Cosmic Prose

Natasha Regehr

Tag: Cosmic Prose (page 3 of 7)

Voila!

I told a fib today. It was easy, because it was in French.

You see, I’ve been seeking a new artistic outlet that will allow me to get out into the community and interact with other people. By “new artistic outlet,” I mean something that fosters self-expression but that will take me away from my 9-5 life of intoning “do-re-mi-fa-sol” on repeat five days a week. By “community,” I mean “outside of my all-consuming place of work.” And by “other people,” I mean “nice strangers who speak French.” Because this is a linguistic undertaking as much as anything else. Continue reading

Here Goes…

Expat life is full of comings and goings, and right now I am feeling the goings much more than the comings. I am suffering the loss of some of my favourite people, and I find myself tempted to retreat to my magnificent new bedroom to while away the hours in comfortable solitude instead of mustering the energy to go out and intentionally cultivate new friendships.

Does anyone else out there understand how uncomfortable it is to watch others socialize freely and effortlessly, but to remain on the outside of their banter? Does anyone find the thought of trying to weasel your way into others’ already-established friendships borderline-terrifying? Does anyone find the thought of spending long, unstructured stretches of time with large groups of people absolutely excruciating?

If so, perhaps you can help me to remain accountable to my new Anti-Isolation, Starting-Over, I-Can-Do-This Social Policy – drawn up just this morning, with a mixture of dread and optimism: Continue reading

China, Revisited: Unforgettable, Indeed

I would be remiss if I did not share the official report:

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China, Concluded: The Great Escape

That last post was a little too light-hearted for its content — or rather, for the trajectory of its content.  Because what happened next was not at all funny. Continue reading

China, Continued: Prison Break

If you made it to the end of my last post, you may have noticed that I alluded to “another story.”  This is it.

I am trapped in a prison compound in the depths of China.  Today I plot my escape. Continue reading

Impressions of China: Birth to 43

I went to China last week, after 43 years of waiting.  Here are  some impressions: Continue reading

Errandipity

I was warned, when I first moved to Morocco, that I should not expect to accomplish more than one, or maybe two things on any given day. One could, for instance, go to the doctor or to the bank, but not on the same day. Or even the same weekend. You see, businesses close when they’re not supposed to be closed, or the roads to said businesses close, or the parking lots close, or the place you think you need to go turns out to be entirely the wrong place altogether. Street addresses, if they exist at all, are not always chronological (this I learned on a five-hour dermatology expedition). And, if you do manage to a) find, b) access, c) park near, and d) enter your establishment of choice, it’s entirely likely that whoever’s inside won’t be able to help you anyway. You need to go to the other location, they say, or bring some obscure document, or (most commonly) COME BACK TOMORROW.

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Bake a Cake

The most delightful thing just happened.

I was late for lunch, because it’s the week before concert week, and I’ve been making up the classes that I missed last week when I was sick.  Like, really sick.  Vomiting sick.  The only kind of sick that would keep a music teacher from her students two weeks before the first big concert of the year.  So I forfeited the dearest part of my day (lunch, of course) to rehearse with the students who missed their classes while I was busy vomiting.  

Therefore, when I finally had a few minutes to breathe, the cafeteria was closed.  I was devastated.  Yes, I had vaguely suspected such an atrocity might occur, but it was a chance I had been willing to take.  I knew I had to risk missing those tantalizing beef kabobs for the sake of the concert cause.  And the children, of course.  The children.

So there I was at the cafeteria counter, gushing with gratitude when the kitchen staff agreed to prepare a plate for me (bless them bless them bless them), and I saw a whole pile of kids sitting around the picnic tables outside, with nary a teacher in sight.

“This is perfect!” I thought.  “I have someone to sit with while I eat my lunch!”  And so I did.

I sat down, right in the middle of all the little ducklings.  They were stunned, but pleased.  I heard some of the children calling out each other’s names in a rhythmic sort of way, and I mused out loud, “Hmm! Sounds like someone wants to bake a cake!” And I started to sing.

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C’est l’amour…

What does it feel like to fall out of love? Could it be happening to me?

French is supposed to be the “language of love,” is it not? We had a sweet, sweet honeymoon phase, French and I. Every day we seemed to know each other twice as well as we did the day before. I was blissfully unaware of my relational faux pas, and everyone else just thought they were cute. Every little sentence was a triumph. Every lesson brought new possibilities. And the grammar… Oh, the grammar! What passion we shared, those participles and I. The verb tenses! The day I first learned passé composé, and could finally talk about things that had already happened… Stories started sprouting everywhere!

It’s true, French and I did take a little break at one point. I spent two months sequestered among Anglophones over the summer, but I never stopped longing for the langue de l’amour. I signed out workbooks from the library and continued the relationship in a one-sided, long-distance kind of way. When I returned to the Moroccan Promised Land of language acquisition, I was disappointed to find that both my teachers had deserted me (as if I didn’t already have an abandonment complex). “I miss you! I love you! I want you back!” I wailed into my sorry little unilingual void.

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A Whole Lot of Normal

Last week I tapped on my neighbour’s door to ask for a bit of flour. Because that’s what you do when you neither cook nor bake, but you find yourself craving cheese sauce, and that sauce needs thickening, and you know your neighbour has flour, because she gave you some the one and only other time you felt a need to cheese things up.

It’s pleasant, having neighbours from whom you can acquire flour twice a year, in exchange for several kilos of peanut and almond butter. It’s pleasant, walking in and being welcome in someone else’s home. It’s pleasant, chatting about how we’re really feeling about this juncture in our lives. Continue reading

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