Forever is composed of nows: Part II

Things that I have "learned" about Paris:

I know that Rennes, where I spent 5 months in 2004, is no metropolitan. I know this. And that is why I love it and want to go back. All the same-and I can't help but to compare-I am so surprised by the presence of English in Paris. I hear it ALL the time. I see Brits and Yanks right and left. It is tourist season, yes. I am aware of that. But this impression began in Switzerland even. I couldn't believe being able to get along without honestly knowing a lick of German. To be honest, it is kind of sad. 

When I lived in Rennes, I spent 5 quite silent months amongst anyone who wasn't a foreign, English speaking student. I had to. There were a few Frenchies who had done studies abroad to England or the States, but it was mostly Americans and Irish that I hung around if I wanted to communicate at all. One in ten of us had a cell phone. Internet only existed in the campus library and at internet cafés. It may be unfair of me to compare a Rennes of 8 years ago to a Paris of today, but I can't help but feeling as though I have been witness to a huge cultural shifting. Globalization through the internet and the media has happened, right before my eyes. Of course kids still learn English at school as they have been for the past 30 something years. But I think it is safe to say that in the last 10 years or so, everything has changed. And is still.changing. Culturally, linguistically. It's kind of sad. I come to France to experience a culture and a history that is different from my own. That gap between French and American mentality, so impassive, I wonder if it will always remain that way. I don't want our cultures to understand one another simply because one has obliterated the other. Perhaps that is dramatic. Perhaps we'll give it another 10 years and see.

My internship here entails two kinds of work: setting up visits with old people who are lonely and need the company or someone to accompany them on little outings, and biweekly meetings with a group who have come from hard times and few means and have made a sort of family for themselves amongst others like them. I'll be talking a lot more about my work, schedule, visits, and of course, the people, for the rest of my stay here. For the sake of this topic however, I'm gonna just limit myself to one anecdote.

Three days of the week I spend my afternoons doing visits with Carin. You will likely hear much more about her. She is, I believe, somewhere in her 60's, from the Netherlands, and a French Professor. She has come here for 3 weeks, leaving behind her husband as she has done the past 3 years to come here and renew her French. She is fiercely independant, gets around on a bike, goes to concerts almost nightly, has a beautiful singing voice and a way with the people here. Perhaps needless to say, she is already likely to be one of my heroes. In any case, we had a visit Friday. The woman we visited, Mme Marechal, collected books of French culture, mostly about impressionism. She knew so much but the craziest thing is she has never traveled. Ever! Anyway, she uses art as a kind of therapy to help her deal with the solitude, but, most especially, the lack of solidarity she feels and the changes in the country. The city she grew up in and has lived in most of her life is such a different place. It has evolved, not just with the effects of time on her culture, but by other cultures on her culture. In case you aren't aware, immigration is a huge phenomenon in Europe. I should google some statistics but I'm feeling lazy. What I do know is that 8.1% of the French population are immigrants. What I also suppose is that most of these immigrants live in the larger cities: donc, Paris et Marseille. 

I think the best way to summarize is using Carin's words, which she used to help me understand Mme. M's distress. Carin watched after her mother, who recently passed, go through a similar struggle: in the Netherlands, there are entire neighborhoods which are now entirely full of immigrants. Natives no longer live there. But all this has happened only over the past 20 years or so. Which translates a lot of change in only a short amount of time. And the older generation, the ones who shaped the cities as we have them today in many ways, are too old to move away out of such neighborhoods. Or it doesn't make sense for them to. But it takes so much energy for them to live, that tackling this unfamiliar is a daunting task. And so they live further isolated, not just by age but by culture. 

So in summary, I am beginning to see how Paris, this city that I love for its age and richness of history, is also a city that encapsulates change. It's a striking juxtaposition.