i'm looking at the poster posted on the wall in fronna me, which is a hymn to the cell phone...it goes a bit like this...and is a translation of the french version which is above it. so i'm not sure how funny it's supposed to be.
Our Friend the Mobile Phone.
We can only be thankful to you for the favours that you daily do us.
You are ubiquitous in our activities and your autonomy is ever greater.
But it would be suitable and advisable for you to be less conspicuous, out of due respect for the people who are busy working in this room.
Indeed, it is sometimes annoying and even galling to hear your ever so original jingles throughout the day.
In the future, we will be all the more grateful as you will place yours calls outside the computer room.
We are tankful to you for your kind collaboration.
it works on so many levels! i'm sure my semiologie du poetique prof could say great things about the difference between the signified and the significant or some similarly terrible lacanian quip. yay! so, yesterday. what i love maybe more than shows is venues. someplace to call home or call home about. gosh, this is all related to the conversation we had last night at 2P+C, over our overpriced drinks (even if they were haribo garnished). the 'i got mugged in new york and now i hate new york' syndrome. the 'my french host mother defreezes eggrolls to make me feel welcome and now i feel smug towards france' syndrome. attaching meaning to place. for me it can not but help going back to
independence day, one of my lasting pulitzer bibles of portable philosophies, and how location is really no more than what we imbue it with. why i will always have a soft spot for saratoga and why i love watching from the train window to see the staid philly skyline. why new york frustrates me, why i'm obsessed with rome. why seoul will never stop throwing me off...
because we measure life to a large extent by location, i think. (les trois unités!)
démanagement. time, as the selfsame semiologie prof said a few hours ago, can be measured in both digital and analog. what you see when you boredly fix your ocular equipment on your wristwatch, your heart thumping, and try to watch the minute hand glide around the dial, is one representation of time - it is (supposedly) constantly fluidly moving. whereas digital is tick tick tick the 1s and the 0s and little fluorescent sticks moving around, forming numbers. whereas location/place is quite different. we don't actually most of us go around measuring footfalls. instead maybe we measure space with emotional content.
study abroad is so questionable and even illegitimate in some ways (or in some people) because it eventually just amounts to american propaganda. this longing to wake up in a land where diners exist! like as you get borne further and further away from the things you depend on - political correctness, overdeodorization, diversity, hubris, well organized educational institutions! with real toilets! - the more you crane your neck for shore. but also for some...it's the chance to pack lots of little things (as small as the open-air market in aix-en-provence, or as weighty as a pain au chocolat) into a little box labeled 'france'. of course it's both for everyone! of course! this includes me.
but what i really wanted to say was that i feel so fat these days, i've gained like four kilos, and i have no money, and no house in philly, and i'm at a loss! and my contacts are old and give me headaches all the time. god i hate headaches. and that our new catechism is probably something as naughty as 'split up, hook up, regroup'...and that for a few days i was eating eclairs and reading jd salinger to stay afloat. now it's much less.
