We assembled, your typical Gaulois family – we got our
warcarts, our cattle, our dyepots and our spears together – and made it down to
Roquette, where I was to be interviewed, examined, and finally issued my visa
for a year. First, I watched a film that told some white lies about liberty,
equality, and fraternity (illustrating the latter, to the sound of Robespierre
turning in his grave, with scenes from a football match), and then was called
out to have my lungs xrayed, my eyes examined (the examination card, in a nice
touch, contained, in its small print section, what seemed to be a prose poem
about beauty), and my personal history and that of my family extracted: I
claimed that there was no inherited schizophrenia, hebephrenia, pyromania,
nymphomania, or anthropophagous warts in my family tree, and that I had never
had a serious illness, never drank alcohol (except when I could find it – I added
this silent codicil in my own mind), and was as healthy as a horse.After which,
I was called into the office of the nicest case officer ever, who said that my
record showed that I could skip the classes on logement, typing, woodwork,
sheepherding, and abbatoir science, but that I would have to assist on a
program on French civics, including the dread explanation of how the French
elect the senate. In preparation for the latter, the case officer gave me a
textbook on logarithms and another on non-Euclidean geometry. We were about to
rise in our chairs and sing Ca ira when she noticed that I had made a gross blunder
on my application sheet. Normally, I would have been quartered for this
mistake, but instead, I was showered with such courtesy and understanding that
I swore to make encore un autre effort and like rillettes, or die trying. An
excellent day. I am in!
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads
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Routines, rituals and the post-identity moment
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2 comments:
congrats R!
Do you find the french less or more awful than the US? be happy you aren't here - this fucking country's a sinking ship.
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