Still playing catchup...

Today in theater we played the same scene from Arizona Dream for the third time in a row. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with this film outside language teachers partial to art films (has anyone else heard of it?) but I’m curious to know what happens. In our scene, Johnny Depp meets his uncle’s 23 year old fiancée from Poland who seems just keen on marrying his 50 some uncle, until she’s reminded of the age difference. She is quite happy to meet Johnny Depp’s character. Quite happy.

So I think we were getting a little tired of it today. People seemed to be just going through the motions. Until we decided to a take “delire” and had our one guy play our one female character- the bride. Suddenly people actually started playing the roles. It was amazing. And hilarious. None of the guys approached the apparent puff-chested self satisfaction of the Uncle that Paulette did…and Bruno’s sobs upon learning that his “nephew to be” was about the same age as him were more dramatic than any of the girls’. Like finding themselves in alien gender roles they actually started acting in the exaggerated way we’d been trying to get them to use all along.

Back a week ago to last Sunday- kept meaning to describe my time in Paris.

Somebody told me awhile back that they preferred Disneyland, Paris to Parc Asterix (the Parisian themepark based on an actual European cartoon character.) It was like entering a fairyland, she said. I don’t see how Paris itself doesn’t fulfill this requirement. I was walking by Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville, all lit up different colors for Christmas I think, with gothic turrets and towers everywhere, with people milling about everywhere speaking about forty different languages that were not French. I walked around for ever and spent about two seconds each in the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal and a certain “little” church (probably about the size of the Cleveland cathedral) with a little personal history attached to it. Just reminds me I need to go and spend awhile just milling around the City of Light (and Shadiness, for that matter, but I don’t plan to spend that much time around the Rue Pigalle and environs)

Swing was pretty good. A lot like anywhere else. As much as any town’s swing is like another’s. Charleston, slow to medium tempo lindy, some balboa…no east coast. Hope I can find a time to go back…without obliging T., who was a great sport and picked up Charleston quite fast but who didn’t seem overly enchanted with the whole deal all the same.

But she sketched her wedding dress for me, and I got to see her wedding ring (It’s huge! It belonged to her fiancé’s mother. She wore a glove over it on the subway. She say’s it’s too big and makes her feel like some old noble lady…she said she liked mine better…I tried to point out her ring’s good points…but it wasn’t easy…I like my ring better too J

Even better…I finally got to meet her youngest sister. The one who was still in her mother’s womb last time I was there. She’s now six. When I arrived she presented me with a picture she had drawn for me, in which she spelled my name “laurène” (actually shows a great understanding of the French phonetic/graphemic system, I think…if you were to spell it in French based solely on how it sounds, that is exactly how you would do it.) and didn’t say two words for the first twenty minutes I was there. And then she wouldn’t stop talking to me, or let anyone else talk to me either for that matter.

We played with the cardboard nativity set she had made and she showed me more drawings she had done and some Christmas decorations in a book she liked. Already has the French attraction to interior design. She also showed off her English, told me she was hungry (with an awesome h) and thirsty (very impressive “th,” I wanted to bring her into my classes to demonstrate for my students) and told me (in French) about a puppet show she saw in English class about some English people who took a boat to America and met some Indians who helped them survive the winter.

Oh, you mean it was about Thanksgiving, I suggested.
Yes she said
Did you understand it all? I asked
Yes she said.
I was sad this year, I complained. I missed Thanksgiving.
You mean you missed the boat? she asked.

C. told me all about how awesome he thinks Star Wars is. The new ones, in fact. Apparently the dialogue in the no. 3 French dubbing is not as horrendous as it is in the film we all know and love/hate. As in whatever French person translated the movie is a better dialogue writer than George Lucas. Not surprising. But I’m glad there’s a decent version of the movie somewhere.

Come to think I believe I watched the second one dubbed in French and liked it a lot better that way…

(Mental note: find out the French for “We don’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s lost the will to live.” )

This weekend: went back to the community of the beatidudes. No dancing this time. But lots of adoration, advent celebrations. Advent wreaths. Stayed in the Ste. Claire room and the bible verse at my plate this afternoon was something like “Love admits no fear. In fact, perfect love casts out fear.”

Kate and I went for a walk yesterday. She is staying here for Christmas with her community but seems contented with it. It’s funny, her English is definitely a little Frenchified, in the grammar and word choice if not by the accent (though I noticed she does tend to annunciate all the consonant sounds.) She kept saying stuff like “it’s normal.” And as we were passing the forest ranger’s house, she told me the “forest people” lived there. And was quite amused when I raised doubts about her community’s new age spirituality.