.

Basically, I got super high before the film, and then continued to not understand the things I would not have understood anyway. I went with my friend Carsten, who probably understood substantially less than me, but enjoyed it just as much as me. It's fun to try and make sense of something so crazy later, especially when watching it is so spectacular from a strictly visual point of view. Also, and this is not a fucking joke, I got a bar of high-quality Lindt chocolate that was filled with...hold on to your shit, creme g.d. brulée! It was truly a tour de force.

Moving on...the unrequited love of my life is moving back to Missoula, so I will have to see his crazy ass again, which brings angst to my heart, since I was looking so forward to having really chill, beautiful, lazy summer. Hopefully he will leave or I will accidently not see him (I will make an ass of myself, there is no avoiding it). Or I will see him, he will see me looking spectacular and post-European and we will fuck and then I can get over it.

That sounds feasible, non? Indulge me, ferchrissakes.

Also, I have been thinking and thinking about the next vacation. I think I am going to scrap Italy, because this next one needs to be CHEAP. I just saw seven days in Morocco with flight and hotel included for 244 euros, which is fucking amazing. It also said the hotel was three stars. Or, the hotel has the number three in the title, and it is a one-star hotel. Which would also be okay, for that fucking price. Actually, I think it might have to be something I do. Other possibilities are Portugal and/or any of the Greek Islands. But those might get ditched in favor of a crazy adventure in fawking Marrakech.

Other things? I completed the first season of Six Feet Under. I continue to smoke herb at an irresponsible pace, and will soon be drug-free (SO not the way to be). My friend Matt just told me that some tourists are threatened at knifepoint if they REFUSE to buy marijuana. I laughed hysterically. Hello dream vacation.
I am currently obsessed with the Arcade Fire's album, Funeral. It's incredibly HOT and you can hear a slight 'inspired-by-Twin-Peaks' riff in the first song. Amazing. I listened to it on headphones today, even though my left ear is stil weirdly fucked up. Also, I found out that I can get 55 photos developed at my new fave place for semi-minimal euros.

I am going to Brest tomorrow for a dress-posh party and have picked out a sweet-as-fuck outfit. Am I going to wear crazy all black clothes with white sneakers? Oh yeah. I went there. I'm hoping the dude I want to seduce will be there, but he too lives in another town.

Oh my GOD. This entry is fucking really dumb. But I'm going to just let it happen.

weekend

I would not be any means describe this as a weekend in which I got a lot done, but it was swell all the same. Ended up in Brest, rather non-surprisingly. The teach at my school who keeps inviting us to Lanion cancelled it again, so I managed to get a ride to Brest with my new best friend at school (history teacher who I obsess about movies with) AND I brought my laundry, thus making it a fantastique idea to go (special thanks to Imani and Andy, it was getting painfully necessary).

Friday was all about getting high, hooking up my little treasure to the internet and beginning a parade of downloads. All those downloads (over 100 songs over the weekend) and all my new music (the stuff I bought and the stuff Kurt gave me) is making me ridiculously happy. Then we watched Team America: World Police (FUCK YEAH!) and let the good times roll.

A brief sample from the download list:
-Sealab 2021 Bizarro Episode (only one I could find, strangely obsessed with this one even though it is kind of terrible)
-Iron and Wine song from the Garden State Soundtrack (at last...)
-T-Rex 20th Century Boy, one of the greatest songs EVER
-A fistful of Missy Elliot songs
-The Rapture - Off of the Races and Onto the Tracks, the other greatest song ever
-The first fifteen minutes of the heart-rending finale of Six Feet Under's Third Season
-Some terrible brit-club song about not being able to wait for the weekend to begin
-Porn (obviously)
-Laissez-Moi Danser, the infamous Star Academy song (terrible, terrible)
-David Bowie covering various Beatles songs (HOT!)
-Loads of Starlight Mints, The Ponys, Helio Sequence, Decemberists
-A bunch of Carole King and Joni Mitchell
-Heart-stoppingly hot Basement Jaxx remixes

And about eighty other songs. It was a gorgeous time to be alive.

Now, it's Tuesday and my work week has been going unbelievably well. This trimester, I'm definitely going to be dropping below 12 hours a week, which strangely does not bother me. Even more strangely is that I am strangely happy to be 'home' though I am certainly not feeling any more like this place actually IS my home. It's just nice to not have to shell out euro after euro and live out of a suitcase and recklessly spend all my fucking money (which is pretty much what happened). I am currently watching and waiting for my bank account to drop into the negative, which definitely may happen. I had so hoped I had left my ability to spend money without a fucking thought in my head in the ole USA. Apparently not.

Anyway, my prof friend just gave me the first season of Six Feet Under, so I'm probably going to get high, make pancakes and watch it. Hopefully I will return to a responsible sobriety at 4:30 for my class. Oddly, I'm not really that concerned about it.

Though I should probably quit smoking for a few days, if only to let my now-enormous tolerance drop back to normal.

2005

So, I am back in Morlaix. Surprisingly, it feels really good to be back. Normally, at the tail end of vacances, I feel consumed by dread when I think of returning. But now, the school year is half over, and each day completed is another day that I can leave behind me and look to the future. The last part of vacation was, for me, a chance to think ahead of what I want to do with this year.

Here is a brief resumé of my plans:

-Go to Italy for ten days in February (Rome, Venice; five days each)

-Continue reading lots and write substantially more

-Go to Berlin once school is over (4/15) and chill there for a few weeks

-Save all of my final paycheck for nest egg to be used for evading Montana

-Tie up any Franco-related business and leave this fucking continent May 5-ish.

-Go to graduation of various friends and my bro in Missoula, Montana one week later

-Take a roadtrip to Austin/Nawlins right after graduation; check out Austin for living / visit my pals there and then party in New Orleans (also insert three days for suffering of heat stroke that forces me to reconsider moving south, then promptly put said silly notions aside).

-Spend my last summer in Missoula, Montana experimenting with drugs, playing with my friends and getting some kind of McJob (UPS, hopefully, so I can get mad ducats AND tone my body by moving heavy things).

-Contribute to my nest egg through McJob-ery and move in September (Austin is at the top of the 'to move to' list, followed by Philly and Portland).

-Due zany things for a few months and avoid working until it is absolutely necessary (want to start making more art, get an old camera and take way more pictures, make movies, write, paint my room red, etc).

So, that gives you a very intimate glance at how I will be spending the next year. This will be especially helpful to you should you wish to begin stalking me. Right now, I'm going to smoke some weed, eat a bowl of choco cereal, gather up my laundry and shove off to Boob-town.

what it is...IS what it is

Dude, I am on a shopping binge. Yesterday was CDs: James Brown (Mind Power, from my London Daze), first Iron and Wine, Decemberists, first David Bowie AND Rufus Wainwright's Want Two, which I was sure wasn't due out anywhere til late January or early February.

Today, it's H & M underwear, hot new blue and redd-stripe knit scarf, loads of books, new sunglasses. Happy as shit, stoned as fuck.

Speaking of, with 4:20 right around the corner, I'll make it brief: having a bloody sweet time, New Years was ridiculous and we stayed out until eight in the morning. I tripped on mushrooms for eight hours and was out of my fucking mind. I writhed around on the floor in this crazy window/cage/opium den from this absolutely MAD ecstasy-type bodyhigh while smoking orange flavored hash out of an old-style hookah.

Basically, it was hot.

Food is unreal: big cones of fries, donuts, waffless, bacon pancakess, coffee, etc.

I can't even really go into it right now. We've gone from the beach to the center of the red light district. I need to get some foreign dick semi-immediately, so I'm probably gonna go hit up the gay bars sooner than not.

Back to Morlaix on Wednesday. Not really so excited abut that part.