And the Tuesdays from hell continue...
I spent an hour with Fabrice this morning, reviewing with him for some final thing he has to do. I learned the word for "gun," he taught me the word for "gangster," and then he asked me what "lawn" means.
But how are you supposed to explain the concept of a lawn to a kid who has never lived in anything but an apartment, in a city where there are NO HOUSES. Literally. You want houses, hit up the suburbs. The rich distant ones, not the closeby ones.
"C’est... un peu comme un jardin."
"It’s kind of... a garden." True, I could have gone with something less logical but more accurate– "It’s the place in front of a house where there are plants...?"
Yesterday I was hanging out with a Swedish friend and inadvertently used the word "tingle." And of course, she had no idea what it meant. Her English is fluent, but how often does that word come up? And HOW IN HEAVEN’S NAME DO YOU EXPLAIN IT, in English or otherwise? "It’s, like, when something feels... kind of... prickly, but in a good way? You know, it’s refreshing, and... it feels... like... cold on your skin?"
I am a terrible ambassador for this language.
After Fabrice’s, I went to my architecture class. No, wait, it’s not an architecture class, it’s an art history class focused on architecture of the Renaissance. So we should be STUDYING buildings, not designing them. But I walked in today, and the prof greets us with, "Oh, good, you’re all here for our design class." I choked. Apparently he had announced this on the first day of class, which I did not attend because I was not yet registered, and he didn’t tell me the next week. I have never in my life drawn a blueprint, and to be perfectly honest, whenever there are plans and layouts in anything I have to read for school, I look at it as a free page that I don’t need to read and skip right over it. So I start to freak. And then he says, "I want you to do a geometric plan of this building." First of all, I’ve only BEEN in that building four times, and every time straight to the same room. And secondly, the word geometric in itself is enough to make me shudder like the hyenas in Lion King. I thought seriously about pulling an Uncle Jessi– "I have to go to the bathroom," and then just not coming back, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get my bag and coat out with me just to go to the bathroom. And he starts using these words in French that I don’t understand about weight bearing and outer walls versus inner walls and beams and "Oh, don’t worry, only include the masonry of the building," in French, but I don’t really even know what masonry means in English, except for FREEmasonry, and that really doesn’t apply here. And now that I think about it, I really don’t know that much about that either...
But all those daggum Frenchies pull out their extra-large onionskin design paper and their sketch pencils– the fancy kind you sharpen with a knife– and their stupid gum erasers, which are probably my favorite thing in the whole world, and suddenly I am so jealous of their gum erasers because I haven’t had a new one to play with since high school, and I feel like the stupid kid (again) because I forgot to bring my homework with me, only it wasn’t homework and no one ever told me I needed to bring it. Though to their credit, even if they had told me, I would not have had any idea where to go buy the stuff. And the prof starts drawing a generic geometric plan on the board, in chalk over the chalk already on the board, so I can’t see what he is doing and it’s all full of diagonals to show weight, and I have no idea what any of it means.
So I draw a square, very lightly. Because I don’t know architecture and all I know about math is that I hate it, but I do know art. A little. More than the average person, perhaps. But not much more. And this to me is not art, this is design, and math, and engineering, and there is a HUGE difference.
I know enough to know you draw lightly and that the human wrist moves in a circle, so if you are not wanting to draw a circle, then you have to pick up your wrist. But I am also American, and apparently the American way of doing things when it comes to plans is wrong– you don’t make gentle little sketch marks when you are trying to draw a straight line. You run your hand across the paper in the trajectory that you want one time for practice, and then the second time you draw the dang line. In one smooth gesture. With your right hand, obviously.
This is something else I forgot to mention: there are no lefty Frenchies. I don’t know if they stifle left-handedness in France the way they did in the US back in the day or if it is more subconscious, but there are none. But I am left-handed. So I stick out like a sore thumb at dinners or in class when I am constantly bumping elbows with whoever is next to me.
So the professor is walking the class looking at everyone’s work, and I borrow the only extra sheet the girl next to me has, and start drawing with my stupid mechanical pencil a square made out of gentle sketch marks. He comes over and says, "Oh, it should be much more dirty than this, not nearly so neat, and don’t do it the American way, do it smoothly, like this..." I don’t think he meant it as an insult, I think he had forgotten I was American at that point. He takes my pencil, does the line, and then draws over it much darker than it had been. So I start drawing everything darker.
And he comes back 10 minutes later, and tries to erase one of my lines, and says, "Oh, this is much too dark, much too much, you must go lightly so that it can be erased." And I’m acquiescing silently, willing him to talk quietly so everyone else doesn’t realize how inept I am, when he walks away and opens the black curtains. And lo and behold, the windows that I assumed were rectangular, as windows are wont to be, are round. Which makes no sense, because who in their right mind has round windows? AND the ones on the other side of the room are rectangular and everyone knows the French are all about symmetry. But the roundness has thrown my outline off completely.
AND then there’s the fact that I still don’t really have any idea what I am doing, and my square is not centered and my center axis is leaning and my pillars are the same diameter as the windows, a gross error in scale, and my center beam is more like a 2/3 beam, re-erased so many times I can’t even tell where it actually is.
I learned the French word for the prong on a belt today– not the belt buckle, but the little prong thing that goes into the holes on the other end of the strap. I learned the word for that hole too. And while I was talking to Fabrice today I forgot the French word for skirt and had to explain it with "you know, it’s like a dress, but only the bottom half?"
I also learned a new French concept– diontologie. I don’t think we have this concept in English, though it might be like nihilism, solipsism and pastiche– words and concepts that exist in the English language but which one only knows if one has been through Dr. Busonik’s AP English Lit class (gag me with a spoon). Anyway, diontologie is not only a word we don’t have, but really the whole concept doesn’t exist in the English vocabulary– it’s used to refer to the obligations, mainly moral/ethical, but also just in general, of a profession. So medecine’s diontologie would be, like, the Hippocratic Oath, Doctor/Patient privilege, etc. Law’s would be attorney/client privilege... etc. I realized after I learned the word that it’s a pretty cool concept, more complicated and elevated than ethics, but still practical... but alas, nothing I want to do, ever, for the rest of my life, has any sort of diontologie. So hopefully once I graduate Emory and can quit worrying about the Honor Code, my life will be completely free of obligation, moral or otherwise. Wow, I just read over that to make sure it made sense, and I realized I spelled "medicine" the French way, but I feel like it is so applicable that I am not changing it.
Ha.
Pardon me while I burst into flames,
B