J’aime vraiment Paris. I do love Paris. It is why I have the Eiffel Tower as my logo. I love Washington, DC, too. So maybe I should put the Washington Monument in my logo, too. The two are intertwined in history. But I love Paris. I have walked the streets for hours and it is as Ernest Hemingway coined the term “a moveable feast.” Paris is more than that to me, though. The provinces meant more to me than Paris. Paris was a home for me when I studied at the Sorbonne for a year. I lived briefly in a little “chambre de bonne” or “maid’s room” in the attic of an old apartment building - no heat, just cold running water, and a toilet down the hall. But I went to class each day and learned to get along. I met a group of Cambodian students; and I learned about Cambodian classical dance. With them I traveled to the provinces and the smaller cities, like Toulouse, helping them give their performances of classical dance. The French have a curiousity in exotic things. I learned a gentle way of life could be found with food, laughter, work, and togetherness. Everyone had something to give to the performance. Musicians played the gamelan. I was the makeup artist. This tender cohesiveness nurtured in me a deeper understanding of the value of learning a foreign language. French was a bridge between two cultures and it neutralized a lot of difficult thoughts and feelings. When speaking French I was no longer “l’Américaine” with all of its crazy connotations. I was simply “Melanie” or “Mellie” as they called me. Just a person. In a simple moment when the name “Mellie” was used, I felt a melting away of an old self and the forming of a new self that understood a second language. The old self was inside my being, but the new self was present, as translucent an ever changing in form. Many tender feelings and remembrances of walking the streets of Odéon, a neighborhood where I met many of the Cambodian students surge up whenever I come to Paris.
But it was in the provinces that I learned to relax, walk, see, learn, absorb nature in its quiet easy pace of life. People spoke more slowly. They correct language mistakes less, but in a more gentle way, listening carefully to the words. In Toulouse, I learned to use my French to help the dancers. But I love Bretagne and the city of St. Malo and its Maison du Québec which notes the launching of so many sailing ships, privateers, and expeditions, including those of Jacques Cartier, the explorer in the extreme. St. Malo is the launching place for the Route du Rhum, an incredible boat race across the ocean. I love Normandy for its apple orchards and the scent of cider. I love Dordogne fot its cave paintings and beautiful scenery. I love Provence for its lavender fields and Roman ruins. Learning to love a place means the heart and mind open together. A connection forms, mixing feeling, memory, senses, and an understanding. The language is the bridge that opens the way to experience.
Later, when upon returnnig home, I learned to love other places in my beloved America - Chicago with its Art Institute, the prairies with their flowers and grasses, bison, and birds. The stacks in the library of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, with their smell of dust and old paper and glue. To keep up the connection to Paris and the provinces, I joined the Alliance Française and kept studyng. C’est tout simple.