NEEDLING

PROCRASTINATING AT THE NINE BILLIARDS

Here I am back at my office. Today is one of them days where they don’t shake my hand, where they don’t remember me, where I have never walked into their bar. I don’t know why that happens sometimes, but it does. Maybe it’s that I’ve started bringing a computer in here, or maybe it’s because they’ve somehow decided that I was an American… maybe they’ve seen my screen and realized I wrote in English, or they remember from a couple years back when I’ve brought English speaking friends in here. Whatever it is, this is one of those days where they don’t like me and where they’re going to make me wait for my crème. I ordered my crème as I walked in as I always do, yet I haven’t heard the cream-steaming machine go on or off yet… and I’ve had time to sit down, turn my computer on, and write this whole paragraph. I’ll let it go a few minutes then I’ll have to get back up and go to the bar and re-order. Maybe they don’t want my business anymore. I would be real sorry for that. I don't come in here as often as I did a while back... I've been in this neighborhood more than six years. I still come in here minimum once a week, or once every week and a half. That’s not enough to be considered a regular anymore I guess.

I got up and went up to the bar. They had forgotten all about me. My coffee was sitting on the machine. It should be nice and cold about now. I’m just a little paranoid I guess… (I won’t talk about last night, but I haven’t felt that out of place, that ill at ease, that claustrophobic in a long time… and I haven’t gotten over it… plus there was a Gabin movie on last night, with Ginsbourg…)

I should call MP today and see if her writing assignment is making progress. Which leads me to my own assignment, before I start thinking about hers, I should think about mine.

Those two American women again… example of one of our many “conversations”…

“Are the keyboards different here?”
“Yes… we use AZERTY, where as you use QWERTY keyboards…”
“…” Grimace.
“Different country, you know, different language, different needs, different evolution of things… even keyboards…”
“Why?”
“That’s just the way it is.”
“Why can’t you have normal keyboards, I mean the letters are all in the wrong places. And the commas, and the dots too. I just thought I was going crazy. Why don’t you have normal keyboards?”
“Well, we do have normal keyboards, they’re just different, that’s all.”
“I couldn’t even write an email, I was going nuts… why can’t you have the same keyboards as us?”
“Personally, I prefer the AZERTY keyboard…”
“The what?”
“The keyboard we have in France.”
“…” Stunned, unbelieving…
“Well, for accents and stuff… and I’m used to it.”
“Yeah… I guess it’s for all the different letters and stuff.”
“…”
“I was just all confused, that’s all.”
“We use the same alphabet in French as in English, you know that right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the letters are placed differently on the keyboard but they’re the same letters.”
“You use the American alphabet?”
“Actually, it’s the Latin alphabet.”
“Oh…”

Okay… I’m being a little rough, but that conversation did take place more or less as I’ve put it down. They never asked if we use the so called American alphabet but they actually believed we used a different alphabet in French. How they thought that when the conversation was going on about keyboards, and the different placing of letters – the same letters on both keyboards – I don’t know. I was a little perturbed myself during our talk to have to tell them that the French and the English languages both use the same alphabet. Actually, now that I think about it, it makes sense. If they thought French was written with a completely different lettering system than English, it would indeed be quite weird that all keyboards in the “English” alphabet should be arranged differently than they are in the States (Do all English speaking countries use the QWERTY keyboard?). I’m starting to uncover their logic.

Sometimes the trick to understand others is Not to use the logic which governs our lives to understand their words and actions, but to try and uncover their logic, as foreign as it might be to us, so that we may use their logic to understand their thought process and thus their words and actions. If we don’t understand that much about the person in front of us, what they say and do may and will probably seem completely absurd or rude or both. There’s an idea there, I’m sure of it.

Back to my assignment. I was reworking this short story I wrote last year… I was also trying to rewrite a short screenplay but I couldn’t do it… just couldn’t get excited about it…

I need to move to a cabin in the forest or on the beach or in the mountains or somewhere where there isn’t any internet connection, where there are no television channels, or just one in Spanish or something with Latino soap-operas diffused all day long. But how could I live without minimum one movie theater with regular projections? I could, I’m sure of it.