Morose

Morose, je me sens morose.

This week has been depressing. Maybe it's the weather. "April is the cruellest month." Spring has not really arrived, and you still need a coat. My French friends are all in a bad mood. K told me he's unemployed as of last month, and H's new job isn't working out. C wants to move into Paris from the suburbs but can't afford to, and M can only find freelance work. T needs more people for his company, but he's afraid to hire anyone, so he's working night and day.

A friend and I had lunch at a nice cafe near here, and it took us almost an hour to get our coffee and our bill, because the four people working weren't enough for the fifty or so people in the restaurant. You can't even complain, because the owner is always so nice and was working so hard.

All those things are related.

I went to a party where I met a bunch of Americans and Brits who don't live here, and some kids who had just moved here for a year or two. A few lived here part-time and were the envy of the others. Everyone talked about how much they love Paris, how beautiful it is, how happy they were to be here. How they had dreamed all their lives of coming. I had too!

I didn't dare to say that these days my own envie is also to live here part-time, or even to leave Paris, and live far, far away. I'm not sure where. The grass is always greener.

Mais ce n'est pas demain la veille!

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I had to explain to the rôtisseur that I had not been unfaithful because of bird flu, but because I had been out of town. His business has picked up again after a big drop in February.

Then I walked by the cheese store. I wasn't going to buy anything, but the owner was lounging in the doorway as I passed and called out to me that she hadn't seen me in a while. I ended up buying a pretty chèvre "made by draping it over a teacloth" and discovering that cottage cheese made from cows' milk is called brousse in French, but that broccio (the kind for sale) was from Corsica and made with ewe milk.

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My favorite quote today is from an article in Le Parisien, "The strange silence of Bertrand Delanoë," the socialist mayor of Paris.

A socialist politician observed of Delanoë, "Il s'est réfugié dans le jospinisme incantatoire." [He has taken refuge in an incantatory Jospin-ism.]

How I love the French language!

Comments

[Jessica]

I feel this way today too. I want to go to grad school, and today I was visiting relevant message boards. They were full of stories like "My friend's friend's cousin's aunt's nephew had a 4.0 and perfect scores on his GREs and he was still refused by every school he applied to." Nope, not a good day.

[Linda]

When I first moved to Paris it drove me crazy that I would be in a tiny grocery store trying to buy food with the store packed with other shoppers in the narrow aisles, and long lines trying to check out. What got me was that there would be two or three employees also stocking the shelves at the same time and the customers had to work their way around them. I missed the huge stores in the States with many more check out stands and where the stocking was usually done at night. I now understand that it is really hard to have a business in France and that most stores can't afford the over-time pay or the money to pay for extra help. It helped me not to be so crabby about it all. I bought chicken through the whole bird flu thing as well-got a whole chicken for alot less than usual.

[misschrisc]

You got it right: April not quite feeling like Spring but more like a tease. We need that sunshine to stay but it just won't. It throws us into a little funk.