Seattle

The past month, in my Ecrivains Français et Peuples Etrangers (French Writers and Foreign Nations) class, we have been focusing on French writers and their regards of the US from the 18th century to the present. Today we concluded the unit with an excerpt from a book published in 2006 by Bernard-Henri Lévy. The title of this passage: "Seattle mon amour." I wish I could say that this brought me back; that it encapsulated in one title exactly how I'm feeling at the start of Fall, just when Nantes is beginning to get gray, rainy, and a little more Seattle-like. But it didn't, so read on.


The author starts out with saying that the most beautiful thing in Seattle was the arrival. He describes the docks as "fragile and sunlit", the "mist of summer that mysteriously stops at the edge of the waterfront", and goes on to illustrate Frank Blethel as a man who (seemingly single-handedly) combats the Hearst empire with the family-owned Seattle Times. Lévy described a visit to Redmond as a "décor of pines, lawns, and little lakes, this city within a city that is the home of Microsoft", as well as a visit to Boeing, where I learned all sorts of random airplane vocabulary like "fuselage" in French. 


"Bref, j'ai tout aimé de Seattle." ("In short, I loved everything about Seattle.")


I don't know why, but this 5-page passage just bothered me. It did! I wish I could find some other words. I read it on Monday, when I didn't know how I was feeling about settling back into Nantes after Bordeaux, and felt odd. I read it Tuesday, and felt nothing again. Today, I gave it a third try before class, translating a few more words to see if that'd help, and I really had a hard time disguising my annoyance with this dumb excerpt. The author bounced between describing the Seattle waterfront, Redmond, Renton, 1st Avenue in downtown, and then coming over the pass and seeing the Space Needle, and all I wanted to say was, "That's not it! That's not my Seattle you're describing; that's another city. And it's not even logical road trip to boot!"


After analyzing it in class, my professor told us that this was in the stylistic form of a love letter. The anaphora of repeating "I like (this), I like (that)" and the way in which he just went on about the skyscrapers and the Space Needle. Of course, I didn't even get this impression because I was too distracted. I just couldn't see it. Lévy was describing Microsoft, Boeing, and the shipping industry, not my hometown. He didn't mention the sunsets over Lake Washington that are breathtaking when the clouds finally part, the excitement of Seafair, or the humor that every winter, without fail, the whole city goes paralyzed during the first snow. He didn't mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of people live there, and they somehow find it within them to love Seattle despite the months and months of gray and rain to appreciate the crisp Fall mornings and the clear Spring afternoons. The cherry trees, the blooming flowers, the fact that you can get a mocha with cinnamon on top and actually walk down the street while drinking it (unheard of here). Only once --once!-- in the whole article did Lévy mention the citizens, and that was expressing his surprise that "this town, almost Canadian and already Asian, this Chinese town, this town that has known in a long history, the anti-Asian racial riots in U.S. history" can once again welcome Asians into their metropolis. That was it! 


I was hoping writing down this rant would help me to figure out where I stand, and it hasn't. Not completely, not yet. I understand the falling in love with a city, as I could go on and on about how much I love Nantes. I get that. But isn't it the people? Isn't it the fact that somehow, enough people got together and realized that there's something special about this place, just as they do with every other city? I guess I'm contradicting myself, as you can "love France and not the French" as so many people do, but it's more than that. Reading his excerpt didn't make me proud to be from Seattle; it didn't make me miss it. He didn't highlight a single thing that there is in Seattle that we don't have here. My only thought was, "You just don't get it", which made me think: I'm not homesick. When I got an email that said, "... and probably missing home a little..." I literally chuckled. It's not that I don't like home; I do. However, I feel a strange sort of detachment from it. I noticed Bellevue was changing before I left, and I didn't like it. Too big, too flashy, too materialistic. And after reading something like this, it didn't help. That's my history and my hometown, and it's tough when people see it for industry and skyscrapers and successes like Microsoft and Boeing. I know Bellevue is my home, and I think of it fondly, but it's changed so much already that what's the point of missing it when what I return to isn't the home from which I left?

If rejecting America part of the "adjusting to life in France" roller coaster that IES forewarned us about, then that's good. I'm almost worried I haven't been feeling homesick since I arrived, but I think that's due in large part to my family. Fortunately, my family has been far-flung enough for me to be used to the chaos of four people in four different cities, and fortunately, my amazing parents support me enough to say, "It's okay if we don't talk until December because you're exploring your life in Europe." Of course, there are things I miss about Seattle, like omelets, tater tots, and getting more than 2 ounces of coffee at a time. It's not homesick like heartsick: an achingly long, I-really-just-need-that-to-see-that-to-make-me-happy but a quick, "Yeah... yep, that sounds good" kind of thing. And for each thing I miss, there are five I've discovered. Blood sausage? Check. Walking absolutely everywhere? Check. Drinking tea from a cereal bowl every morning? Check. Quince bars and fig jam? Check, check. (...) This isn't supposed to be any sort of preface to something like, "So with that said, I'm quitting school and staying in France", as much as I'd like that to be the reality. It doesn't mean much at all; it's just me and my thoughts on being here. While I'm here, I'm just constantly struck by the universality of it all. Globalization, yeah, but the fact that people have lived here and have never in their lives eaten tater tots, or even driven in an SUV (today, I saw my very first pickup truck since I've arrived five weeks ago) and they're quite fine without it all. They find pleasures elsewhere, and so can/will/do I.