finding peace

"I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
and besides that you see
I have confidence in me!"
--Maria, Sound of Music

I was commenting on Courtney's blog when I got to thinking about some general concepts acting in my own life. As I have alluded to, I am leaving for France very soon. The countdown actually reads 10 days now! Over the past couple weeks, I have experienced bouts of anxiety at various levels. The anxiety can be rooted in whole conglomeration of things, ranging from not yet having an apartment or a bank account or insurance, etc. to fearing what will become of my relationships with people in the States once I have started my new life over there.

And really, I don't want to give the impression that I'm so worried that my worrying is a problem in and of itself. I'm not stuck in the grips of fear or depression or anything. It's really just a healthy level of worry that keeps me on my feet, because I truly believe that everything is going to be okay. Though I recognize what there is to be afriad of, I am confident. But I find myself intrigued by the issue of where confidence comes from.

Confidence is a word that has too many meanings to be helpful if you really want to understand how to achieve a state of confidence. The few that pertain to the meaning I'm discussing are:
1 a : a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances "had perfect confidence in her ability to succeed" "met the risk with brash confidence" b : faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way "have confidence in a leader"
2 : the quality or state of being certain : Certitude "they have every confidence of success"

The definition of confidence is all tied up with knowing things and then knowing that you know things. There are lots of things out there that you know (I know how to get from my house to my brother's dorm in Champaign. I know that I can't do a pull-up) and lots of things you don't (I don't know if there will be anyone who can speak English at the banks near my new apartment. I don't know how to get certified that I am in good health once I get to France so that I can get my carte de sejour). There are things you think you know but don't (I am pretty sure that if I sign that contract and pay all the money they're asking for there will be an apartment waiting for me where and when I expect it and that it will look the same as it does in the pictures) and even things you think you don't know but do (second-guessing your intuition). When you are operating in an area of things that you know that you know, you probably have lots of confidence. But there is confidence to be found in knowing that you don't have to know everything.

To find that, you have to think about your definitions of "to know" and "right" and "wrong." So much of what we know about the world is based on educated inferences based on what information we have. Even though I haven't seen the apartment that I'm going to with my own eyes and touched it with my own hands, I have enough evidence to lead me to believe that it exists. In terms of the type of knowing that predicts the future (knowing that a certain cause will lead to a certain effect) we really only have data points of experience to go off of. I know that when I smile at someone and ask them how their day was, they will feel happy and special. But especially when it comes to something as complicated as people, things could just as well come out differently than you expect, and you really never know. Knowing seems to be a degree of belief based on evidence and critical thinking. In this case, confidence is an assessment of how certain you are about something, and there will be a variety of factors that will determine how much of a margin of error you allow. How much evidence are you capable of collecting yourself? (I can really only find out information about what to expect in France from websites and e-mails and word-of-mouth at this point.) Is there more that you can research, more thought you can put in, or more experience that you can gain? How much does it matter that you are exactly right? (Do I really need to know exactly how it's going to work to open a bank account once I get there, or can I just play it by ear once I get there? If something unexpected happens, I know lots of ways of dealing with it. If the worst happens and everything crashes down around me and all falls through, I know I have a loving family, a college education, and a set of skills to fall back on.) I can still have confidence that things will work out and life will go on. To an extent, you have to be comfortable with the idea that knowing anything takes a certain amount of faith.

Furthermore, we only "know" things in terms of the categories we assign them to. (I know that's a chair and that that's the moon.) Categories are what human thought is made of--it's how our brain works--but it's not a completely accurate description of reality. When you get down to it, there are grey areas of almost every definition out there. It's hillarious to see how hotly people debate what is a "planet" while the chunks of rock and gas and other crap wandering around out there in the universe comprise a huge variety of descriptions without regard to what we happen to label them as. More seriously, we see in the abortion debate one of the grey areas of what can be put under the definition of "human life." Right and wrong, good and bad, are also just words. I don't mean to belittle the power and usefulness of words, but we must recognize at some point that they are human constructions. The world doesn't come with an inherent judgement on things, but just flows in an intensely complex and unpredictable set of millions of interactions among its millions of elements. It just is, whatever we say about it.

Thus, confidence, for me, is knowing and trusting that. What's so amazing is that even though the world doesn't have inherent judgement, it is so unfathomly complex that we within it
can experience it with judgement and emotion. What a vivid way to live!

off with the boy

This weekend we took Noah to college.

We drove him and all his stuff down to Champaign and dropped him off at ISR. I remember when I was starting out at the U of I, I had been carefully organizing and packing boxes for weeks. It wasn't just because I'm obsessive like that, but also because I couldn't wait to move out. Packing boxes made me feel like it was coming sooner than it actually was. Noah was much more laid-back about the whole process. The day before he left, he threw all his stuff into laundry baskets that Mom had given him. The morning of, we shoved it all in the suburban and left.

It took about 30 minutes to get him moved in and unpacked.

I guess he actually didn't have that much stuff. Also, they were super-duper organized about handling traffic on campus that day. Lincoln avenue was an absolute assembly-line machine! Then, when we pulled up to ISR, they had friendly sophomores in orange shirts ready with wheeled carts. They dragged all of Noah's stuff, in two loads, to his room.

His roommate is supposedly from Korea, but he didn't arrive all weekend, as far as I've heard. Thus, Noah got first dibs on the top bunk and the desk on the opposite wall. I climbed up to make the bed and jumped up and down trying to get the fitted sheet around the mattress while I was kneeling on it. I guess I also unpacked books onto a shelf. Mom folded clothes. There really wasn't much to do. Before long, Noah was like, "Okay guys, you can leave me alone now."

It just seemed like such an insignificant beginning to a very significant life transition. Noah's a freshman in college now! My little brother!! But you know what? He's ready. Even as of what I've seen of him this summer, he has matured so much. I give him my vote of confidence that he is ready to live on his own, go out and have his own experiences, act intelligently, think critically, and have fun.

progress

This post is at Courtney's request. She likes seeing pretty apartment pictures. All my previous lodging options have fallen through, so I am back to looking for new apartments. Here is the latest. This one is through an agency in New York City, and so far they have been miraculously prompt about communicating with me. I pray that this is the final one, but I honestly can't say yet:
Saint Germain des Pres

insomnia

listening to: Moulin Rouge!!!

I've never fallen asleep well. Long past the witching hour, I am restlessly awake still, either working on something with unshakeable concentration or lying awake in bed with millions of thoughts rushing uncontrollably through my mind. I probably don't have to tell you about how completely different the world is at this hour. Most people have been up this late enough times to have experienced what it's like; you know what I mean when I say that in the middle of the night your mind works in a fundamentally different way than it does when the sun is up. I leave the description up to your imagination, largely because I just don't have the attention span right now to write coherent soliloquies about the ways in which your mind becomes focused and free, relaxed, creative, and reaches conclusions from a whole different perspective.


Sometimes I'm up late because I'm doing something that I don't want to stop. But I've also racked up so, so, so many hours of my life lying awake in bed wishing I could fall asleep. On these long nights I lie there, desperately tired, my body begging for rest, and my mind rebelling despite all the good sense in the world. It's uncomfortable. It can be boring. And it hurts the next morning.

But these past few days have been even weirder. Not only am I unable to fall asleep, but I'm not even remotely tired. Not physically tired, certainly not mentally tired. No, I'm actually energized like never before this whole summer. I'm completely hyperactive. In fact, I would ideally prefer, instead of sitting here quietly in my bedroom in my pajamas, to be dancing. I imagine myself at the Moulin Rouge, wrapped up in that magical world of ideal love, passionately ripping out my heart in a heated Spanish tango. I want to move with every fiber of my body, flying in spirals, releasing emotion carelessly as if it was escaping from my soul as bolts of electricity build up to too high a voltage, crying! screaming! ranting! singing!!! all in celebration of the intensity of the drama! Only when I'm totally spent and unable to breath anymore do I finally collapse.


It's 5am.

These magical hours won't linger much longer. In just two hours I have to be waking up to get ready for work, but this just doesn't matter to the forces keeping me awake right now. I'll wake up, and I'll be tired, but I can't escape tonight's buildup of life's intensities, nor would I really want to. After a summer of relative lethargy, my departure for Paris quickly approaches and my fingers begin to twitch at the computer keys and the phone dial, fighting to bring all the necessary details together. My excitement is charging, filling me with life. Earlier, at 3am, I could be found sitting on the edge of my chair, back rigid, bouncing slightly. I'm calling my apartment agency over and over again thinking that maybe this time I'll get something other than their answering machine (it's 10am over there! they should be in the office!!). I already left them a whole message in French last Friday, and I can't very well improvise a new one. I go devour a piece of bread. Dad is up too, and he tries to explain 9/11 conspiracy theories to me. What? My mind can't focus. It feels like he's talking at a snail's pace. Can't he see that I don't want to stand there listening right now?

This is not the first time I've been up this late within the past few days. The other day I couldn't fall asleep until 7am. It's coming. France is really, really coming, and I can feel the shock waves from here.

less than a month and counting

Oh, ouch. This is the painful part of the summer. This is the part where I realize that I'm perfectly happy right here where I am, and that leaving is going to take me away from everyone and everything that I know. Yeah, I knew that before, and I knew it would be hard, but I didn't really know. I hadn't been feeling then what I'm stuck feeling now.

So here's the problem.
My life in Illinois now is completely settled at this point. I'm living with my family, whom I love, and I'm surrounded by even more extended family, which is a wonderful environment to be in. We have a beautiful new house. Mom is making new family friends by the minute. Lots of my friends live near Chicago too, so there's usually an opportunity to see them somehow, which often can include bumming around in the city. I have a fun job working in my Grandpa's office as an office assistant for his medical practice. And life is slow-paced and relaxed.

When I go to France, I will be leading a completely different life. I will be immersed in a foreign culture, struggling to finish learning the language just so I can communicate with people. I will be studying with a brilliant, amazing, world-famous harpist whom I love as a teacher, and thus will be practicing and working as hard as I can for her. I will be living on my own, taking care of a studio apartment in the middle of a big city, constantly taking care of business and errands. And I will make a totally new set of friends.

And somehow, I have to continue to live and to love both these lives. But inevitably, I'm going to adjust to living in France and always be busy with whatever harp thing I'm doing, and breaks to come home will add up to only a few weeks a year. Inevitably, just for my own emotional sanity, I'm going to grow away from my life in Illinois. And every time I switch back and forth, it's going to be painful, just like it is now.

But here's why the benefits outweigh the losses: When in France, I'm actually going to be forging a life for myself, instead of complacently waiting around here. I'm going to learn so much that I can't even fathom it. I'm going to become fluent in French, fiercely independent and capable, amazing at harp, and cultured and worldly to boot. And when I put it like that, two lives sounds like a privilege. I recognize how lucky I am, and I am so thankful for that that I don't even know what to do with myself, but that doesn't completely dispell my instinctive, human fear of separation and of the unknown.

Time continues ticking on. I am now working on signing a contract for the apartment in the 5th arrondissement, rue Buffon.

two new places

Here are the two new apartments that I'm considering. They are both further away from my school, but I have been advised by wonderful Ann Marie and Marta that living far away isn't so bad, that traveling between places is half of the experience, and that there are some nice neighborhoods to be found in areas more toward the center.

The first one that caught my attention was one right on the river in the Latin Quarter (5th):
Rue Buffon
Map of the area
Marta says that this one is a 10-min walk away from where her apartment is and that it's a nice area where normal people live, not overly full of tourists. She was pretty excited about this one. However, the inside of the apartment, though it has character, does not impress me in terms of its layout. Plus, it's too hard to get an idea of the floor-plan from the pictures.

This is the one I just found which is currently my favorite one so far, in the 10th:
Rue du Faubourg du Temple
Map of the area
Talk about character!! Plus, I really like how much storage space this one has! Yeah, there would be one flight of stairs for the harp--that's a down-side--but I've done that before, right Colleen? I don't know much about the area, though it seems to be pretty non-descript, seeing as no one has said anything about it in the course of all my Paris research.

Now if they would just response to my request forms!

17th, Malesherbes, 6th, 1st, M3, Place de Clichy, M12, Pont Cardinet??, 5th floor no elevator, rue Paul Feval, 14th, etc....

After the excitement of the family reunion this weekend, after recovering from the muscle-soreness of my water-skiing attempt, after saying goodbye to all my dear cousins for another year at least, it's time to get back to work. This week is apartment week.

I didn't get the apartment I wanted, the apartment right next to Diana that would have been so easy because it was right across from our school. Thus, I am now left dangling in the abyss of uncertainty as I frantically comb through the world-wide-web trying to find an alternative option. It's a balancing act, weighing the scales of price against size and location. The harp is another complicating issue, because I have to make sure that if I'm not on the ground floor there is an elevator and that it's big enough to fit a harp (most of the time its impossible to tell). The apartment I like the best is not in the best location, and the best apartment I can find for a reasonable price near the school is really, really small! How important is location? How much am I going to care about the size of the apartment? Can it be so small that I get depressed about living there or would I get used to it?

For your viewing pleasures and my personal organization of thoughts, I will compile a list of places that I am considering as of this particular hour.
Here's the one I like the best on the inside:
Paul Feval
Here's the one that would be really close, but almost suffocating (check out the bathroom!):
Deodat de Severac
Here's a medium-sized one a medium-annoying distance away with medium-appeal:
Boetie
And yes, I'm looking at other websites, but nothing has topped any of these yet.

Help!