So the title of this piece is called showers with the windows open...because I can do that now that the weather is so warm. Let me give you a run down of how things have changed over the past months.
After my trip in the South, I felt refreshed, ready for the hard month of March ahead. I had been on over lapping vacation time from work and school for about a month, so I was not super excited about jumping back into the grind. But I was ready for it. (Now I know most of you are thinking, "Vacation for a month?!?! Shit, you lazy dog. But hey, perks of working at a school.)
Day after day, I woke up with the sun, spending hours on the train to and from work or school. I worked hard and good long hours. I had 9 hours strait of classes on Mondays and 6 hours on Wednesdays. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, I worked all day. I spent time outside of school and work preparing my short French film. The script, written in French, is an awkward “first time” love story between two introverted adolescents.
Other time off time was spent with the Spaniard Olimpia, a beauty from Seville who I dated. Our relationship was a little complicated at times, and riddled with cultural differences, but always very rich with experience. She took off back to Spain around early March, leaving me a little sad hearted, but very content with all that had passed between us.
Teaching had become much more comfortable for me. I was able to walk into a classroom and feel like I had control. But there were always new challenges. I had to come up with new games, topics, and articles for each class. I was feeling like a lot of my material had grown old, boring, and ineffective. I was also discovering that I had overestimated the level of English the students could speak. They needed more than just conversation topics and games. They needed more repetitious work on their accents, vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, spelling (me too), and more. So I tried more lab work like tactics while trying to maintain a fun atmosphere. I brought in magazines, and articles about more current and popular Anglophonic situations and personalities that they knew and liked or didn't know but found a connection with.
In one course, we discussed racism in the US. The students were constantly shooting questions about the subject so we listened and analyzed the song "Oppression" by Ben Harper. The song addresses the oppressing hand of segregation and racism and calls for action against those negative forces. The songs lyrics are beautifully sung and always poetically written. It was a pleasure for me having the students discover the true meaning of the song. It was challenging and interesting for them and fun for me too. Nothing is better than having a student come up to you after a class you have taught and say, "Thank You." It makes cleaning the blackboard feel rewarding.
School was going pretty good as well. I had a sound editing class where we worked with Pro Tools. A voice singing class that was teaching me how to control my breath and the sounds that came from my body as I spoke and sang. And there was always my directing class in which I was reporting to my teacher about the preparation of my film. I also enrolled in a French architectural history class and a French argumentation and presentation class on Wednesdays. I now knew the lay of the land like the metro station by my apartment. It was also very nice to see old friends and make new ones. It was no problem getting back into the Paris 8 university life.
March rolled rhythmically by; the constant commuting ate away the days, and the shift from cold to warm was like the flicker of a television as your change channels.
I traveled to Brussels the first weekend to see a Dave Mathews concert with my buddy Mike. We spent that weekend drinking good beer, eating true Belgium waffles, and seeing the sights of little Belgium town. We visited a structure called the Atomium, a metallic structure of an atom. Founded to the ground, the giant atom is comprised of metal tubes connected to metal spheres that contain art, food, or activities for children. It looked like this:

We visited the oldest bar in Brussels, a 125 year old bar with all the different kinds of beers you could drink and bowls of delightful spaghetti. We looked like this:

The end of March marked the arrival of Spring, and the steps between my films pre-production and production went into action. I location scouted and held casting meetings and calls for actors. To help familiarize myself with the French film making terminology, I AD’ed (Assistant Directed) a film shoot for a guy in my class. All you need to know is, “Moteur, annonce, et action…couper.” His short was about an old man who decides to revisit his old job after living in a retirement home. The first day of shooting we worked all night, from 9 to 5 in the morning the first day, and normal hours the last 2 days of the production. By the time the shoot ended, the month of April had finally begun.
April. It bloomed like the flowers that covered the parks, like the leaves that reappeared on the trees. I spent my first week of spring vacation rehearsing my actors and planning my shots. (That’s right, a month of work, and 2 more weeks of vacation. Suckers.) I locked the locations, and made sure my crew was up to par. We filmed long days on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. There was a rocky tension. I was jumping into a project I felt I’d put so much time into, but still had no idea how it is going to turn out. I was nervous. But with my unsteady hand, but steady cam, I did my best to create what is commonly referred to as cinema. We had to film a young man, who travels through Paris, to have sex with a girl he barely knows because he wants to cross the line of virginity. And he sure does cross that line, all on tape. And then he goes back home. And eats dinner. The End.
Finishing the film was a huge weight off my shoulders, and I was happy that I had completed what I had set out to do here in Paris. There was that part of me that wanted to go back and do it all over again, but now I am excited to get the roughs into editing.
This is the end of my story for now because we have reached the present.
I would like to take a little moment of honor:
1. I want to acknowledge the kids who lost their lives in Virginia. I prey their souls are in beautiful places now. I was very sad when I heard the news.
2. Kurt Vonnegut. He was silly, but smart. He was witty, but deep and melodic at the same time. My senior English teacher, Mr. Rasic, once told me that I would really connect with Vonnegut. He could tell by my writing. He was right.
Keep happiness close to you. Think about your family and friends. It is important that we focus on good things in life right now.
Always, Me.