In 1989 I graduated from college, sold my few worldly possessions (except my drums, which I left with my brother) and moved to the South of France. Although I had spent my school years living a rather monk-like life, I was not headed to a monastery. This was going to be pretty much pure pleasure.
As a French major I had a chance to spend a year teaching conversational English at the Université d’Avignon in Provence. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Avignon, a medieval city of cathedrals and quiet cafes, was temporarily home to the Pope during the 15th century. With the Pope’s Palace rising next to a plaza at the center of town, a turreted wall around the perimeter and gorgeous countryside beyond, it is postcard beautiful.
The job required only that I be in class three days a week, 3 hours a day. The rest of the time I was free to do as I pleased – travel to nearby hilltop villages, drink Beaujolais, visit museums and watch old French movies at the local cinema. There were no papers to correct or exams to prepare. I simply had to discuss world events with 30 college students for an hour at a time, giving me a chance to engage a total of 500 French minds, 450 of which belonged to women.
Excited, with visions of Truffaut and Goddard films dancing in my head, I got off the plane with my French degree thinking I was fluent in the language and ready to parle francais with the natives.
Boy was I wrong.
I quickly learned that what I really spoke was classroom French at about 33 rpm, while everyone else in France was speaking street French at 78 rpm. Sentences flew out of people’s mouths like darting little birds, a flock of unknown verbs and colloquial expressions swirling around my head at dizzying speed. I could no more catch individual words and translate them than I could discern each beat of a hummingbird’s wings. If I was going to survive the year, I had some serious work to do.
Each morning I would meditate, drink a bowl of espresso and head out to do battle with the French bureaucracy. I was outgunned at every turn. A simple trip to the phone company became a three day ordeal in which I risked being arrested because of my inept language skills. At one point I tried to tell the woman behind the counter I would take anything, just as long as it would ring. What I think I actually said was I wanted a phone so I could start an international espionage ring. She was not amused.
Finally I was able to secure an apartment and get my life set up. After several exhausting weeks I started getting into the swim of things, though I still found myself occasionally drowning in a torrent of unrecognizable sounds. I had to translate everything in my head, which made it really difficult to communicate. Just as a conversation would get off the ground some twisted locution would come whizzing at me – did he really say “I have ants in my arms?” - and I would have to try and wrestle it to the ground so I could unravel it. By the time I had it figured out, the person I was talking to had flown so far ahead in the conversation that I had no idea what they were talking about. I spent a lot of time with my face frozen in an idiotic grin while my brain was frantically searching for meaning.
Then one night I had a dream that changed everything.
In the dream I walk up to a French Chateau, all creamy limestone and wrought iron details. I knock on a large red door and an old stone-faced man answers; obviously the Butler. I follow him down a long hall to a large sunlit room with only one chair. I sit down and wait. I’m not sure why I’m here, but I have the sense it’s for an important meeting.
Before long I hear heavy footsteps marching down the hall toward me. My heart starts beating in the same insistent rhythm, echoing the sound of the footsteps. The door bursts open and a Nazi soldier stomps in. He looks me in the eye then raises a rifle and pulls the trigger. The explosive sound of the gun wakes me up.
For a moment I still feel like I’m in the dream, my heart pounding in my ears as I look around my room to see if the soldier is still there.
It takes me a long time to calm down and go back to sleep.
The next night I have the same dream. I walk up to the same chateau and the same soldier comes into the room and pulls the trigger. Again I wake up as the gunshot goes off.
This goes on for several nights and every night the dream is just as intense, until by the end of the week I am delirious with exhaustion and fall into bed dying to go to sleep, but dreading the dream.
Once again that night I walk up to the chateau and knock on the bright red door. The Butler answers and this time he smiles at me. I follow him down the hall and sit in my chair but now I’m aware I’m dreaming and I know what is going to happen. I realize I could get up and leave before the Nazi comes, but I can’t run, I know I must sit and wait. Sure enough, I hear the footsteps and my heart starts pounding and the soldier bursts into the room, raises his rifle and shoots. I hear the sound of the gunshot but this time I feel the bullet hit me. I fall to the floor and my mind reels as I feel the cold tiles strike my face. Then, like a camera panning up from the scene I see myself laying on the floor, bright red blood forming a pool around my body.
I open my eyes. I’m sitting up in bed. A salty taste on my tongue causes me to instinctively stick my finger in my mouth. I pull it out and blood drips off the end on to my bedspread. For a split second the veil between my dream and my life is gone and I think to myself, “I’ve been shot!”
I put my finger in my mouth again and realize there is a gash in my tongue. Then it dawns on me. I must have bitten it when the gun went off in my dream.
I lay awake the rest of that night trying to understand what was happening to me. As the morning sun starts to filter through the shutters on my window it hits me. My dream was telling me that if I really wanted to learn French, part of me had to die in order for someone new to be born, someone who could speak the language. I had to kill off the last of the American identity I was clinging to in order to embrace becoming… what? I obviously wasn’t going to become French. I decided the answer was to become a citoyen du monde, a citizen of the world, no longer solely American and not quite French, but something beyond both.
The Nazis of course were enemies of the French, so it made sense I would choose them to represent my executioner. Days later I realized the symbolism of chomping on my tongue. I literally had to bite my native tongue, to stop my internal English dialogue. The word for tongue in French is la langue, which is also their word for language.
After that my language skills improved quickly. I started thinking directly in French and even dreaming in French. I stored English in the back of my brain, only pulling it out for my classes at the University and then tucking it safely back.
By the end of that year I was able to see hummingbird’s wings slowly beating up and down everywhere I went.
I think the world is going through a similar struggle right now. We are all dying for a change but we have to let go of who we are before we can become citizens of a new world. It’s a shift in perception that, if we are open to it, can lead to a new mindset and a completely different way of living together on earth, our planet home.
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
This crisis we are facing is both metaphorically and literally a life and death story.
As a French major I had a chance to spend a year teaching conversational English at the Université d’Avignon in Provence. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Avignon, a medieval city of cathedrals and quiet cafes, was temporarily home to the Pope during the 15th century. With the Pope’s Palace rising next to a plaza at the center of town, a turreted wall around the perimeter and gorgeous countryside beyond, it is postcard beautiful.
The job required only that I be in class three days a week, 3 hours a day. The rest of the time I was free to do as I pleased – travel to nearby hilltop villages, drink Beaujolais, visit museums and watch old French movies at the local cinema. There were no papers to correct or exams to prepare. I simply had to discuss world events with 30 college students for an hour at a time, giving me a chance to engage a total of 500 French minds, 450 of which belonged to women.
Excited, with visions of Truffaut and Goddard films dancing in my head, I got off the plane with my French degree thinking I was fluent in the language and ready to parle francais with the natives.
Boy was I wrong.
I quickly learned that what I really spoke was classroom French at about 33 rpm, while everyone else in France was speaking street French at 78 rpm. Sentences flew out of people’s mouths like darting little birds, a flock of unknown verbs and colloquial expressions swirling around my head at dizzying speed. I could no more catch individual words and translate them than I could discern each beat of a hummingbird’s wings. If I was going to survive the year, I had some serious work to do.
Each morning I would meditate, drink a bowl of espresso and head out to do battle with the French bureaucracy. I was outgunned at every turn. A simple trip to the phone company became a three day ordeal in which I risked being arrested because of my inept language skills. At one point I tried to tell the woman behind the counter I would take anything, just as long as it would ring. What I think I actually said was I wanted a phone so I could start an international espionage ring. She was not amused.
Finally I was able to secure an apartment and get my life set up. After several exhausting weeks I started getting into the swim of things, though I still found myself occasionally drowning in a torrent of unrecognizable sounds. I had to translate everything in my head, which made it really difficult to communicate. Just as a conversation would get off the ground some twisted locution would come whizzing at me – did he really say “I have ants in my arms?” - and I would have to try and wrestle it to the ground so I could unravel it. By the time I had it figured out, the person I was talking to had flown so far ahead in the conversation that I had no idea what they were talking about. I spent a lot of time with my face frozen in an idiotic grin while my brain was frantically searching for meaning.
Then one night I had a dream that changed everything.
In the dream I walk up to a French Chateau, all creamy limestone and wrought iron details. I knock on a large red door and an old stone-faced man answers; obviously the Butler. I follow him down a long hall to a large sunlit room with only one chair. I sit down and wait. I’m not sure why I’m here, but I have the sense it’s for an important meeting.
Before long I hear heavy footsteps marching down the hall toward me. My heart starts beating in the same insistent rhythm, echoing the sound of the footsteps. The door bursts open and a Nazi soldier stomps in. He looks me in the eye then raises a rifle and pulls the trigger. The explosive sound of the gun wakes me up.
For a moment I still feel like I’m in the dream, my heart pounding in my ears as I look around my room to see if the soldier is still there.
It takes me a long time to calm down and go back to sleep.
The next night I have the same dream. I walk up to the same chateau and the same soldier comes into the room and pulls the trigger. Again I wake up as the gunshot goes off.
This goes on for several nights and every night the dream is just as intense, until by the end of the week I am delirious with exhaustion and fall into bed dying to go to sleep, but dreading the dream.
Once again that night I walk up to the chateau and knock on the bright red door. The Butler answers and this time he smiles at me. I follow him down the hall and sit in my chair but now I’m aware I’m dreaming and I know what is going to happen. I realize I could get up and leave before the Nazi comes, but I can’t run, I know I must sit and wait. Sure enough, I hear the footsteps and my heart starts pounding and the soldier bursts into the room, raises his rifle and shoots. I hear the sound of the gunshot but this time I feel the bullet hit me. I fall to the floor and my mind reels as I feel the cold tiles strike my face. Then, like a camera panning up from the scene I see myself laying on the floor, bright red blood forming a pool around my body.
I open my eyes. I’m sitting up in bed. A salty taste on my tongue causes me to instinctively stick my finger in my mouth. I pull it out and blood drips off the end on to my bedspread. For a split second the veil between my dream and my life is gone and I think to myself, “I’ve been shot!”
I put my finger in my mouth again and realize there is a gash in my tongue. Then it dawns on me. I must have bitten it when the gun went off in my dream.
I lay awake the rest of that night trying to understand what was happening to me. As the morning sun starts to filter through the shutters on my window it hits me. My dream was telling me that if I really wanted to learn French, part of me had to die in order for someone new to be born, someone who could speak the language. I had to kill off the last of the American identity I was clinging to in order to embrace becoming… what? I obviously wasn’t going to become French. I decided the answer was to become a citoyen du monde, a citizen of the world, no longer solely American and not quite French, but something beyond both.
The Nazis of course were enemies of the French, so it made sense I would choose them to represent my executioner. Days later I realized the symbolism of chomping on my tongue. I literally had to bite my native tongue, to stop my internal English dialogue. The word for tongue in French is la langue, which is also their word for language.
After that my language skills improved quickly. I started thinking directly in French and even dreaming in French. I stored English in the back of my brain, only pulling it out for my classes at the University and then tucking it safely back.
By the end of that year I was able to see hummingbird’s wings slowly beating up and down everywhere I went.
I think the world is going through a similar struggle right now. We are all dying for a change but we have to let go of who we are before we can become citizens of a new world. It’s a shift in perception that, if we are open to it, can lead to a new mindset and a completely different way of living together on earth, our planet home.
Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
This crisis we are facing is both metaphorically and literally a life and death story.
