Productive Cuddling

I recently showed the opening of the film American Beauty to a bunch of French executives during an English Debate seminar entitled “The Ideal: French vs. American”.  This film’s is a beautiful, tight beginning, a sequence which opens us up to the characters and their worlds in a crisp and rhythmic way.  In it you have the protagonist played by Kevin Spacey, a character who even from the start resembles someone who has been run over, by his life, the speed of his culture, the breakneck but normative pace of his everyday.  Alongside him is his wife, marvelously played by Annette Benning, who might not even once stop running during the entire film.  She is like a relay runner, rabid and pumped to either hand off or collect her baton at any given moment.  She is at one with the speed of her life.  “Lester, could you make me a little later please?  Because I’m not quite late enough!”  This is the first line she throws at her husband in the film.

I pressed the pause button after and peered at the people in the room, many of whom were there (I won’t lie) not to practice their English but to take a healthy advantage of the fact that their company supplies for someone like me to waltz in and occupy them for a day; the American New York gay guy with impeccable English who will chew their ear off about films and ideals, thereby preventing them from doing any work.  How relaxing!  I asked them how this sequence might have been filmed, what actors, which setting, etc., if the film were to be called French Beauty.  And the response was generally what I expected – ze mother, perhaps, would be occupying herself with ze children?  Or at least maybe there would be a brief breakfast scene?  Fine.  But nowhere did I hear a change in how the Kevin Spacey character would be portrayed.  Which meant, in my mind, the fast characters would slow down and the slow characters would…stay as is.  That is not to say that the speed of life here, or at least the conception of the speed of life, is less dramatic, or lifelike.  It is just slower, more studied, with more stops along the way for one to take advantage of the moment.  Please don’t think I am anti-French: I am just trying to understand how people live around me.  By no means am I trying to infer that the French walk around like the depressed Lester Burnham, but instead that they might be moving abreast of him, at his pace.

Whether or not you agree, it is undeniable that the pace of life is different in Paris.  This feeling was amplified for me upon my recent return from New York, where I spent a whirlwind 2 weeks seeing family and friends, being taken out, eating, shopping and writing (I know, woe is me).  But somehow, in all this hurried enjoyment, my body remembered something absolutely vital: this is how we used to move! it said.  It was all play in New York, and I still managed to do more, see more, spend more and move more than when in France.  Granted, even though New York is my home, it has become an altogether strange vacation destination for me in the past two years (an incident that I am sure other supplanted people would relate to), a place where I am now unsure as to what extent I should be enjoying myself.  But the fact remains that France is where I live and work, and the only thing I manage to do more of here is eat and sleep!  Getting back from my trip a few weeks ago, I threw myself into breakneck charades just to go to the doctor or to run various other menial errands.  I mischievously waited until the last moment, maybe to give myself a jolt of physical nostalgia for the homeland.  I remember trying to picture New York in the Parisian snapshots that whizzed before me in my hurried state.

But that is where the rushing stops for me here.  There are in fact some amazing things I’ve adopted from the French organization of time and ambition, things that have even changed my life.  Barring the abovementioned adjustment period after New York, when I’m late, I no longer do it.  Rushing and me are over.  To ‘rush’ is an oxymoron, an activity which in itself is fated for failure.  I just got this.  If one rushes, one is almost always already late (unless you’re like my lovingly neurotic mother who rushes as if she is late in order to avoid being so).  What is the point?  It took the French feeling of laissez-faire – which does course through the air here – for me to finally realize, there is no point.  If I am late, now it’s bon, why rush?!  Even the French word bon implies a sort of settling, a damned-if-I’m-upset-about-it kind of throwing in of the towel, whereas ‘OK’ is a little less flexible, something we Americans use to move on with.  The good-natured anti-rush; I can’t tell you how much this has helped my mental and physical wellbeing, now that I no longer arrive at my destination sweaty and stressed (3 minutes later, calm and ready, is far more preferable).  I plod along with the others, defiantly, thinking to myself how much better I feel by not rushing.  Perversely, the nervousness that is obligatory in being late just might help to feed this defiance.  Back home, the way I used to tax my system was so…American.  The stress that festers due to matters relating to time and schedule in my country are disproportionately enormous.  This realization is therefore invaluable for me, someone who is often late if I don’t watch myself. 

This newfound calm that now overtakes my default biological impulses has always fit with my Parisian schedule; only once did I get yelled at for tardiness by a French person, at the kinésithérapeute (an impossible word meaning something between a chiropractor and a masseuse, loosely).  But upon reflection his first name was Hans – he was most definitely German!  Perhaps, I am so at one with the French approach that I risk going too far.  I actually let a crowded metro car go today without trying to cram myself in.  I followed suit with the rest of the people on the quai, calmly balancing my time constraints with my threshold for comfort, and decided to wait.  The ratios for people who do that here and in New York are quite different.  The list of examples in support of these differences is very long, but certain situations jump out at me from time to time, refusing to allow me to forget that I’m in a foreign country.  For one, France uses a beurocratic system that hinges on the post office.  The mail??!  In America, that’s simply too slow.  Mail in the States equals catalogues and Publisher’s Clearing House, especially in this day and (web)age.  Another example is found in the following:  through some trick of fate, I recently found myself in two movie theatres, one French and one American, where the movie did not begin in time due to some sort of technical problem.  The differences there were startling too.  In New York I had people on their feet sooner than you could say ‘lawsuit’, while here in Paris everyone schmoozed amongst themselves until ten minutes later, when the lights finally dimmed.  I was ready to have a full blown American breakdown in the space of those ‘dix minutes’.

—
Because Paris life is slower and more reflective, the city becomes less impending in my impression of it.  The beauty here, as astounding as it is, remains purely sensual in its historical authority: there is no pulsating NOW activity that validates it like in New York, which towers over you both literally and figuratively.  I thought this recently as I crossed, in a matter of seconds, the façade of the Notre Dame, a beautiful but sleepy church (if you ask me).  Yes, I was in front of this historic structure at night, but I cleared it in spite of its essential history as I cut across the place in my brisk, homespun pace.  Maybe that too is presumptuous and unfounded.  As a New Yorker, I must qualify my theories and reactions, since contrasting Paris against ‘New York’ standards can be misleading.  ‘American’ standards might tell a different story.  But I can only speak of what I know.  And more importantly, the fact remains that I am here, in France, and I embrace that sensual, aesthetic hesitation; if you’re not careful, the immediacy of a place like New York can depress the shit out of you.  There are also exceptions to this whole idea – I saw a large French woman (yes, large) cram herself onto a different metro car the other day, and the car horns on my French rue outside bellow in a way that actually puts 8th avenue to shame.  But again, I speak of my own experience.

As an English teacher (woe is me, really), I see Paris as one big beautiful ellipsis…and New York as a short and immediate exclamation point!  For variety’s sake, and while you’re at it in the interests of a varied and interesting life, the French way of life/pace can be just as good if not better ­than the acceleration you’re used to.  The ‘ideal’ we promise in our little English seminar, if it exists, should a cultural mix.  On the whole, French people might even be happier, tasting the wine and cheese.  They walk alongside our sad and dilapidated Kevin Spacey, but they are in effect more content in their beautiful surroundings.

I will leave you with this:  The way my boyfriend and I are.  In short, I am a basketcase, he calm and collected with phrases like “On a les temps…”  (“We have the time…”).  This morning he told me that he doesn’t like it when I work “when we’re together.”  But…we live together!  In the same room.  I wonder what part of me working might bore him, in fact?  He replies that he would rather that we talk, spend time with each other, cuddle.  Cuddle?  I can’t help the thought that shoots through my brain, the minute I hear the word: cuddling just might be the most unproductive activity I can imagine!  I edit that harsh and cold thought before it comes out of my mouth (thank God):  “My goal right now is to work, you know that.”  I am of course referring to the last couple of months, during which time I have realized yet again that my current boulot alimentaire (job to make the ends meet) must soon come to an end before I wake up one day and realize I’ve wasted too much time. 

My boyfriend knows all this, from firsthand observation, and he understands that I am at a crossroads: the time is now, I must be productive now if I want to jump headlong into writing, developing my work habits and the peppering of self-delusion required for all writers.  I am busy, doesn’t he see that?  Not all of us have time for…cuddling!  But then, wait a second.  How horrible am I?  I remember that I enjoy cuddling with him!  I am not, nor ever have been, anti-cuddle!  I do have a soul.  But all the same, it is true that sometimes during these tender sessions I have brief glimpses of what I could be doing.  Doesn’t everybody?  I am not so insecure as to think that this calls into question my love for him.  The best way to reason myself out of the unwelcome frustration my rushed American psyche might throw at me during a cuddle is this: cuddling is actually hyper-productive, in a different way.  It is something I started to do relatively late in life (not in high school like most kids), and so I have a lot of catching up to do.  It creates trust, and a feeling of stability.  Tactile stability.  That is pretty damn productive, isn’t it?!