Memoire

I'm missing Paris. A lot. So I thought I'd sift through some pictures and find my favorites from the time in my life where I learned the most about myself and the rest of this crazy, beautiful world.

Impromptu encounter

My head is filled with rocks. Not the smooth sorts of pebbles that you find layered beneath placid waters, but sharp, jagged, moss-infested rocks. The ones that cut your feet. The ones that you throw to break windows of abandoned houses. Those kinds of rocks.

I write in my notebook the order in which I will do things today, underneath this quote:

May you build a ladder to the sun
And climb on every rung

The list looks as follows:

Go to the library and write to Brianne, Liam, and Professor Smick
Put the framed Paris photos on your wall
Bake a chocolate cake
Go to mission church and sit

I get off work at 5pm. Channing wishes me well as she sends me on my way, spinning around and off down the other hallway. It is raining lightly outside. I don’t bother pulling out my bright green raincoat. I think about all that I promised myself I would do, troubled at how quickly the day’s hours dwindle when we allow them to. But my feet lead the rest of my body towards the church, through winding paths lined with sharp grass edges and cradled by weeping willows.

The colossal entrance confronts me for the second time in my undergraduate career.

“Do they ever lock churches?” I think seriously. I would not have known.

The doors reveal rows and rows of empty wooden seats, a muraled ceiling stretching towards the sky. I sit. Silence fills my chest.

My hands lay folded in my lap. Minutes pass. My eyes drift slowly under my lids and my neck stiffens. My head pulls backwards, floating on a threshold of storm and stillness. My breath calms. My limbs lock. The tip of my nose fixes upward, almost detaching itself from my body. The rocks tumble, agitated, searching for escape.


I am not smothered in demands or sounds or words on lined paper. I am not crushed hope, mangled and exhausted. I am not good or bad intentions.

I am not a mother who weeps alone, longing for the warmth of a hand, or a sign of life. I am not catastrophe sweeping through impoverished nations, murdering. I am not a broken cell phone or unread books stacked neatly on a dresser.

I am not chipped nail polished; I am not neglected messages. I am not a brother, burdened with the fear of revealing secrets. I am not hurt because I know them already.

I am not labor’s sweat; I am not unguided or crude. I am not frustration or laziness or inhibitions. I am not a father buried under scars, slipping twenties for consolidation.

I am not a sister who tears at foreign skin. I am not schedules; I am not dirty clothes heaped on floors. I am not a lover whiplashed by selfish deceit. I am not choices of what to eat, when to sleep, what to say.

I am not a grandmother standing in her bath robe in the kitchen in the middle of the night. “This family is falling apart.” She whispers. “You have to do something.”

I am not without love. I am not alone.


I am.

I simply am.


My neck loosens. My head straightens, resting steadily on my shoulders. I don’t know if I’ve been breathing, or if the life within me simply halted and has resumed again. I can feel red blood cells swimming to my fingertips. Colored light from the windows floods the room, washing gently over me, unlocking my knees.

"I have a meeting," I remember. I rise and gather my belongings. My bag is lighter.

I walk out onto the steps. An enormous pink cloud envelops the darkening sky. And I think:

Well, God, it’s nice to finally meet you.

L'histoire d'un moment; Un moment de l'histoire

The sky is clear as we walk towards my car, parked lonely by the broken sidewalk. It smells like campfire. I step to avoid puddles, but my laces fall victim to mud and debris from the storm.

“Baby,” you say. You smile at my tired face. You don’t mind that our plans rearranged; I don’t mind that we’re miles from home on a damp Sunday morning.

You hurry forward and spin around, like you have something pressing to reveal. Your hand meets my cheek. The other tucks a strand of hair behind my ears as I stand, hunched.

“I love you.”

I taste your words. I close my eyes. You sink into me. The warmth of your mouth is like nothing else.

Cognitive flooding.

Studying Moral Epistemology can be mentally draining. That's why we invented day dreaming:

It is you
yes, very much you
and it is me.

Rock and roll, yes, roll
thick rock, raw, unending roll.
Oceans roll.

Slide up spines
where solace lies,
tumble in deepest pits

Tainted with mud, perhaps. Or salt. Sea salt.
The kind that flushes out wounds
and harbors jelly fish.
Oceans roll.

Lush
lush like cotton candy
or Victorian extravagance, suffocating
liberating.

Grooves of palms
carve ribs
sweet, raw.

Hold me paralyzed
with your fingertips
like puppet strings
like fire.
like ice.

Melt into me
roll through me.
Oceans roll.

I am your jellyfish.

Frenzy Refined.

Dec. 23, 2009

I thought the other day about a phone conversation I had with my aunt Gina a few days before I left for Paris.

I stirred lentils in the kitchen. I told her I was going to come back a different person.

“Yea, I believe many things about you will change. But you, Rach, will never change who you fundamentally are."

I wondered about this word for a long time, fundamental.

My knee jerk was supported by a philosophical perspective, of course—that it all boils down to identity. And by that I mean whether “I” is contained in the flesh of my body, the neurological functions in my brain, my memory, my mind, conscience, consciousness, my will, or (and this is my favorite) my soul. Ignoring the rigorous philosophical debate on identity and memory loss, comas, etc., I specifically questioned whether or not one can actively manipulate, by the drive and direction of the will, the formation and transformation of one’s own identity--or whether its composition and evolution is necessarily contingent on environmental and historical factors (because though “identity” is an idea, it is an idea that manifests itself within the human across a certain fragment of space and time.)

The body is the most obvious indicator of the self aside from one’s own name. But let’s take it from a physiological perspective, in case you’re hungry for some thought food. Fact: The human body’s cells completely regenerate every seven years. So if the physical particles of my flesh and bones are in constant flux and transformation, I can’t ever be exactly the same person at any given time. If not my body, what exactly remains constant? What keeps me me if not my mane or gangly limbs?

But then I figured I’d take the fundamental question from a different approach. Maybe strictly linguistic (which, of course, is inherently linked to all philosophical investigation). What does “fundamental” really mean? Original, primary, vital, essential. Sure. But these all mean different specific things. By definition, I cannot change my origin: I was born a female into the Hammel family in Berkeley and grew up in the San Francisco suburbs. If you trace my family heritage far enough, you’ll see that I am of Northern European descent, mainly German, Swedish, Norwegian, and Irish/French/English. Oh, and keep an eye out for good ‘ole Abe on the family tree.

My essence—what is essential for my being—is my history and background, my physical appearance or figure, and my internal states (personality, worldview, tendencies, mannerisms, ideas, opinions, likes/dislikes, ambition and drive). I suppose the questions is where it’s all situational, depending on constantly fluctuating external contexts like age, living conditions, resources, events, opportunities, etc., or if it’s engrained in the very blueprints of my makeup, transcending the thresholds of purely external limitations.

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I will say that as far as identity is concerned, there is surely room for variation.

All this thinking about identity led me to examine my own self, making me wonder whether or not my aunt Gina was right. In Paris, I spent my days speaking a different language, living with a different family, indulging in a different diet, learning different rules and adopting different habits, delving in to different academic dimensions, and observing radically different forms of life. So where was the line of constancy preserved during my four month experience of cultivating a lifestyle that directly threatened the status of my pre-existing fundamental? I wondered if I really was still the same old Rachel, or if maybe it was possible that I had tapped into my fundamental and done a bit of maintenance work.

None of the perspectives led me directly to the answer, as you can see from my aimless ramblings. But, as a budding writer and a sucker for art, all messy smart crap aside, I thought I’d close the final chapter of my travel journal with one last perspective. None other than: the poet.

The word fundamental followed me to France and stayed stuffed inside my pocket for many months. The edges, rough, but the surface, flat and smooth. The colors, fading and illuminating. Sometimes it froze in the cold weather, or melted under the heat of the sun. It indulged and it created and it felt sorry for the homeless child on Rue Daguerre. It got angry and frustrated and threw belongings at the wall, shattering them into pieces and staining pillows. It smiled at the rising sun of a new day and reflected about its blessings. It didn't care too much about material things. It laughed off its inhibitions and trusted the intentions of pure strangers. It sat at the old piano in the living room of a new family and lay in bed awake all night, listening to rain drops hitting and sliding off the roof. It balanced on the threshold of awkward and inviting and it helped a blind man across the street. It asked far too many questions and didn’t ask nearly enough.

It climbed hundreds, thousands, millions of steps. It took panoramic snapshots of rusty chimneys and stories untold. It snuck food into the bedroom and spilled coffee on the carpet. It marveled at the wonders of the world and the timeless deliciousness of a rustic baguette.

It wondered and it loved and it learned about the secret workings of the soul.

It cried tears beneath le tour Eiffel on a sober Tuesday night. It cried tears of loss, a second mother. It cried tears of the simple joy of existing.

It learned to look back and it learned to never look back.

Is it the same? Yes, very much indeed.

Is it different? Yes, very much indeed.

Another night.

Dec. 20, 2009

New York Erin with red hair was a gem. One of those quick-wit types who wears fur coats and bulky vintage rings and doesn’t give a shit about what you think of her cigarette addiction. We sat at the Violon Dingue bar, our group of friends downstairs, and talked about law school, unofficial “man friends,” and absinthe binges. I flirted with the Irish/Berkeley, CA/NY/French bartender who gave us each four complimentary drinks, probably because we were there for so long. We laughed the hands right off the clock and she told me everything was going to be alright.

We made our way to the lower level after trying to ignore the cross-eyed man who sat closer to us than we would have liked. I didn’t buy anything. I sat with a business man and boasted about my brother’s artistic talent and how he’s going to be famous one day. The business man gave me his information and then rattled off inspiring life quotes in two different languages, like he’s done it all before.

"It's you that's important, not what you have." His words hung in the air, dripping with cliche. I wrote it in my notepad, the one I take with me everywhere.

"Come on, you're twenty. Anything's possible."

I liked that one.

The friend group parted ways by 5:15am and I said goodbye to the business man. Red-haired Erin and I meandered in the street and caught rain on our taste buds. Then I said goodbye to her, too. I would never see her again. I didn’t have money for a cab so I walked home.

Atelier de l'artiste, Rue de Rivoli

Dec. 22, 2009

“L’artiste n’est jamais pauvre”

The artist is never poor.

The beginning of a love affair (with gelato)

Lesson #13: Always be the first to act. Also, you need to live in Florence.

I single-handedly organized a week-long trip to Italy with a group of friends for fall break. I mean, sorry to toot my own horn for a minute, but it was a pretty incredible trip (minus a few minor setbacks, like the dangers of long island ice tea and being indefinitely banned from a hostel after the humiliation of getting caught sneaking one extra person into our room, etc.). I ate enough pizzas over the course of the vacation to…well, I don’t even really want to think about that. New Year’s resolution: DIET.

Here is a sparknote’s list of the highlights:

PISA -

Leaning tower (equipped with the ultimate tourist picture)



Cemetery (where members of the Medicci family were/are buried)

Gelato

FLORENCE –

Ponte Vecchio




Strolling through the Bobili gardens







Galleria Uffizi – “Birth of Venus”

Duomo (the 13th century Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the historical center of Florence, known for its impressive architecture and elaborate facade. I was too broke to climb to the top, though)





Academia - Michelangelo’s “David” (illegaly snuck a picture)

Secret bakery and an impromptu slumber party…at Danny Kahle’s host mother’s house?




Gelato (I learned what real gelato is here, thanks to GROM)



Champagne at sunset on the top steps of Piazzale Michelangelo






(*Note - this makes the list of top 5 abroad moments, trailing just behind riding bikes in Amsterdam and climbing the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night with Anton, followed by the above secret bakery/slumber party and the last three hours of the Oktoberfest weekend huddled at a table outside Hofbrau with the Maples crew + Michaela).

ROME –

Throwing a coin into the Trevi fountain (Alex, get ready for half of your gift :)



Spanish steps and the Berlin wall exposition

St. Peter’s Basilica

Vatican and the Sistine Chapel (where a guard caught Divya sneaking a picture of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” on the ceiling, which was breathtaking, I might add)



Pantheon (where I listened to a beautiful choir and learned the history behind the red, green, and white of Margherita pizza)

Coliseum and the Ancient city (one word: awesome)




Did I mention gelato?

Etching smiles into tombstones

Exerpts from personal journal entries/ramblings


Oct. 1, 2009

I sat on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg to watch leaves fall. An old, crippled man shuffled towards the end of the gravel path and a mother helped her new baby with his first steps

A joy of life renewed

...


Do you paddle past an eddy,
Pull through a lull? Why not
Pull in the paddles, spin,
Stretch your arms wide
And touch the edges of this moment?
-Kay Satre



Oct. 26, 2009

Extreme tension
Surging through my wrists
Grinding behind my eyes
Clenching between my teeth
Carving out the insides
Of my mouth


But my heart is beating



Nov. 1, 2009


Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait

Lesson #12: Don’t waste your life waiting



Nov. 6, 2009

Tell me, baby
Are you still on the stoop
Watching the windows close?



I bought a train ticket to Marseille. I had no plans to take anyone with me, or to meet anyone there. I traveled to southern France alone to breath in the salty air of the sea and taste the colors of the sunset in blissful solitude. The strange place that welcomed me sat beside me by the harbor without asking any questions.

I made a friend with a gentleman named Paul, a native New Zealander, but who grew up in London. His accent was spectacular. His words lingered between us and I grabbed them with my fingertips. We laughed about how dirty Marseille was as we followed the boats at the dock.


“Did you know this is one of the oldest cities in France?” He offered.

“How exactly do you determine the age of a city?” I asked.

He shrugged. I didn’t press him. We continued walking.



Later we drank coffee and listened to rap and played poker.






Nov. 6-8, 2009

...And now, writing this, I’m on a train to Barcelona with an empty seat next to mine and a bag of trailmix and applesauce at my shoeless feet. The window reveals boundless miles of compacted red rooftops punctuating rolling, quiet hills. A disgruntled infant kicks my backrest, screaming for his mother. I’ve showed my passport more times than I should have, and I don’t entirely know how to get where I am going when I arrive. But I watched the seaside pass, finding nothing wrong with this moment.







Maybe we could forget everything and
You could come and steal me
And we could freeze time

Though you’re far away from me now
There’s something you should know:
My hands have not forgotten yours

If only Adam was here.

Mid October, and I found a way to ace nearly all of my midterms. So, I thought it would be appropriate to embark on an hors Paris exploration. You know, set my feet out into the real world a bit.

Now, admittedly, my entire European travel agenda was not a product of extensive thought or planning. I had originally anticipated visiting as many countries as time and money allowed for, but what countries I actually ended up visiting were chosen at pure random (except for Munich; Oktoberfest was a given). Imagine spinning a globe blindfolded and materializing a decision with the stroke of an index finger-- my first finger landed on what would prove to be one of the best places in the world. What other way to start off my Euroventures than by officially transcending adolescence on an overnight party bus to Amsterdam? I understand why one would ask such a question, because really, there is no other way.

Destination #1 : The Netherlands

Or Holland. Or Nederland.

In French, the name is none of these--a fact that would've proven helpful during my 3-hour online search for a bus ticket.

WHERE THE HELL IS THIS COUNTRY? I SWEAR TO GOD I'M GONNA...

*Note to self, cursing at a computer screen makes the computer less likely to want to help you buy a bus ticket to a name-less country.

The French name, that was so kindly introduced to me by Frederic during a family dinner, is translated as Pays-Bas, which means literally “the country below.”

COUNTRY BELOW WHAT? GERMANY? DENMARK? THIS IS BULL...

What I learned later is that the country is situated significantly below sea level (think the bowl that is New Orleans), so they had to build a barricade of dams around the city (amsterDAM, originally Amstellerdam, indicative of the city’s origin: a dam in the river of Amstel). Hence, the canals.

Pays-Bas kindly and eagerly welcomed about 20 IES Paris American students over Halloween weekend--a weekend that, by the end, made every one of these 20 IES Paris American students boast about future plans to live there permanently. I shared a part in this consensus--it really was and still is the most beautiful, charming, and friendliest place on the planet.



But as I said, upon my decision to travel to this country in the first place, I had no idea what I was doing. Well, I did have an idea. An idea that is shared by probably the majority of people who have not been to Pays-Bas: legal and excessive pot-smoking. And stripper girls. This, of course, was not the motivating factor to venture north. The pictures on the tourist website just looked cool.

Amsterdam, Euroventure #1:

After a tumultuous bus ride, during which one of our girl friends nearly escaped aggravated assault by a large Arab man, and someone (Dru Attkinson) projectile vomitted on the stairs and almost got our entire group thrown off the bus and possibly into jail, we arrived safely in Amsterdam at around 6am. It was still dark outside.

While the other students huddled in the train station, floundering in a haze of confusion, sleep deprivation, and possible intoxication, I began my Amsterdam adventure, packet of guides, tickets, maps, and paperwork in hand. And yet, despite my mountainous progress in map-reading, Bridget and I absolutely could not find the hostel for the life of us. (But if you, dear reader, can navigate your way through a foreign country following a map with no street names, my hat is off to you.)

So we stopped for coffee. The barista was from San Diego. Go figure. His coworker unloaded boxes and smiled at us.

We resumed our search, to no avail, until a large white windowless vehicle honked at us, a vehicle one might term as a “raper van.” I don’t blame the raper van man; we looked like tourists. He pulled over.

Oh, fantastic, I’m about to be kidnapped. And I didn't even get to see the stripper girls.

It was the barista’s coworker, who in fact was not the barista’s coworker, but "the delivery boy," he said through the window. He exited his vehicle and kindly turned our map rightside up, and after many English and Dutch words were butchered and battered back and forth, he invited us into his raper/delivery van to "take us directly to our destination."

Now, I suppose the “taken” theme is an inevitable reoccurence for two young, American, broke, relatively attractive females traveling Europe by foot. I discriminated between the pros and cons quickly in my head, which were evident: it was cold outside, our backpacks were as heavy as lead, and I hadn’t eaten in over 12 hours. On the flip side, I was seriously contemplating supressing my universal distrust of strangers driving large white vans because my intuition said so; there was something so honest and safe about this man. I opened the back door of the van and inspected for weapons, victims, or whatever evidence of criminality I could find. He was, in fact, a delivery boy.

We were dropped off at the hostel door step within 3 minutes.



Lesson #10: Trust Dutch delivery boys (but probably be careful trusting all white windowless van drivers, just to be safe).

Lesson #11: Actually, trust all Dutch people, especially ones who you meet at the grocery store and invite you and your friends to their house in Rotterdam and cook you a 3-course dinner.



And on a more metaphysical note, have faith in the power of your instincts.

_______


A friend recommended that I go on a bike tour in Amsterdam; I’ve always wanted to go on a bike tour. There are many reasons for this: 1) you don’t have to walk, 2) you see twice as much in half the time, 3) you get to ride bikes, 4) you get to ride bikes.

It was either that, or sit at a coffee shop and pass the time smoking weed with a bunch of Santa Clara boys, whose mission it was to become as lazy, quiet, paranoid, and unresponsive as possible--one of whom, after hearing me express my frustration with the choices of certain individuals, informed me that I am "in the wrong city, babe."

But then I remembered that I live by my own rules, and that,

It is our personal duty to actively pursue what we want in life.

Amsterdam, Euroventure #2:

Less than 24 hours into my Amsterdam journey, now 20-year old Rachel was mounted on a bright red bike, handle breaks and everything, followed by Bridget on her bright red bike, and Jamie on his bright red bike. I found a better map—a map with words—secured my backpack and camera strap, and embarked on a bike route.

You know those hand signals they teach you in driver’s ed? The one’s you never use and always forget? Well, people use them in Amsterdam because EVERYBODY rides bikes in Amsterdam. In fact, it is estimated that more people in the city ride bikes than drive cars, which I imagine does wonders to the environment, and to the collective well-being of the population.





We had a pretty good system going: I rode in front, and Bridget and Jamie followed, single-file style. At times, I would stop and ask,

"Where do you guys want to go now?" To which Bridget would respond,

"Just keep doing your thing, Rach."

So in between directing myself and two others with my right/left/stop hand signals, manning the map-navigation and street name pronunciation (like "we're gonna head straight down Klaveniersburgwal until we hit Binnengasthuisstraat), steering, breaking, and taking pictures, it is a wonder that I didn’t crash into something, or that something didn’t crash into me.



We passed bridges and museums and landmarks and windmills and I pointed to things listed in my guide book. For hours, we traced our way through the major sight-sees with the wind in our hair and air in our lungs, not paying mind to the numbness in our fingers.



It wasn’t until we wound our way around the tip of the city near Central Station and stopped to look out into the harbor that opened up to the rest of the world that I realized not only was I taking a bike tour,

I was leading one.

Footnotes

We rolled around in a sleeping bag with our shoes on
Our friends drinking whiskey beneath us in a cloud of smoke
You were afraid to say the things you wanted to say
I knew what you wanted to say

We played our guessing game, my knees bumped into yours
but you didn’t move them
You bit my lips with your teeth
under a sea of stars on a cloudless night
and I wondered if we would get married one day

Over the phone
I told you, "You’re my shining sun"
Scratched the words right into the sky with my tongue
I wasn’t old enough to drive yet

You pressed your chest against mine
in the heat of endless summers
when you'd run your fingers through my veins
and smile the way you always did

I pealed my freckles when the trees lost their leaves
in another city
where the streets don't connect

You always loved my freckles