Cosmic Prose

Natasha Regehr

Tag: Self-Deprecation (Page 1 of 2)

Faux French, Riviera Style

July 11, 2018 / / 2 Comments

Have you been wondering how I’ve been faring since I bade farewell to les vaches?

I am slowly adjusting to life on the French Riviera.

Slowly.

My drive here was uneventful, except for that time my GPS became my enemy and led me in circles for two hours in downtown Nice during the height of tourist season.  Navigation systems don’t do well with pedestrian-only streets.  That’s all I’ll say about that.

And now I am perched on a hill overlooking the uppity town of Villefranche-sur-mer, with its uppity yachts, BMWs, and fake hedges. Why anyone would need a fake hedge in this lotus land is beyond me, but there it is.  Why water a real hedge when you can buy a fake one?

No, to be honest, I’m missing the friendly, down-to-earth charm of my village in the Alps.  Well, okay, the cows were not so friendly.  But there was an endearing honesty to that place, a sense that life had substance, and that everything else was somehow false.

Not so with the French Riviera.  Everything here feels half-empty, like the soul of the place just drained out into the Mediterranean when the people all arrived. I’m sure at one time it was quaint and delightful and historically significant; but right now, it feels to me like a toy neighbourhood, constructed out of blocks and toothpicks and dotted with plastic accessories.  Doll houses, all, papered in Euros…

But I, too, am a falsehood, here on the French Riviera.

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Maybe!

June 18, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I have been stressing out about French. Have you noticed? Likely not, because you think I’m still obsessing about the Royal Wedding.  Forget that.  I’m over it.

No, French is my ongoing obsession, more than ever now, as the stakes creep higher in equal proportion to my rising self-doubt.

What if I can’t do it? What if, no matter how much I study and how long I persist, I never pass beyond the blundering idiot phase of language learning? Oh, sure, I’m less of a blundering idiot than I was three years ago, when I couldn’t say, “I want to walk up the hill.” But the subjunctive has its own mode of blunder induction (did you catch that, French-speakers? Its own mode?).  The more I learn, the more I blunder.

Now, these rising stakes of which I speak so melodramatically.  What are they? Well, you know.  Employment. That about sums it up.  You see, I miss Canada. Continue reading

Greece, Part 1: Taking the Plunge

October 22, 2017 / / 1 Comment

IMG_4731I love water.  I love being in water.  I love being in deep water.  I love being upside down in deep water.  I love gliding through it, feeling its silky caress against my skin.  I love the aquamarine blueness of it, the way the light dances through it, the way I drift and float and submerge and emerge with perfect ease and grace.  I love the serenity of this glowing world to which I can escape and suspend time — until my lungs oblige me to surface for a little bit of oxygen.

You can imagine, then, the appeal of staying in this underwater world indefinitely, unconcerned about the trivialities of inhaling and exhaling — just drifting from one delight to the next in a slow ballet of submarine bliss.

Scuba diving, I thought, is exactly what my life has been missing.  I must go scuba diving.  I will be a natural at manoeuvring through this liquid paradise.  I will feel utterly at ease in my favoured element.

Not so. Continue reading

Voila!

October 1, 2017 / / 1 Comment

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…

September 1, 2017 / / 1 Comment

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

C’est l’amour…

February 14, 2017 / / 0 Comments

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 Canadian in Paris, Part 1: Under the Eiffel, Eh?

April 1, 2016 / / 0 Comments

IMG_5936“Let’s meet under the Eiffel Tower at 10am.”

How’s that for a statement you don’t hear every day? Particularly from your pals in humble Peterborough, 6,000 km from anything remotely Parisian?

It was March, 2016, and I was living in Morocco. I had some medical concerns that I felt weren’t being adequately addressed in Casablanca, and had planned a last-minute consultation with a specialist at the American Hospital in Paris. I was desperate for a conclusive diagnosis and action plan for my increasingly distressing health situation; but what I ended up with was so very much more enlightening than the coveted doctor’s report.

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Magic Carpet

August 31, 2015 / / 6 Comments

Sunday has become my own private Independence Day. It started last week when, rather than waiting for a ride home from church, I bravely embarked on my first solo taxi ride. I was terribly nervous. It turned out to be terribly fun. I chattered (if one can call it that) in French the whole way, and had a good laugh with the driver after declining his spontaneous marriage proposal.

So this week I decided to be doubly brave. Go to French church. Leave the dictionary at home. Understand the first half of the sermon. And then (to prevent a messy brain explosion), slip out and trek, explorer-like, to the city’s old medina.

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Villains and Fiends: The Day I Joined the Mob

August 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

In Morocco, I measure my successes by kilometres travelled and items purchased. To get anywhere, and buy anything, is pretty much always an ordeal in one way or another. And my own fears have prevented me from accomplishing either of these tasks independently for far too long.

Fear of what, you ask? Pickpockets? Lewd men? Crooked taxi drivers? Corrupt policemen? I was warned about all of these, but not nearly as emphatically as I was warned about that most notorious of North African villains: the Moroccan Driver.

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Flight 209

July 31, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the final boarding call for Royal Air Maroc flight 209 to Casablanca.  All passengers should now be seated on the plane for take-off.”

What? How did that happen? An hour ago, there was still a whole hour left to wait.  I was blogging furiously, trying to get that “in transit” story posted while I was actually still in transit.  I heard lots of Air France calls for flights to Paris.  Every 30 seconds a smooth voice urged me, in loud, clear, unmistakable English, to head directly to France.  I was not a fool.  I knew that it was a trick.  I was not going to France.  Silly airport!

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