le roncier

Comment les écrivains français gagnent leur vie. En gros, pas trop bien, sauf 150.

Une conférence ministérielle européenne sur l'intégration à Vichy; Hortefeux est un petit marrant. Heureusement, il n'est pas le seul : Des manifestants en pyjamas rayés interpellés lors d'une conférence sur l'intégration.

Le ministre français des Affaires étrangères Bernard Kouchner a déploré dimanche une "confusion phonétique" par laquelle le quotidien israélien Haaretz lui a fait dire qu'Israël "allait manger l'Iran" si ce pays se dotait de l'arme nucléaire. M. Kouchner a tenu à préciser dans un communiqué "que durant l'entretien en anglais avec les journalistes du Haaretz, il a utilisé le mot +hit+ (frapper) et non +eat+ (manger) à propos d'une hypothétique réaction israélienne s'agissant de l'Iran".

Confusion en Israël autour de propos de Kouchner sur l'Iran.

Et c'est pourquoi, feignants de français, il faut prononcer les "h" en anglais et ne pas confondre les sons courts et les sons longs.

Place de la Bastille, vers 11h du soir.

Jeune Homme, 31 ans, journaliste/libraire, non fumeur, sérieux, bien sous tous rapports, cherche colocation ou chambre dans Paris, dans appartement assez grand et qui ne ressemble pas à une cave, avec un accès internet haut-débit sans fil. Spirituel, je sais cuisiner, laver les toilettes et être discret.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe blague, c'est de moi qu'il s'agit et je cherche vraiment un endroit à louer pour me réinstaller sur Paris après deux ans et demi au Canada, à un prix raisonnable. Si quelqu'un a une proposition ou une idée, n'hésitez pas à m'envoyer un mail. Merci d'avance. Et je promets de ne pas vous piquer votre coupe de cheveux.

The other day, I was feeling blue so I took a long walk along the Seine. I started on the left bank, near what I still call the new Francois Mitterand library, just next to what is now my new favorite area in Paris. The whole neighborhood has been recently constructed, hence it can give me what no other place in Paris can give me, the impression of a clean slate. Everywhere else, Paris is drowned under recollections of happy or painful moments, and I still have a hard time painting it anew with more recent memories.

A day earlier, I was demonstrating with 700.000 others Parisians at the annual Gay Pride, “la Marche des Fiertés”. The weather was beautiful, as it has been since I arrived, and my friend Alex looked at me funny when I suggested that it was may be a sign, a sign that Paris was wishing me well and that everything happened for a reason. It took me the better part of an hour to get ready for the Parade, before I finally left the apartment with a simple white shirt. I couldn't really not to be at my best because I knew I would see a lot of people I used to know, and most importantly, because I was going to see Nicolas. He was there, indeed, as beautiful and daring as he always is, so much actually I couldn't stay. Also I couldn't bear the thought of running into his new lover. I fled, but just before I disappeared in the crowd, Nicolas caught me by the arm and told me that today, I was very beautiful, really “vraiment très beau”. I smiled and said, you too, kissing him on the cheek and leaving him with all his beautiful bears friends. Alex nodded and pointed to the sky to cheer me up, the sun was breaking through the clouds.

A day after, walking, I remembered how much of an old city Paris really was. As I left the newly renovated part of the left bank to enter the old crappy one, I realized there was still place for small pockets of wild life, where some homeless people tried to live in cardboard houses and wildflowers tried to bloom. I spotted a big old barge who looked like a disused floating police station, squeaking, its windows broken. And then it was over again, I was back in a living part of the bank, where people were tango dancing in the middle of the day. Arriving at the Louvre museum, passing under one last bridge, I smelled old urine and dog pooh once more and figured it was the way for the self-called capital of fashion to remember me that if living here was a luxury, we were all born between shit and piss t begin with. Ask your mum if you don’t believe me.

This Pride made me feel insecure, I wish I could be as strong as a hairy bear. As I opened up to Alex about that, he said that my sideburns were helping. It makes you a Bear Bijou, I thought I heard. A jewel bear ? No, he answered, “un bear des joues”, a cheek bear. I know I misunderstood, but I liked my first idea better.

Paris is still the same, it seems. Women are skinny(er), their make-up is more discreet and yes, there are boulangeries and patisseries at every corner and I fed on pains au chocolat for two days before feeling the need to have some greens. I also wasn't there for two days that I already felt the urge to leave for a quieter place, anywhere, elsewhere, where people wouldn't be so much in a hurry, where I had a little bit more of room for myself and most importantly, a place where my mom wouldn't be so rude towards other people. Definitely, France is not a country of service, but Parisians luckily aren't expecting any and keep a very firm attitude towards salesmen, as if they knew no amount of politeness would ever be sufficient to softened these hearts of steel. Even more, being too nice is still a sign of weakness in this tough city.

But is it the same, really ? The first surprise I had coming home, is the diversity of Paris population. Paris is almost as colorful as Toronto, but the interactions between people are completely different. It's just as if white people go on with their lives, feeling like they rule the city of course, acknowledging the visible minorities and enjoying the cultural richness, but in a very French, very blasé way. It's almost as if minorities agreed on letting them think that “la France éternelle” will never change, as long as they can live there. Paris has to remain French, and French still means white for most of the people. They don't want to be remembered that, as a world class city, Paris doesn't only belong to the French but also to everyone who has a connection with the city. At the same time, they really take pride in the reputation of their city. Another french paradox.

Of course, a little bit like Toronto and rural Canada, the rest of France is pretty white, as I remembered in the TGV, the fast speed train, I took to Bordeaux. And as we are in a country that doesn't want to define itself as a mosaic of minorities, even the visible minorities start acting "white" to fit in. In the brand new streetcar of Bordeaux, I overheard this young woman telling her friend proudly that, now, she didn't have to speak arabic anymore, as her grand-mother died last year. Obviously, it sounded like a good thing for her that helped her to feel more french. It's an other illustration of what I discovered while I was in a bilingual country (as in : Canada) : being French is speaking French. Technically, people will treat you like one of them if you're able to be rude to them (to a certain degree) and to answer in a flawless French. French medias are a big part of the problem also : newspapers are still obsesed with President Sarkozy when it's not indirectly control by him and the main figures are undoubtably white.

But I have seen other stuffs too that complicate my analysis. There is Nicolas and his lebanese background, almost taking personal offense in me criticizing French society. There were all those brown skinned engineers in the subway, working on laptops, in their very serious grey suits. There is my mum, treating everyone the same way, bluntly, no matter how dark their skin is, and her again, not mentioning her boyfriend was biracial, when they started dating, because it was not relevant for her. Obviously, even though I have been extremely careful about that, I let the North American vision of old Europe change the idea I had of France. Like it was very hard to explain that you couldn't oversimplified and sum up the riots we had a few years ago only as a religious problem (I don't think we can call them "young muslins riots" for instance), I started to think about France as a angry racist old lady who couldn't stand loosing her beauty queen crown to a younger Miss (in that case, the rest of the world). But of course, nothing is as simple. People use laptop everywhere here as free wi-fi is available in public parks. Bordeaux new streetcars system, running on these grass filled trails, put to shame any TTC vehicle in Toronto. There is definitely something changing in France; and as I look down, through the window at the people passing by on the boulevard Bonne Nouvelle (the Good News Boulevard, where my friend Maxime lives), I realize that even though those people live in a dying museum, the future is happening everywhere. Like the crude green leaves on the trees, life is blossoming on the street of Paris, in this mixed raced crowd and people are, slowly, learning to live together. I'm just starting to wonder if it's so different now or if my experience in Toronto changed the way I look and live with minorities. It was a very cold, harsh epiphany : May be I was racist, may be I was the one unable to see the integration of visible minorities in everyday life because when I saw a black man, the first thing i saw was his color, not the fact that he was a man.

My friend Antonio used to tell me, once you left, you never come back. Definitely, the "I" that came back is not the "I" that left the country, two and a half years ago. Je est un autre, as Rimbaud used to say.

(Yes, I'm practicing my written English skills. Please be understanding ^__^ )

• Gizmodo nous fait découvrir une maison incroyable à Bordeaux, créée par Rem Koolhaas, avec planchers et murs mobiles. Le documentaire consacré à la maison rappelle fortement Mon oncle de Jacques Tati.
• Pour les fans de Fantasy classique, l'ensemble de la série Elfquest est disponible en ligne. Des Elfes en pattes d'éph, franchement, qui peut dire non. Via Ectoplasmosis.
• Finalement, l'idée déco du siècle, j'en peux plus de les vouloir, trouvée sur Vulture, les posters de propagande du Président Roslin de BattleStar Galactica, tout en finesse soviétique. BSG, qui est, rappelons-le, la meilleure série que Joss Whedon, le créateur de Buffy, connaisse, selon le documentaire Phenomenom, qui tente de nous faire patienter jusqu'à la prochaine et dernière saison. Via Torréfaction.