Last night, on a rare weekend night off for J, we went down to the Century to see the horror/dance film Climax, and I was struggling the entire time, despite it being a really weird film and me being a little high, to see if I could understand enough of the French without looking at the subtitles (I apparently could not). In high school, I took four years of it, then an additional course of it in college to meet the gen ed requirement for a BA, but I seriously would not be able to understand much of anyone speaking it. One time on the bus, there were women speaking slow enough for me to understand a little, and I can read little. (I'm fuzzy on tenses, which I never had a good grasp of). Because I know french, there are bits of other latin-based languages I occasionally to make out--some spanish, some italian.
A friend and I always joke about kinda basic girls and their love of Paris. Their tendency to decorate their apartments with french poster art and pillows emblazoned with Eiffel Towers. Of course I say this having once owned at least a half dozen of french posters and still have two (see photos) hanging in my living room and even sorta named the press after another I no longer have.. A few weeks back I posted about the allure of a certain french decrepitude that appeals to the literary minded courtesy of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. There is something exotic about France (language and culture, maybe even slightly a bit more than even Italy. There's a reason people go to Paris on honeymoons, even though many European cities are just as romantic. Basic or no, there is something breathtaking about the idea of an expansive Paris apartment, with giant windows, herringbone floors, and a juliet balcony. With filling your apartment with fresh flowers from the market and endless croissant. You can do all these things right here in Chicago, but somehow they are far sexier when you're speaking french and smoking Gauloises.
I was super into it in high school though, learning the language and the culture--I was french club president my final year, did immersion days at area colleges, was inducted into the French honor society. It was unlikely that I would ever be much for actually making it to Paris. I wasn't as anxious about flying as a teen and did, but I still didn't have the sort of family financials that would ever allow a trip. Maybe this is one reason I love New Orleans so much, it's french flavor, but home grown with blues and jazz and a little voodoo thrown in for good measure.
