Look at All the Phoques I Give

I am suddenly overcome by a paralyzing fear of grocery shopping. It occurs to me that in a few weeks, I will be forced to find food in a foreign language.

How do I know I won't accidentally poison myself by adding detergent to my cereal?

With six years of French classes under my belt, you'd think reading labels would be easy. You are wrong. 

A few days ago I went in for my visa appointment. The guard said, "Bonjour." I replied in kind, because in stressful situations my brain reverts to mirroring. I once entered a store and welcomed the saleswoman who had just greeted me. 

Back to the guard. I thought this would be the end of it, but the terrifying snowball of simple conversation had begun its roll. He continued, "Ca va?" This shouldn't be too hard, I thought, this is French I stuff. But while I had the brainpower to think that entire sentence in the two second conversational pause, this is what came out of my mouth, "Ca va. Et tu?"

Et tu.

I had momentarily forgotten this was not a production of Julius Caesar. 

I've been worried about my linguistic abilities of late. Alternating to a new language, whose word for baby seal, phoque, offends me, is probably not a good idea (imagine the racy soap opera that would be my life as a French arctic conservationist). I can barely handle English.

A few months ago, I asked my sisters if they were hungry. 

Input: Are you hungry?                        Output: Ya huh?

I don't give a phoque. 

Well okay, maybe one. 

While volunteering for the LA Film Festival this year, I spent several hours opening theater doors. You learn a lot about people when you open doors for them, such as how embarrassed they are about having doors opened for them or how little etiquette their parents taught them or even the subjectivity of etiquette because what if thanking someone for opening a door isn't offensive somewhere in the world. I mean, some cultures have never created a wheel, because it was never necessary. 

Just let that sink in.

Responding to thanks is always nerve-wracking for me. Usually I just nod and hum two notes - Mm hmm - that I assume convey both humility and acceptance of their gratitude, because to do more would be asking too much of my anxiety-ridden mind. But here I was, a representative of the film festival. I had to put more effort into it, so I alternated between, "You're welcome," which Barney the dinosaur taught me, and "No problem," which I learned in middle school was what the cool kids said. The following is not an exact transcription.

You're welcome.

No problem.

You're welcome.

No problem.

You're welcome. 

No problem.

You're welcome.

No problem.

You're welcome.

No problem.

Your problem.

Help.

Look at All the Phoques I Give

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C'est la Vie

My molars have probably been reduced to half their size these past three months. I am a living mortar and pestle. Study in France, they said. You'll nibble at baguettes as you bike around the Eiffel Tower, a small mountain of croissants hidden in your beret, they said.

So far, my journey to the land of cheese, love, and ship-hair has not been so ideal. In addition to school registration and securing housing, I am in the midst of preparing paperwork for my visa.

If I ever get to be a tyrant or despot (a reasonable goal, I think), I will punish my enemies with forms.

Thou hast been sentenced to ten years

Fillingeth out forms

Thou shalt not maketh e'en one single mistake 

Thou shalt not createth e'en one unclear letter or number

Forsooth! If thou dost, thou shalt filleth out four of the same forms in its stead.

It's not that my fingers have cramped. It's not that my eyes are strained reading the fine print. It's that I always write my name on the line that says, "Name," then look down to the next line.

FIRST NAME

Every. Single. Time. 

C'est la Vie

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Forgive My Metaphors (They Know Not What They Do)

I take it back. Life isn't an emotional roller coaster.

If it is, how come I'm going through a creative high at the same time the hardest decision of my life so far hacks away at my spirit bit by bit?

Maybe life is a badly-designed set of monkey bars, with bars that hang higher than you can reach on the tips of your toes, then so low you could step onto them, and then both high and low at once?

I've lain awake into the wee hours of the morning every night of the past week. Glued to my bed, I'm forced to face my most pressing concerns. Insomnia wears me down, but I maybe secretly sort of look forward to each night? Because the hours just after midnight are now the magical hours, when the problems of an unlimited fictional universe dwarf my own. My notebook is littered with blindly jotted ideas.

On a side note, my mind dreamt up the coolest looking violin last night.

I mean, it sounded like a violin. It looked like someone had glued five washboards together and given them hinges. With horse hair strings connecting them.

P.S. If life is a box of chocolates, then I'm eating the one with lumpy nougat filling.

Forgive My Metaphors (They Know Not What They Do)

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All or Nothing

The road to adulthood is dotted with false starts, not least of which may be a quiet night in a friend's dorm half an hour away from home.

Moments before hopping into Esmira's car, I sat in a Taco Bell watching Jay play 五子其 against my dad, waves of melancholy and fear churning relentlessly in my gut. I've flown across the Pacific Ocean and lived for a month without my family and taken an overnight train to San Francisco with little notice to my parents, but in the hours leading up to these escapades I turn into a little girl on the first day of school who wants nothing more than her blankie and for her mom to reemerge from the door.

I tried to peer a few months into the future, to the as yet imaginary night when I would force myself through the motions of sleep, my room collected into a couple of fraying trunks at the foot of my bed, as I waited for the alarm to go off that would set the frenzy of relocation in motion. I sent my terror into the future, trying it on.

This weekend wasn't an escape. My worries nagged me as I painted my face in a department store, danced in the waning sunlight beneath a ferris wheel, took the recommendations of a stranger while unaware of his attempts at charm, eyed pregnant prom queens having dinner in a food court with their friends in pink mullet dresses, watched four pixelated men stumble about with tinny voices, slathered colors onto my nails, and made pancakes for the first time in a kitchen overflowing with pots. 

Here I am wishing for a safety net or a peek down the two paths before me. But when has this been anything but go big or go home, all or nothing?

All or Nothing

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Essentials of Cinema

Tomorrow I'll take my final exam and skip off into summer and you'll never catch me for as long as I live. In anticipation of my freedom I've borrowed a few older films I've been meaning to see. Some call them classics, others vintage (although I find this word overused and often wrongly so), and some of my old classmates would call them, "What do you mean you haven't watched that? And you call yourself a filmmaker."

Well here I am, with four movies clutched in my hand. My local library has a t-rex skeleton, a ceiling that changes to imitate the real sky (à la Hogwarts), and an aquarium with sharks (also could be used to describe the movie "Fish Tank" with Michael Fassbender). Surely it has a great collection of films as well. Why, yes it does.

Next week, I'll settle down with cookies, tea (we have sugar in the house agaaiiaiiiaian), and my filmmaking goggles to begin my required viewings. Before that I'm running away with my friends to a shopping center. It has a ferris wheel, you guys. Fearless adventurers, we are. Yoda, I now am.

Photos of Hitchcock, Godard, Scorsese, and Chaplin, credit unknown. If you know, please let me know and I'll update this post. :)

Essentials of Cinema

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