L’Observateur : Paris Edition

Mon française c’est plus bonne avec chaque jour passée. Comme vous dit? J’ai une dialogue interieur avec tout le monde en les rues de Paris. Ouais, c’est vrais, avec tout le monde, je parlez en demi-silence. Par example, le autre jour, un homme marcheé en mon chemin trés lentement et sans utiliseé il tête. J’ai un conversation avec le homme en le sujet de ile conduite. Mais, il ne me attendre pas presque je ne parler pas avec volume. Vous moi entendres? Autres temps, les conversations silences c’est peut-être avec une femme qui marcheé in le voie du velo sans pensée ou un chien qui vulgaire en le trottoir de Avenue Parmentier ... et mon française c’est plus bonne presque c’est beaucoup des idiotes commes ça en cette cité.

And, the online translation of my broken French to English:

My French is anymore good with every day tolerable. As you say? I have an interior dialogue with everybody at blocks about Paris. Yes is proper, with everybody, I talk at half-stillness. For example, him alternative day, a bloke march at my lane slowly and without expend he head. I have a chat with him bloke at point about island conduct. But, he await not, almost I talk not with size. You I hear? Alternative times, the conversations stillness is tin with a female Thanksgiving march in him lane any velvet without think or a dog Thanksgiving coarse at him footpath about Avenue Parmentier. And my French is anymore good almost is a lot any daft as that city.

The other day the doorbell rang and a guy sold me a Communist Party newspaper (no ads) for a euro. Afterward, I thought about him trying to do that in Texas, and then imagined his dead body.

Recently, our landlady switched our ISP to Freebox. In addition to wireless internet, it gives us free phone calls to the United States, as well as countless channels of nothing to watch, like Berbére TV and the Karaoke Channel.

What’s hip in Paris these days seems to be a recycled version of the late-Eighties in the vein of the early Jim Jarmusch films.

When I came back from Venice a few weeks ago, it was the first time I returned to Paris and thought “home,” and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

In the coming days I’m off on a three-week couscous bender. My aim is to see the majority of Morocco, going from Casablanca in a counterclockwise oval around the Atlas Mountains and back. I may visit Tangier (the city of my conception) and Kenitra (where I gestated on a naval base for a few months before being airlifted to my rightful birthplace in the Sooner Nation). I will also attempt to find an internet connection fast enough to stream the broadcast of the Oklahoma Sooners/Florida Gators BCS Championship Game on January 8. Or, I may just get lost in the Sahara and become a bedouin or a Berber or whatever.