The Truth

I think that many of you know me as a good person, not someone who does malcicous things, or who is out to hurt people. I want you to also know me as an honest person, and so there is something that I want to say, and I figured this was the best place to say it. Those of you who speak with Ruta often will probably already know, but for those of you who dont, this is the easisest way of telling my side of the story.
If you have ever loved someone very much, which I know you all have, then you know how hard it is to be away from them, even for a short time. I love my wife very much, and so it makes it hard to be alone, and further, to KNOW I am going to be alone for a lot longer than just the two weeks we have been apart. I hope that with that in mind, you will understand a little why I did what I did, and maybe someday, I can hope for a little forgiveness.
The other day, I went to a farmer's market, just outside of Paris. Because all the products come in in the middle of the night, it was necessary for me to be there very early. I got to the market at 3:30am, and maybe it was because it was so early and I was so tired that I wasn't thinking with my head. I was really missing Ruta and just needed someone. It is just so hard to be alone all the time, and so I met someone at the market, someone who listens when I talk, someone who knows what it is like to be alone, someone who I feel like I have known for a long time. To tell you the truth, I dont even know her full name, but I know that the way I feel about her now is the way I will always feel about her, because when I saw her, I immediately fell in love with her beauty and I wanted her all to myself.

That is how I feel in love with a 200lb. wheel of organic Parmesan cheese.

She is fricking HUGE and, um, pungent. I love her and I think that I will enjoy her from now until the end of my days.
What did you think I meant? Filthy minds, you Americans.....
Regardless of my marital indiscretions with various cultured dairy products, Les Halles-Rungis (the name of the farmer's market) was awesome in scope and in bounty. The flower market alone is the size of an airplane hanger, and I felt like I had gone to another planet. I didnt know that there were so many kinds of flowers that I hadnt seen before. It is truly confounding to look out at rows and rows of plants that you just have never known and think that this is part of someones daily life, these strange and beautiful, alien and sensual plants are an everyday thing for a farmer who lives very near to me, but I had no idea they even existed. It reminded me how little I actually know about the world, and that was a good thing, because I think when we presume to know everything about the world around us, that we know "how things are," and worse- that we might actually know how things are going to be for us in life- then we stop learning and love of life has to come to an end. How can we be expected to maintain a passion for anything, be it eachother, or a place we live, or some thing we do, if we are so arrogant as to presume that we know it, fully? I am only 30 years old, and I am confident in the belief that I do not fully know myself through and through, and it is in the discovery of new layers, new abilities, new loves in my life that I can be passionate about my life. Imagine sharing that discovery with a husband or wife or child or friend, for a lifetime! That's just miraculous; a miracle everyday.
And that was just the flower market!
So, yes, the cheese shop was pretty cool too, as you might have guessed. I tried a group of French cheeses that were an amusing mixture of tastes. "Amusing," by the by, is the most affectionate word I can think to use, as frankly, most of these cheeses tasted like moldy feet. I mean, whatever you're into, right? Some people like feet cheese, some people dont; some people put their underwear on hangers on the lamp shade, some people dont do their laundry in my sink.... You say potoato....
In other news, I am being trained as the saucier (the sauce maker) at work. We do a range of simple vinaigrettes to complex emulsions, and I am being trained on all of them. I know this sounds dumb, but I really love making sauces. It is pretty challenging work, and you have to have a good sense of balance and taste to do it, so I feel pretty good about being good at it. It did lead to two faux pas's this week though, that I will relate to you directly.
Faux pas, the first- In trying to become a stronger member of the brigade (kitchen crew), I am using as much French as I can with the other cooks, if I can help it. So, the other day, I had to put some simple sauces in those squeeze bottles that you might use for ketchup at a hotdog stand, you know- the red plactic ones? We use those to decorate a plate or zap a salad with a quick blast of sauce. Anyway, I thought I knew the word for those things, and so I said to another cook, "Tu me veux mettre une pipe poor toi?" thinking I was saying, "Do you want me to put these in the squeeze bottle for you?" Well, the word I used was pipe, when I should have used les pipettes. Had I used pipettes, all would have been well. However, because I used pipe (pronounced: peep), it turns out that I had offered this person oral sex.
The whole kitchen stopped and looked. So that's the story of how I learned the French word for squeezy bottle, and trust me, I will never, ever forget it.
The other faux pas wasnt so bad. One of the other cooks, Jeremy, isnt so hot with his English. I had made a citrus infusion and asked him to taste. To appreciate the full comedy of this situation, you must know that Jeremy is a 22 year old French guy with a heavy accent. He weighs in at about 110lbs and has thick glasses and acne. He is kind of your stereotypical American nerd (if he was American). I asked him to taste the infusion, and he dipped his pinky in and tasted it. Then he said to me, point blank and straight faced, "Mmmmm, zis iz very good. I love you."
There was a brief moment where I wasnt sure if he just wasnt so strong on English pronouns and just meant to say "I love it", or if I had won the love of my first French nerd. Turns out it was the former. I corrected the mistake, and it has become our little running joke: "How is the soup?" "Its great! I love you."
All kidding aside, I feel like now that week two is over, the honeymoon has eneded. I am aware of not being on vacation, and the novelty has worn off. Hemmingway wrote a short story once called, "In Another Country" wherein, his main character, Nick Adams, is in a war in Spain. The point of the story is basically, that Nick is so alone and so out of sorts, that he feels he is losing himself, that who he is, is somehow tied to where he is and whom he knows there. That he is literally in another country, but that he is also a different person, not himself but someone else he does not know. That he has lost his identity and feels the same sense of disorientation that one feels when in another country. Man, I know what that feels like.
When I was 19 and moved to Greece, I went with a group of people I didnt know, and met a lot of people from the states. I basically hung around with them when we went to the islands or around Greece herself. It was a long and informative vacation.
But to work some where, where you dont really speak the language and know no one, to have something expected of you everyday, but not really know what it is going to be from day to day, moment to moment; it is truly disorienting. I feel like I am losing all the habits I had that were part of being comfortable at home. I lived my life in a way that was familiar, and I sought out the familiar, so to feel a sense of belonging. But here, I cannot belong because the point of this experience is that I do not belong. It is an amazing thing to watch yourself in action, to see yourself change and grow and learn, when so little is familiar, when making yourself understood is out of the question but getting a simple request across or asking a simple question is a herculian task, when so much is expected of you when so little is explained. I do not feel that I know myself anymore, like I am a stranger in my own skin. And it makes me look on home a bit differently. I wonder how it will be when I get back, when after two weeks there have been such dramatic changes in being, that after four and a half months, will I even be recognizable?
I dont know, and I'm not sure if I want to know yet.

And that- really- is the truth.